This paper presents two different visions of how one might portray the interaction of an organism's body parts and thus how a society might be likened to an organism.In the case of Herbert Spencer there was a democratic vision of an organism, often portrayed as a political assembly of body parts, each one acting in its own 'interest' . Spencer learned about certain organisms whose very status as unitary individuals was questioned in the 1840s and' 50s. Many of these invertebrate animals were seen as compound organisms, as aggregations of harmoniously-interacting parts. In these organisms, each part had a surprising amount of independence, often having its own simple 'brain', the ganglion. And the principles demonstrated by these simple invertebrates were thought to hold for more complex organisms like humans too. This democratic vision of an organism linked nicely with Spencer's distaste for dirigiste authorities, and the young Spencer grew up amidst three excellent examples of organizations that defied or did not require central authorities -religious Dissent, radical politics, and phrenology. Spencer therefore believed that societies and organisms were guided by the same principles of specialization and harmonious interaction encountered in comparative anatomy, Dissent, radical politics, and phrenology; and so he saw no apparent contradiction when he likened a society to an organism in 1860.On the other hand there is an authoritarian view of the organism, where each part is beholden to a dirigiste authority like the will or the brain. Spencer's friend, Thomas Henry Huxley, held this view. He began his scientific career examining the same invertebrates that Spencer used for his examples, but where Spencer saw republican assemblies of emotions, Huxley saw instead a body ruled by the Hobbesian authority of the brain. He denied that compound organisms were even possible. Huxley's early biology matched his later professional interests too: he used his version of the social organism to legitimize a new clericalism represented by his own group, the scientific naturalists. This was particularly useful in areas like justifications for greater government funding for science, which Spencer hotly opposed. Huxley's dirigiste version of the social organism won out, and Spencer's alternative view of a disunified social organism was forgotten. As the disunified organism was forgotten over the next century, many historians and commentators attacked Spencer's "contradictory" stance in which he likened each free individual in a liberal society to a body part of an organism. They were aware only of a unitary organism, and so these analysts were aware only of organic imagery that justified a strong State. They used Huxley's definition of a biological individual without being aware of his own reasons for doing this.
Abstract. To better understand the work of pre-Darwinian British life researchers in their own right, this paper discusses two different styles of reasoning. On the one hand there was analysis:synthesis, where an organism was disintegrated into its constituent parts and then reintegrated into a whole; on the other hand there was palaetiology, the historicist depiction of the progressive specialization of an organism. This paper shows how each style allowed for development, but showed it as moving in opposite directions. In analysis:synthesis, development proceeded centripetally, through the fusion of parts. Meanwhile in palaetiology, development moved centrifugally, through the ramifying specialization of an initially simple substance. I first examine a community of analytically oriented British life researchers, exemplified by Richard Owen, and certain technical questions they considered important. These involved the neurosciences, embryology, and reproduction and regeneration. The paper then looks at a new generation of British palaetiologists, exemplified by W.B. Carpenter and T.H. Huxley, who succeeded at portraying analysts' questions as irrelevant. The link between styles of reasoning and physical sites is also explored. Analysts favored museums, which facilitated the examination and display of unchanging marine organisms while providing a power base for analysts. I suggest that palaetiologists were helped by vivaria, which included marine aquaria and Wardian cases. As they became popular in the early 1850s, vivaria provided palaetiologists with a different kind of living and changing evidence. Forms of evidence, how they were preserved and examined, and career options all reinforced each other: social and epistemic factors thus merged.
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