I think that the "germ theory" of disease, already mentioned, especially
with Koch's approach, was exceedingly important. We still have "bad air"
as the label for a serious disease.
An extension of this is the change of "filterable virus," where _virus_
orignally meant a slimy fluid or a poison (connected in my mind to the
fact that stagnant water was likely to have an abundance of pathological
organisms), to a reproducing entity. I don't know enough to say whether
the discovery of RNA retroviruses shook things up as well.
Prions seem yet another category that changed thought considerably.
Dave
On Fri, 02 Jun 2000 13:17:49 -0500 "James Mahaffy" <Mahaffy@dordt.edu>
writes:
> For some odd reason Loren's examples are too much from the physical
> side of the fence (which is where more philosophy of science is
> usually done because it can be more rationally reduced). In any
> case, here are some more examples from biology or geology.
>
> One obvious one was the effect of Darwin causing abandoning of a
> teleological explanation for origins that was common in the British
> natural theology [I think that is what they sere raftered to as] of
> the time.
>
> Another is the punctuated/equilibrium stasis model (by some
> paleontologists - Gould and others) that suggested the mainstream
> model of a gradualistic evolution should be modified by evidence
> from the fossil record.
>
> Recently in biology the switch from a morphological to a cladistic
> taxonomy has and is having a tremendous impact on classification. I
> really noticed it at the International botanical congress this
> summer where there were still some defense of the traditional
> taxonomy but it looks like the cladistic folks are becoming more the
> accepted way of doing things. This calls into question even being
> able to use traditional taxonomic ranks (categories) or at least
> have them remain stable. This is an interesting one because it was
> not caused by weakness of traditional taxonomy other than the fact
> that cladistics was seen as being more inline with evolutionary
> theory. From the standpoint of grouping organisms it clearly makes
> life a bit more complicated. If I am not mistaken, birds really are
> now supposed to called reptiles or at least reptiles is seen as an
> artificial group because it does not include birds.
>
> Earlier Anton's discovery of little animalcules lead to realization
> that there were things like algae and protozoa and that critters
> were made of cells. The impact that bacteria caused diseases was
> earth shaking.
>
>
>
> James Mahaffy (mahaffy@dordt.edu) Phone: 712 722-6279
> Biology Department FAX : 712
> 722-1198
> Dordt College, Sioux Center IA 51250
>
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