Towards a History of Theoretical Biology

Today, theoretical biology is often described as the branch of biology that employs mathematical and computational tools to model and represent biological processes in quantitatively precise terms. But it wasn’t always this way. A hundred years ago, when theoretical biology first emerged as a distinct research program, it had a drastically different—and far more ambitious—agenda: to critically analyze the conceptual foundations of biology in order to resolve longstanding theoretical disputes and bring about the epistemic unification of biological science. Regrettably, the early ‘philosophical’ period of theoretical biology has been almost completely forgotten and its existence is seldom acknowledged—let alone carefully examined. This is the goal of this session. More specifically, the session explores the origins of theoretical biology and identifies the motivations that lead prominent biologists in the German and English-speaking worlds to take up the cause of theoretical biology in the early twentieth century. It explores the efforts to create an international community of theoretical biologists and to institutionalize the discipline by means of book series, specialized journals, and conferences. The session also recounts the attempts to revive the old, ‘philosophical’ form of theoretical biology in the 1960s, and why these ultimately failed. Speakers in this session share the conviction that only by adopting a broader conception of what it means to ‘do theory’ in biology—one that is respectful of theoretical biology’s own history and which brings together formal and non-formal approaches—can the field recover its former relevance to the rest of biology.