Doing Theory: German-Speaking Research Communities in Theoretical Biology, 1901-1945

This paper investigates different research traditions in early German-speaking theoretical biology. A century after the term ‘biology’ was coined, a number of scholars started to argue for the need to develop a ‘theoretical biology’. While through the works of, among others, Johannes Reinke and Jacob von Uexküll interests in biological theorizing grew steadily, the new field’s aims and research methods were quite diverse. Theoretical biology was argued to allow conceptual clarification, theoretical ordering, organization of research activities, better communication of results, abstracting from the ‘burden of details’, securing the autonomy of biology from physics, and ultimately, unifying biological research. Due to this heterogeneity still today large part of early theoretical biology remains poorly understood. By focusing on two of the most central figures in this young discipline, Julius Schaxel and Adolf Meyer-Abich, this paper, first, seeks to disentangle and classify individual motivations of scholars to promote theorizing in biology. This includes clarifying theorists’ (i) different views on the relationship between theory and experimental practice in biology, (ii) underlying philosophical frameworks (e.g., holism, dialectical materialism), and (iii) terminological characterizations of the new field (e.g., ‘general biology’ vs. ‘theoretical biology’). Second, the paper provides an overview of the structure and conceptual debates of this large (and today largely forgotten) German-speaking theoretical research community until the end of WWII. Therefore, contributions to the two central book series of the time, Schaxel’s ‘Abhandlungen zur theoretischen Biologie’ and Meyer-Abich’s ‘Bios’ will be discussed.