̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - Department of History and Philosophy of Science

̽��ֱ��rise, fall and revival of research on human development

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Aug 2024 09:23:47 +0000

Analysing the past sheds light on the present resurgence of research on human development. That’s the lesson of a new study by Professor Nick Hopwood, from the Department of History and Philosophy of Science, that is published in the Journal of the History of Biology. ̽��ֱ��paper discusses the flourishing of human embryology a century ago, its drop in popularity after World War II, and especially its revival since the late twentieth century.

“Every journal article and news story about human development includes a bit of history, but it’s often narrow, rarely informative and not always accurate”, Hopwood says. “I wanted to stand back and see a bigger picture, then dig down to find out how and why there has been such a surge of attention. Working in Cambridge made that easier.”

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has been at the forefront of innovation, from the first test-tube baby to the extended culture of early embryos, organoids and other stem-cell models. ̽��ֱ��networking through Cambridge Reproduction of expertise in science and medicine, humanities and social sciences helped Hopwood reconstruct the genesis of these advances. This took a combination of research in libraries and archives and interactions with scientists, including interviews, sharing of documents, attending conferences and giving talks, here and elsewhere.

“Human development has long been of special interest as evidence of our origins and for its medical relevance, but is hard to study”, Hopwood explains. “Historically there have been two main approaches. Either deciding that it’s too difficult to research human embryos because they’re usually hidden in pregnant bodies, so we should study other animals and hope results will transfer. That’s an indirect approach. Or trying for the best possible results from the few human specimens that can be obtained. That’s a direct approach. My article analyses the rise of research directly on human material as part of the changing politics of choosing a species to study. I explore how researchers distanced themselves from work on animal models but even human studies depended on this.”

Interest in human embryos grew in the later 19th century, following debates about evolution. Darwinists pointed to the similarity of humans and other animals at early stages as evidence of common descent. Critical anatomists responded by setting up networks of physicians to collect material, mainly from women’s pregnancy losses. New techniques such as serial sectioning and wax modelling from the slices made details of internal structure visible in 3-D.

This led to a watershed moment: the establishment by the Carnegie Institution of Washington of a Department of Embryology at Johns Hopkins ̽��ֱ�� in Baltimore. Founded in 1914, the first research institution devoted specifically to embryology focused on human embryos, now also increasingly recovered from aseptic operations for various conditions. Important discoveries include elucidation of the timing of ovulation in the menstrual cycle, initially in rhesus macaques. Human embryos from the first two weeks after fertilization were described for the first time.

Flies, frogs and chicks

After World War II human embryology ran out of steam. A new field, developmental biology, focused on model organisms, such as flies, frogs, chicks and, as the exemplary mammal, mice.

“To make progress, the argument went, it was necessary to work on species where more could be done more easily”, Hopwood explains. “That meant micromanipulation, enough material to do biochemistry and molecular biology, and genetic tools.” This approach demonstrated its power in the 1980s, when mechanisms of development were found to be more conserved across the animal kingdom than researchers had imagined. Yet from around the same time interest revived in using human material.

“There was not a steadily rising curve of research on human development through the twentieth century”, Hopwood contends. “Instead, human embryos have gone through cycles of attention and neglect. As opportunities opened up and the balance of power shifted between researchers invested in different organisms, so the politics of species choice have changed. Over the last four decades we’ve seen a renewal of research directly on human development. This is in the first place because of changes in supply and demand.”

̽��ֱ��achievement of human in-vitro fertilisation, with a live birth in 1978, gave access to embryos before implantation in the uterus. After much debate the UK Human Fertilisation and Embryology Act 1990 permitted donated embryos to be kept in vitro, under strict regulations, for up to 14 days from fertilization. Though only in 2016 was that limit approached. Meanwhile, biobanks, notably the Human Developmental Biology Resource in Newcastle and London, provided ethical supplies of post-implantation stages from terminations of pregnancy.

There has been opposition from anti-abortion activists, and many fewer embryos are donated for research than scientists (and some patients) would like. But the field was transformed. As in the years around 1900, new technologies eased the study of human embryos. Only now the advances were in digital communication, molecular analysis and imaging methods. Optical slices and computer graphics replaced microscope slides and wax models.

Beyond mice

To obtain human embryos with permission and funding to study them, researchers had to make the case for studying our own species. They stimulated demand by arguing that it would no longer do simply to extrapolate from mice. Knowledge and skills from the mouse model could be applied, but the differences as well as the similarities had to be explored. That was crucial before clinical application, as in fertility treatments. It was also desirable in discovering what makes us human—or at least not mice. Funders were keen to support medically relevant research or “translational science”.

In the last fifteen years another kind of model has transformed the politics of species choice. Subject to ongoing ethical negotiations, stem-cell-based embryo models have enabled fresh kinds of experiment on human development. Some researchers even argue that, for investigating fundamentals of vertebrate development, these human systems are now the model. Mice remain a crucial resource, with almost every innovation made on them first. But since their development is rather peculiar, other laboratories are promoting comparisons with species that develop more like humans.

Around ten years ago, all this inspired the organization of a new sub-field, human developmental biology, not least through a series of conferences. Major research programmes, such as the Human Developmental Biology Initiative, bring together scientists working, in different ways, on various aspects of embryogenesis.

Questions remain. Hopwood’s historical research concentrated on the USA and the UK, with nods to continental Europe and Japan. It would be good to explore other countries’ histories, he suggests, especially since differences in reproductive politics and infrastructure mean that access to material is uneven.

More generally, Hopwood argues, “history can contribute by showing how we got here and clarifying the arguments that have been used”. “It helps stakeholders see why there are now such opportunities for research on human development, and that, because arrangements are fragile, it will take work to gain and keep public support.” So a long-term perspective can assist researchers and funders in thinking about what might happen next.

“Interest in human development has risen and fallen and risen again. Are we now going through another cycle of attention, or could interest be maintained? Will the balance shift back to animal models or will we see an ever greater focus on humans, at least in the form of stem-cell models? How might present actions shape choice of species in the future?”

̽��ֱ��research was part-funded by a Major Research Fellowship from the Leverhulme Trust. Story by Edward Grierson from the School of Humanities and Social Sciences communications team.

A new study takes a tour of the history of research into human embryology and development to show the "cycles of attention" that led to major scientific breakthroughs.

Carnegie Science

Photos of embryos of horizon XVII, published in Contributions to Embryology in 1948 and still in use as Carnegie Stage 17.

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

CamFest Speaker Spotlight: Dr Tom McClelland

zs332 — Wed, 20 Mar 2024 10:57:04 +0000

Tom McClelland is a lecturer in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. He will be speaking about his and colleague Paulina Sliwa’s recent research findings on the much contested ground of who does the housework and what impact gender has in Seeing the mess: Gender, housework and perception at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science on Thursday 21st March 3-4pm.

Witchcraft accusations an ‘occupational hazard’ for female workers

fpjl2 — Tue, 19 Sep 2023 08:53:54 +0000

Women’s working conditions increased the odds of them being suspected as witches, according to a new analysis of an English astrologer’s case files from the early 17th century.

Explore life in the Universe with new postgraduate programme

lw355 — Mon, 18 Sep 2023 10:00:19 +0000

A new postgraduate programme will train researchers to understand life's origins, search for habitable planets and consider the most profound question of all: are we alone?

Men may not ‘perceive’ domestic tasks as needing doing in the same way as women, philosophers argue

fpjl2 — Thu, 22 Dec 2022 09:39:23 +0000

Philosophers seeking to answer questions around inequality in household labour and the invisibility of women’s work in the home have proposed a new theory – that men and women are trained by society to see different possibilities for action in the same domestic environment.

They say a view called “affordance theory” – that we experience objects and situations as having actions implicitly attached – underwrites the age-old gender disparity when it comes to the myriad mundane tasks of daily home maintenance.

For example, women may look at a surface and see an implied action – ‘to be wiped’ – whereas men may just observe a crumb-covered countertop.

̽��ֱ��philosophers believe these deep-seated gender divides in domestic perception can be altered through societal interventions such as extended paternal leave, which will encourage men to build up mental associations for household tasks.

Writing in the journal Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, they argue that available data – particularly data gathered during the pandemic – suggest two questions require explanation.

One is “disparity”: despite economic and cultural gains, why do women continue to shoulder the vast majority of housework and childcare? ̽��ֱ��other is “invisibility”: why do so many men believe domestic work to be more equally distributed than in fact it is?

“Many point to the performance of traditional gender roles, along with various economic factors such as women taking flexible work for childcare reasons,” said Dr Tom McClelland, from Cambridge ̽��ֱ��’s Department of History and Philosophy of Science.

“Yet the fact that stark inequalities in domestic tasks persisted during the pandemic, when most couples were trapped inside, and that many men continued to be oblivious of this imbalance, means this is not the full story.”

McClelland and co-author Prof Paulina Sliwa argue that unequal divisions of labour in the home – and the inability of men to identify said labour – is best explained through the psychological notion of “affordances”: the idea that we perceive things as inviting or “affording” particular actions.

“This is not just looking at the shape and size of a tree and then surmising you can climb it, but actually seeing a particular tree as climbable, or seeing a cup as drink-from-able,” said Sliwa, recently of Cambridge’s philosophy faculty and now at the ̽��ֱ�� of Vienna.

“Neuroscience has shown that perceiving an affordance can trigger neural processes preparing you for physical action. This can range from a slight urge to overwhelming compulsion, but it often takes mental effort not to act on an affordance.”

There are dramatic differences in “affordance perception” between individuals. One person sees a tree as climbable where another does not. Objects offer a vast array of affordances – one could see a spatula as an egg-frying tool or a rhythmic instrument – and a spectrum of sensitivity towards them.

“If we apply affordance perception to the domestic environment and assume it is gendered, it goes a long way to answering both questions of disparity and invisibility,” said McClelland.

According to the philosophers, when a woman enters a kitchen she is more likely to perceive the “affordances” for particular domestic tasks – she sees the dishes as ‘to be washed’ or a fridge as ‘to be stocked’.

A man may simply observe dishes in a sink, or a half-empty fridge, but without perceiving the affordance or experiencing the corresponding mental “tug”. Over time, these little differences add up to significant disparities in who does what.

“Affordances pull on your attention,” said Sliwa. “Tasks may irritate the perceiver until done, or distract them from other plans. If resisted, it can create a felt tension.”

“This puts women in a catch-22 situation: either inequality of labour or inequality of cognitive load.”

This gender-based split in affordance perception could have a number of root causes, say philosophers. Social cues encourage actions in certain environments, often given by adults when we are very young children. Our visual systems update based on what we encounter most frequently.

“Social norms shape the affordances we perceive, so it would be surprising if gender norms do not do the same,” said McClelland.

“Some skills are explicitly gendered, such cleaning or grooming, and girls are expected to do more domestic chores than boys. This trains their ways of seeing the domestic environment, to see a counter as ‘to be wiped’.”

̽��ֱ��“gendered affordance perception hypothesis” is not about absolving men say Sliwa and McClelland. Despite a deficit in affordance perception in the home, a man can easily notice what needs doing by thinking rather than seeing. Nor should sensitivity to domestic affordances in women be equated with natural affinity for housework.

“We can change how we perceive the world through continued conscious effort and habit cultivation,” said McClelland. “Men should be encouraged to resist gendered norms by improving their sensitivity to domestic task affordances."

“A man might adopt a resolution to sweep for crumbs every time he waits for the kettle to boil, for example. Not only would this help them to do the tasks they don't see, it would gradually retrain their perception so they start to see the affordance in the future.”

Collective efforts to change social norms require policy-level interventions, argue the philosophers. For example, shared parental leave gives fathers the opportunity to become more sensitive to caring-task affordances.

Added Sliwa: “Our focus has been on physical actions such as sweeping or wiping, but gendered affordance perceptions could also apply to mental actions such as scheduling and remembering.”

By adding a gender dimension to the theory of “affordance perception” and applying it to the home, a new hypothesis may help answer questions of why women still shoulder most housework, and why men never seem to notice.

Men should be encouraged to resist gendered norms by improving their sensitivity to domestic task affordances

Tom McClelland

Getty images

Wiping down the countertop

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

Yes

Cambridge launches new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe

Anonymous — Mon, 10 Jan 2022 15:11:51 +0000

̽��ֱ��Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe will bring together an international team of scientists and philosophers, led by 2019 Nobel Laureate Professor Didier Queloz.

Thanks to simultaneous revolutions in exoplanet discoveries, prebiotic chemistry and solar system exploration, scientists can now investigate whether the Earth and the processes that made life possible are unique in the Universe.

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ�� has recently launched the Initiative for Planetary Science and Life in the Universe (IPLU) to enable cross-disciplinary research on planetology and life in the Universe.

Building on IPLU’s activities, the new Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe will support fundamental cross-disciplinary research over the next 10 years to tackle one of the great interdisciplinary challenges of our time: to understand how life emerged on Earth, whether the Universe is full of life, and ask what the nature of life is.

̽��ֱ��Centre will include researchers from Cambridge’s Cavendish Laboratory, Department of Earth Sciences, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics, Institute of Astronomy, Department of Zoology, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, Faculty of Divinity, and the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology.

“ ̽��ֱ��Centre will act as a catalyst for the development of our vision to understanding life in the Universe through a long-term research programme that will be the driving force for international coordination of research and education,” said Queloz, Jacksonian Professor of Natural Philosophy at the Cavendish Laboratory and Director of the Centre.

Research within the Centre will focus on four themes: identifying the chemical pathways to the origins of life; characterising the environments on Earth and other planets that could act as the cradle of prebiotic chemistry and life; discovering and characterising habitable exoplanets and signatures of geological and biological evolution; and refining our understanding of life through philosophical and mathematical concepts.

̽��ֱ��Centre will collaborate with researchers at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado Boulder (USA), ̽��ֱ�� College London, ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Harvard ̽��ֱ�� (USA) and the Centre of Theological Inquiry in Princeton, New Jersey (USA).

“Understanding the reactions that predisposed the first cells to form on Earth is the greatest unsolved mystery in science,” said programme collaborator Matthew Powner from ̽��ֱ�� College London. “Critical challenges of increasing complexity must be addressed in this field, but these challenges represent one of the most exciting frontiers in science.”

Carol Cleland, Director of the Center for the Study of Origins and Professor of Philosophy at the ̽��ֱ�� of Colorado Boulder, also collaborator on the programme said: “ ̽��ֱ��new Centre is unique in the breadth of its interdisciplinarity, bringing together scientists and philosophers to address central questions about the nature and extent of life in the universe.

“Characteristics that scientists currently take as fundamental to life reflect our experience with a single example of life, familiar Earth life. These characteristics may represent little more than chemical and physical contingencies unique to the conditions under which life arose on Earth. If this is the case, our concepts for theorising about life will be misleading. Philosophers of science are especially well trained to help scientists 'think outside the box' by identifying and exploring the conceptual foundations of contemporary scientific theorising about life with an emphasis on developing strategies for searching for truly novel forms of life on other worlds.”

Didier Queloz is a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge.

With a £10 million grant awarded by the Leverhulme Trust, the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge is to establish a new research centre dedicated to exploring the nature and extent of life in the Universe.

̽��ֱ��Centre will act as a catalyst for the development of our vision to understanding life in the Universe through a long-term research programme that will be the driving force for international coordination of research and education

Didier Queloz

ESO/M Kornmesser

Artists’s impression of the rocky super-Earth HD 85512 b

Yes

Licence type:

Attribution

Cambridge's finest recognised in 2022 New Year's Honours

ps748 — Sat, 01 Jan 2022 10:00:00 +0000

Among those awarded is Emeritus Professor James Diggle who receives the CBE for Services to Classical Scholarship. He was Professor of Greek and Latin from 1995 until he retired in 2011 and is a Fellow of the British Academy as well as Life Fellow at Queens' College.

Professor Diggle said: “My pleasure in receiving this honour will, I hope, be shared by Queens' College and the Faculty of Classics, both of which I have been closely associated with throughout the whole of my career, and also by Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Press, which has just published the Greek Lexicon on which I worked as Editor for over 20 years.”

Lynne McClure, Director of Cambridge Mathematics, receives the OBE for Services to Education. Cambridge Mathematics is an enterprise committed to championing and securing a world class mathematics education for all students from 3 to 19 years old and is a collaboration of three ̽��ֱ�� partners – Cambridge Press and Assessment, and the Faculties of Mathematics and Education.

She said: “I am very pleased personally to be a recipient in the New Year’s Honours, but even more delighted that this award highlights the importance of mathematics education – for everyone. At Cambridge Mathematics we are privileged to benefit from collaboration with amazing practitioners, researchers and designers in the UK and internationally, working together to improve mathematics education, worldwide.”

Professor Pauline Rose, Professor of International Education and Director of Research for Equitable Access and Learning Centre in the Faculty of Education, receives the OBE for Services to International Girls’ Education: “I’m truly honoured and genuinely surprised to receive an OBE for services to international girls’ education. Thanks to all who’ve worked with me, supported and challenged me over the years. I look forward to continued collaboration on evidence to improve quality education for all.”

Professor Lorand Bartels, Professor of International Law in the Faculty of Law and a Fellow of Trinity Hall, receives an MBE for Services to UK Trade Policy. Professor Bartels, who is currently Chair of the UK’s Trade and Agriculture Commission, said: "It is a great honour for a trade lawyer to be recognised in this way. It has been a privilege to be able to work with the government over the last few years as it has developed its newly independent trade policies, and it has been immensely satisfying to be able to put my academic work into practice. I hope that this award inspires others to become involved in what is truly a fascinating and important area of international law."

Dr Robert Bud, Affiliated Scholar, Department of History and Philosophy of Science, receives an MBE for Services to the Science Museum and Northern Industrial Heritage. Robert Bud is Emeritus Keeper at the Science Museum, London, where he was a senior curator for 40 years: “I have benefited tremendously from association with the History and Philosophy of Science Department whose researchers have welcomed me, encouraged presentations, and collaborated on projects to great benefit of my work at the Science Museum.”

̽��ֱ�� ̽��ֱ��'s Vice-Chancellor, Professor Stephen J Toope, said: "It’s pleasing to see another group of people associated with Collegiate Cambridge receiving recognition in the New Year’s Honours list. Public service is what so many of us at this ̽��ֱ�� aspire to and it’s been noticeable in abundance over the last two years. I offer my congratulations to those who’ve been honoured in this way for their commitment and their achievements."

Academics and other staff associated with the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge feature in the 2022 New Year's Honours List.

Public service is what so many of us at this ̽��ֱ�� aspire to and it’s been noticeable in abundance over the last two years.

Professor Stephen Toope, Vice-Chancellor

Senate House

Yes

Mind Over Chatter: What is the future?

ns480 — Thu, 27 May 2021 13:22:48 +0000

Season 2, episode 1

This second series of Mind Over Chatter is all about the future - and in this first episode we’re going to be considering what the future even is… Have you ever wondered how time works? It turns out, the answer is a lot more complicated than we thought.

Join our wondering and wonderful conversation with philosopher of science Dr Matt Farr, whose work focuses particularly on what it means for time to have a direction, professor of psychology Nicky Clayton, who looks at the evolution and development of intelligence in non-verbal animals and pre-verbal children, and professor of linguistics and philosophy, Kasia Jaszczolt whose research interests combine semantics, pragmatics, and the metaphysics of time

We’ll be talking about everything from physics to linguistics… and from broken eggs to Einstein’s theory of relativity.

Subscribe to Mind Over Chatter

Key points

[04:28] - Does time actually go from past to present to future? And does time really ‘flow’?

[09:53] - How do B-theorists deal with entropy? Can you un-break an egg?

[14:12] - Recap of the first portion of the episode, reviewing A-theory, B-theory and C-theory of time

[18:58] - How the mind understands the subjective concept of time

[27:11] - ̽��ֱ��Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and how the way you talk about language affects the way you perceive and think about things

[30:21] - Recap of the second portion of the episode

[34:02] - How do the mental and linguistic concepts around time fit with philosophical concepts and physics of time?

[45:46] - Is there a conflict between the psychological and linguistic models of time and the way physics handles time?

[48:20] - Recap of the last portion of the episode

Mind Over Chatter: ̽��ֱ��Cambridge ̽��ֱ�� Podcast