The Emergence of Genetic Rationality: Space, Time, and Information in American Biological Science, 1870-1920

Prelude

prelude I n t h e s p r i n g o f 1 8 9 1 , a t e l e g r a p h m e s s e n g e r interrupted a speech by Indiana University president David Starr Jordan with a note from his mentor, the great Andrew Dickson White. The note simply read: “Decline no offer from California till you hear from me.”1 Leland Stanford had offered the presidency of his new university to White. Although flattered to receive attention from a man with as much prominence and money as Stanford, White was already employed as the president of Cornell University, and, like most of his other established colleagues, saw no reason to give up comfortable circumstances to erect a new university on the wild side of a continent that had only recently boasted a transcontinental rail line. Stanford had asked White because he approved of the curricular reforms that White had instituted while president of Cornell. The most important of these was a system called the “Major Professor System” in which a student was introduced to a professor within his chosen discipline. This professor then took it upon himself to recommend a course of study for the student that would ensure a breadth of learning in spite of the solid disciplinary focus.2 One reason that President White introduced this practice was to allow students to choose new fields of study that enabled them to develop professional careers in business, science, 2 9 and engineering. Indeed, in his earliest speculations on the need for the university , Stanford wrote that he had tired of young men coming to ask him for work in the railroad without being adequately prepared in the dealings of a large business venture. Jordan later recollected that Stanford had hoped his new university would be “a center of invention and research, where students would be trained in ‘usefulness in life.’ [Stanford’s] educational ideals, it appeared corresponded very closely with my own. Indeed, from President White he had been assured that I was the man to organize the institution he contemplated.”3 Jordan accepted Stanford’s offer. Jordan had graduated from Cornell, had assumed a teaching position there, and was appointed president of Indiana University at thirty-four years of age. Once president, Jordan lost no time in making over the curriculum in the image of Andrew Dickson White. A naturalist by training, Jordan understood the importance of ensuring that the curricula in new institutions emphasized science and engineering. While at Indiana, Jordan had used the prominence of his position to argue for the implementation of an elective system that would allow each student to choose a diversity of topics under close guidance. While Jordan’s perspective on the role of education for the new century plus the enthusiastic recommendation from White were enough to secure the position of president for the new university, Jordan shared another interest with his new employer: theories of animal husbandry and breeding. As a biologist, Jordan was interested in the problem of heredity from a theoretical perspective. Indeed, it was while studying under the great Louis Agassiz that Jordan decided to commit his career to the biological study of life. As a believer in the theory of evolution, however, Jordan would come to appreciate the relationship of living beings in ways that Agassiz became famous for resisting. Jordan’s interest in heredity was rooted in the practical necessities of an agrarian life. His father bred Merino lambs, and Jordan’s first scientific publication was on the topic of “hoof rot in sheep.”4 Meanwhile, Jordan’s new employer, Stanford, was carrying on important investigations directed toward increasing the productivity of animals. Stanford’s fortune was great enough, and his holdings of land vast enough, that he could set up one of the largest breeding farms in history to experiment with his theories regarding heredity. Until now, historians have only concentrated on one small component of these experiments, the part that brought the self-promoting Eadward Muybridge to the farm to develop a photographic means to under3 0 / I / H A R N E S S I N G H E R E D I T Y stand the mechanics of equine locomotion. What has been left behind is the broad set of beliefs and hopes that convinced Stanford to hire Muybridge in the first place: an interest...