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Historiography and Immunology

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Handbook of the Historiography of Biology

Part of the book series: Historiographies of Science ((HISTSC))

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Abstract

In this chapter, we provide an overview of attempts from different disciplines to treat immunology and immunity as objects in the history of science. Despite the science’s immense potential, there is a paucity of broad, synthetic historical scholarship, compared to writings about the philosophy and, indeed, historiography of immunology. Following a reprise of the origins of immunology as a field of investigation, we trace the pathways through which histories of immunology, and their entwined philosophies, have developed and matured over the past century. The recent output of expansive “denaturalized” histories, which has given rise to a variegated and relatively autonomous historical landscape, is surveyed. The chapter concludes with a call for fuller realization of histories of immunology and immunity, with scholarship that is more comparative, connected, and transnational, rather than internally focused on biography, institutional development, and the succession of ideas and techniques.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Metchnikoff has been variously described as a zoologist, embryologist, immunologist, or medical scientist by different writers. His own self portrait was that of a zoologist who “suddenly became a pathologist” (as quoted in Foster 1970, 92–93).

  2. 2.

    See the Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2011) for a special issue on scientific biography in general.

  3. 3.

    Translated into English as The Specificity of Serological Reactions (1936).

  4. 4.

    Tauber (1999, 459) later observed that Burnet “sought a firm definition of the immune self” (see also Tauber 2004, 2008, 2016). But see Anderson (2004) on Burnet’s ecological vision. In a recent synthesis, Tauber (2017, 228) has attempted to reconcile the two Burnets, concluding redundantly that “immunology deserves much greater attention by philosophers of science.”

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Acknowledgments

Warwick Anderson is grateful for research support from the Australian Research Council (DP120100861).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    Warwick Anderson

  2. Independent Scholar, Bangalore, Karnataka, India

    Neeraja Sankaran

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  1. Warwick Anderson
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  2. Neeraja Sankaran
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Correspondence to Neeraja Sankaran .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA

    Michael R. Dietrich

  2. Program in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine Department of Ecology, Evolution and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Mark E. Borrello

  3. Graduate Program in Science Technology and Society, Bar-Ilan University, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Oren Harman

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Anderson, W., Sankaran, N. (2021). Historiography and Immunology. In: Dietrich, M.R., Borrello, M.E., Harman, O. (eds) Handbook of the Historiography of Biology. Historiographies of Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90119-0_20

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