Greifswald 2024 – scientific programme

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GP: Fachverband Geschichte der Physik

GP 4: Exploring the experimental approach

GP 4.1: Invited Talk

Tuesday, February 27, 2024, 16:30–17:30, ELP 3: HS 2.33

Infusoria, Cress, and Tulips: Physical Experiments with Living Organisms — •Caterina Schürch — TU Berlin

This talk examines examples -- from the mid-eighteenth century to the early twentieth century -- of physicists using living organisms in their experiments. Not surprisingly, the decision to work with biological material required different justifications at different times. In the mid-eighteenth century, experimental physicists moved quite naturally from experiments with non-living material to experiments with organized bodies, whereas in the early twentieth century, working with biological systems was considered highly problematic. While prominent biologists suggested that there should be a biologist in every physics laboratory and a physicist in every biology laboratory, there was little interest among physicists in working with complex organisms that were difficult to control. Only in exceptional cases did it make sense for them to use living objects in their experiments. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, however, living animals and plants were still part of the physicist's repertoire. Analyzing the debates about living organisms in physics experiments offers us a promising angle for exploring the changing methodological standards of experimental research in the physical sciences and beyond.

Keywords: Biophysics; 18th century; 19th century; 20th century; organisms