The information overload in E-Discovery proceedings makes reviewing expensive and it increases the risk of failure to produce results on time and consistently. New interactive techniques have been introduced to increase reviewer productivity. In contrast, the techniques presented in this article propose an alternative method that tries to reduce information during culling so that less information needs to be reviewed. The proposed method first focuses on mapping the email collection universe using straightforward statistical methods based on keyword filtering combined (...) with date time and custodian identities. Subsequently, a social network is constructed from the email collection that is analyzed by filtering on date time and keywords. By using the network context we expect to provide a better understanding of the keyword hits and the ability to discard certain parts of the collection. (shrink)

In this work, we provide a broad overview of the distinct stages of E-Discovery. We portray them as an interconnected, often complex workflow process, while relating them to the general Electronic Discovery Reference Model (EDRM). We start with the definition of E-Discovery. We then describe the very positive role that NIST’s Text REtrieval Conference (TREC) has added to the science of E-Discovery, in terms of the tasks involved and the evaluation of the legal discovery work (...) performed. Given the critical nature that data analysis plays at various stages of the process, we present a pyramid model, which complements the EDRM model: for gathering and hosting; indexing; searching and navigating; and finally consolidating and summarizing E-Discovery findings. Next we discuss where the current areas of need and areas of growth appear to be, using one of the field’s most authoritative surveys of providers and consumers of E-Discovery products and services. We subsequently address some areas of Artificial Intelligence, both Information Retrieval-related and not, which promise to make future contributions to the E-Discovery discipline. Some of these areas include data mining applied to e-mail and social networks, classification and machine learning, and the technologies that will enable next generation E-Discovery. The lesson we convey is that the more IR researchers and others understand the broader context of E-Discovery, including the stages that occur before and after primary search, the greater will be the prospects for broader solutions, creative optimizations and synergies yet to be tapped. (shrink)

Retrieval of relevant unstructured information from the ever-increasing textual communications of individuals and businesses has become a major barrier to effective litigation/defense, mergers/acquisitions, and regulatory compliance. Such e-discovery requires simultaneously high precision with high recall (high-P/R) and is therefore a prototype for many legal reasoning tasks. The requisite exhaustive information retrieval (IR) system must employ very different techniques than those applicable in the hyper-precise, consumer search task where insignificant recall is the accepted norm. We apply Russell, et al.’s cognitive (...) task analysis of sensemaking by intelligence analysts to develop a semi-autonomous system that achieves high IR accuracy of F1 ≥ 0.8 compared to F1 < 0.4 typical of computer-assisted human-assessment (CAHA) or alternative approaches such as Roitblat, et al.’s. By understanding the ‘Learning Loop Complexes’ of lawyers engaged in successful small-scale document review, we have used socio-technical design principles to create roles, processes, and technologies for scalable human-assisted computer-assessment (HACA). Results from the NIST-TREC Legal Track’s interactive task from both 2008 and 2009 validate the efficacy of this sensemaking approach to the high-P/R IR task. (shrink)

This volume inaugurates the publication of the biblical Dead Sea Scrolls from the main collection discovered in Cave 4 at Qumran. It contains ten biblical manuscripts from Genesis to Deuteronomy and Job. Six are written in the ancient Palaeo-Hebrew script and four are in Greek. There are also five hitherto unknown compositions. The Hebrew texts antedate by a millennium what had previously been the earliest surviving biblical codices in the original language, and they document the pluriform nature of the ancient (...) biblical textual tradition before the text became standardized. The most extensive and significant manuscript, 4QpaleoExodm, exhibits the expanded textual tradition that formed the basis for the Samaritan Pentateuch and illumines the historical and theological relationship between the Jews and the Samaritans. Fragments of an unidentified Greek text mention Moses, Pharaoh, and Egypt, suggesting some development of the Exodus theme, and further witnessing to the rich religious literature to which Rabbinic Judaism and nascent Christianity were heirs. An index of all the biblical manuscripts from Qumran Cave 4 and their distribution in other Discoveries in the Judaean Desert volumes is provided, and there are also forty pages of plates from the manuscripts. (shrink)

In this first English translation the author has included all of the original text and has added new footnotes, preface, and 150 more pages of text. The new material is conveniently starred. A monumental work which develops the view Popper calls "deductivism" --the theory of the deductive method of testing.--J. E. M.

Following with the discovery of the electron by J. J. Thomson at the end of the nineteenth century a steady elucidation of the structure of the atom occurred over the next 40 years culminating in the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938–1939. The significant steps after the electron discovery were: discovery of the nuclear atom by Rutherford (Philos Mag 6th Ser 21:669–688, 1911 ), the transformation of elements by Rutherford (Philos Mag 37:578–587, 1919 ), discovery (...) of artificial radioactivity by Joliot-Curie and Joliot-Curie (Comptes Rendus Acad Sci Paris 198:254–256, 1934 ), and the discovery of the neutron by Chadwick (Nature 129:312, 1932a , Proc R Soc Ser A 136:692–708, 1932b ; Proc R Soc Lond Ser A 136:744–748, 1932c ). The neutron furnished scientists with a particle able to penetrate atomic nuclei without expenditure of large amounts of energy. From 1934 until 1938–1939 investigations of the reaction between a neutron and uranium were carried out by E. Fermi in Rome, O. Hahn, L. Meitner and F. Strassmann in Berlin and I. Curie and P. Savitch in Paris. Results were interpreted as the formation of transuranic elements. After sorting out complex radio-chemistry and radio-physics O. Hahn and F. Strassmann came to the conclusion, beyond their belief, that the uranium nucleus split into smaller fragments, that is nuclear fission. This was soon followed in 1939 by its theoretical interpretation by L. Mietner and O. Frisch. (shrink)

The effectiveness of information retrieval technology in electronic discovery (E-discovery) has become the subject of judicial rulings and practitioner controversy. The scale and nature of E-discovery tasks, however, has pushed traditional information retrieval evaluation approaches to their limits. This paper reviews the legal and operational context of E-discovery and the approaches to evaluating search technology that have evolved in the research community. It then describes a multi-year effort carried out as part of the Text Retrieval Conference (...) to develop evaluation methods for responsive review tasks in E-discovery. This work has led to new approaches to measuring effectiveness in both batch and interactive frameworks, large data sets, and some surprising results for the recall and precision of Boolean and statistical information retrieval methods. The paper concludes by offering some thoughts about future research in both the legal and technical communities toward the goal of reliable, effective use of information retrieval in E-discovery. (shrink)

A group of thirteen essays, most of them being either meta-philosophical or metaphysical. The latter group can be seen as applying the theme Wisdom plays so often in the former group and in his previous works: the comparison of one type of statement with another, leading to discoveries which resolve philosophical paradoxes but which can, if misused, engender new ones. Of special interest: "Religious Belief" and "The Metamorphosis of Metaphysics." The price of this volume is unfortunate, as is the printing (...) job.—A. E. J. (shrink)

The development of X-ray diffraction photography was central to the discovery of the helical structure of DNA in 1953. Unfortunately the story of how this technique was developed receded into the background as subsequent attention focused on the moment of discovery by Watson and Crick. As a result the importance of photography as ‘data’ and the role it plays in scientific discovery is underplayed. We seek to rectify this situation by presenting this story and by drawing conclusions (...) about the importance of this form of photography in scientific investigation as well as for the insights it gives us regarding the process of discovery. (shrink)

There is an undercurrent to be detected in Anselm's record of the meditative experience that issued in the Ontological Argument and, although it points to a profound and perennial problem in the interpretation of religion, this undercurrent has been largely ignored. The Argument, as is well known, moves entirely within the medium of reflective meaning focused on the idea of God and, unlike the cosmological arguments of later theologians, it makes no appeal whatever to a principle of causality or to (...) the discovery of a sufficient reason for finite existence. Anselm seems to have had his own sense of what one may call the unadulterated rationalism of the Argument when, in his own words, he wondered, ‘if perhaps it might be possible to find one single argument that for its proof required no other save itself, and that by itself would suffice to prove that God really exists’. Here we are entirely within that inner chamber of the mind so dear to the Augustinian tradition, a mind from which one is to exclude all thought save that of God. The task of the one who reflects is to penetrate the inner meaning of this thought in order to discover what it implies beyond what is evident on the surface. With such an eminently rational or logical aim occupying the centre of attention, it is quite understandable that the presence of another, and quite opposed, concern should have been overlooked - Anselm's concern, namely, to transcend, as it were, the medium of thought itself, and enter into the presence of God. The reason that this concern introduces a tension in the search for a proof is that the realization of presence would seem to render proof superfluous, while the inference in an argument - especially one moving towards existence – inevitably suggests, in some sense and to some degree, the absence of what is sought for. (shrink)

The purpose of this work is to analyse the cognitive process of the domain theories in terms of the measurement theory to develop a computational machine learning approach for implementing it. As a result, the relational data mining approach, the authors proposed in the preceding books, was improved. We present the approach as an implementation of the cognitive process as the measurement theory perceived. We analyse the cognitive process in the first part of the paper and present the theory and (...) method of the logically most powerful empirical theory discovery in the second. The theory is based on the notion of law-like rules, which conform to all the properties of laws of nature, namely generality, simplicity, maximum refutability and minimum number of parameters. This notion is defined for deterministic and probabilistic cases. Based on the method, the discovery system is developed. The system was successfully applied to many practical tasks. (shrink)

This anthology on creativity represents a lifetime of reading and study by the late Charles Dewey Tenney, a philosopher who had been a student of Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard. In a series of fourteen essays Tenney considers the various factors that can be identified in creativity, followed by the recorded testimony of philosophers, artists, historians, explorers, scientists and others, both theorists and practitioners. The contributors extend in time from Aristotle and Sophocles to Buckminster Fuller and May Sarton. They include (...) such diverse thinkers as Martin Luther, Karl Marx, Lewis Carroll, Julian Huxley, Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, Gertrude Stein, Henry Nelson Wieman and Alfred North Whitehead. In all, more than 300 of the world's most creative individuals are included. Contents: Discovery, Invention and Creation; Roots of Discovery; Environs of Discovery; Agents of Discovery; Hinderances to Discovery; Observation and Discovery; Reason in Discovery; Reverie Discovery; Imagination in Discovery; Sensibility and Discovery; Method in Discovery; Artistry in Discovery; Diffusion; and Foresight and Discovery. (shrink)

Given the very large numbers of documents involved in e-discovery investigations, lawyers face a considerable challenge of collaborative sensemaking. We report findings from three workplace studies which looked at different aspects of how this challenge was met. From a sociotechnical perspective, the studies aimed to understand how investigators collectively and individually worked with information to support sensemaking and decision making. Here, we focus on discovery-led refinement; specifically, how engaging with the materials of the investigations led to discoveries that (...) supported refinement of the problems and new strategies for addressing them. These refinements were essential for tractability. We begin with observations which show how new lines of enquiry were recursively embedded. We then analyse the conceptual structure of a line of enquiry and consider how reflecting this in e-discovery support systems might support scalability and group collaboration. We then focus on the individual activity of manual document review where refinement corresponded with the inductive identification of classes of irrelevant and relevant documents within a collection. Our observations point to the effects of priming on dealing with these efficiently and to issues of cognitive ergonomics at the human–computer interface. We use these observations to introduce visualisations that might enable reviewers to deal with such refinements more efficiently. (shrink)

Those of us who were made to study Pride and Prejudice at school know that Darcy represents pride and Elizabeth represents prejudice. Those of us who have actually read the book know that the situation is a good deal more complicated than that. The motivation for a significant part of the action is Elizabeth's pride, a point that is made quite clearly and is recognized by Elizabeth herself in what sounds like a thoroughly rehearsed speech: ‘How despicably have I acted!’ (...) she cried.—‘I, who have prided myself on my discernment!—I, who have valued myself on my abilities! who have disdained the generous candour of my sister, and gratified my vanity, in useless or blameable distrust.—How humiliating is this discovery!—Yet, how just a humiliation!—Had I been in love, I could not have been more wretchedly blind. But vanity, not love, has been my folly.—Pleased with the preference of one, and offended by the neglect of the other, on the very beginning of our acquaintance, I have courted prepossession and ignorance, and driven reason away, where either were concerned. Till this moment, I never knew myself’. (shrink)

Soon after the discovery of insulin in the early 1920s, the popular press celebrated the miraculous discovery. Although insulin had no curative effect on the chronic state of diabetes, it was frequently heralded as a “cure.” This paper examines how the discovery of insulin intersected with the rise of diabetic technology and the transfer of medical technology to the home setting. By analyzing diabetic manuals written for patients and physicians, letters exchanged between patient and physician, medical journals, (...) magazines and newspapers, I trace how patients learned about insulin and more significantly how patients adopted measurement technologies designed to allow better home administration of insulin. This included acquiring knowledge about nutritional content and scales, maintaining sterile glass syringes, sharpening needles, using chemistry to measure sugar in the urine, and recording various measurements into meaningful text for patient-physician dialogue. As diabetes was re-imagined as a chronic and controllable illness, patients and physicians alike grappled with the promises and limitations of new medical technologies. This historical perspective offers a lens for better understanding the process of implementing diabetic treatment plans that required home testing, measurement, and recording of medical data. Such processes centered the importance of patient-centered work and the value of diabetic technologies. Much of this discourse is outlined in diabetic manuals of the 1920s. (shrink)

_Taking Picture Books Seriously: What can we learn about philosophy through children's books?_ This warm and charming volume casts a spell on adult readers as it unveils the surprisingly profound philosophical wisdom contained in children's picture books, from Dr Seuss's _Sneetches_ to William Steig's _Shrek!_. With a light touch and good humor, Wartenberg discusses the philosophical ideas in these classic stories, and provides parents with a practical starting point for discussing philosophical issues with their children. Accessible and multi-layered, it answers (...) questions like, Is it okay for adults to deceive kids? What's the difference between saying the Mona Lisa is a great painting and vanilla is your favorite flavor? Each chapter includes illustrations commissioned especially for this book. (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Lowe offers a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the philosophy of mind. Using a problem-centred approach designed to stimulate as well as instruct, he begins with a general examination of the mind-body problem and moves on to detailed examination of more specific philosophical issues concerning sensation, perception, thought and language, rationality, artificial intelligence, action, personal identity and self-knowledge. His discussion is notably broad in scope, and distinctive in giving equal attention to deep metaphysical questions concerning the (...) mind and to the discoveries and theories of modern scientific psychology. It will be of interest to any reader with a basic grounding in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Research in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the Law has maintained an emphasis on knowledge representation and formal reasoning during a period when statistical, data-driven approaches have ascended to dominance within AI as a whole. Electronic discovery is a legal application area, with substantial commercial and research interest, where there are compelling arguments in favor of both empirical and knowledge-based approaches. We discuss the cases for both perspectives, as well as the opportunities for beneficial synergies.

ABSTRACT:What more can be said about COVID-19 and the social determinants of health? This article describes neglected perspectives that derive from the history of social epidemiology, a field that identifies the social etiology of disease and variations in disease incidence among people differentially located in the social structure. The "discovery" of social determinants of diseases like COVID-19 is nothing new for epidemiology: debate over how to analyze structural determinants versus individual-level risk factors persisted throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. (...) By the late 20th century, research had highlighted fundamental causes of health disparities, such as social conditions and structural racism; these are structural factors, embedded in the social fabric of life. Measurement of structured inequalities within systems faces complex and challenging problems, as research aims to better account for these lived realities at different levels of analysis and as multiple factors merge to influence outcomes (revealed in intersectionality theory). At each of these intersections, there are opportunities for bioethicists to consider their ethical implications. It is imperative to understand the social and ethical roots of our present conversations about health inequalities, in order to partner intelligently with researchers on the forefront of advocating for change. (shrink)

Efforts by governments, firms, and patients to deliver pioneering drugs for critical health needs face a challenge of diminishing efficiency in developing those medicines. While multi-sectoral collaborations involving firms, researchers, patients, and policymakers are widely recognized as crucial for countering this decline, existing incentives to engage in drug development predominantly target drug manufacturers and thereby do little to stimulate collaborative innovation. In this mini review, we consider the unexplored potential within pharmaceutical regulations to create novel incentives to encourage a diverse (...) set of actors from the public and private spheres to engage in the kind of collaborative knowledge exchange requisite for fostering enhanced innovation in early drug development. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces by Ivo Assad IbriRobert E. InnisIvo Assad Ibri Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces Springer, 2022, xxvii + 341 pp., incl. indexIn the chapter on 'The Heuristic Power of Agapism in Peirce's Philosophy' in his recent book, Semiotics and Pragmatism: Theoretical Interfaces, Ivo Ibri points out that access to Peirce's work requires something on the part of the reader that is "not readily available (...) in everyone's spirit: a sense of poetry, an aesthetic sensitivity that will, ultimately, become the sharpest and strongest tool to penetrate the deepest meaning of his philosophy" (116). Such a sensitivity is manifested in Ibri's own responsiveness to Peirce's accounts of the permeating qualities of things in a dynamic universe of emerging novel orders and patterns. Ibri's book presents the record, indeed the culmination, of a well-known and wide-ranging long-term engagement with the work of Peirce. It makes available in English translation the contents of the two-volume [End Page 257] collection of his papers in Portuguese published in 2020 and 2021, although a number of them were originally published in English. The title of the book indicates the dynamic triadic nature of Ibri's central Peircean themes: semiotics and pragmatism and their theoretical as well as historical 'interfaces.'Paradoxically, taken alone, the book's main title, 'Semiotics and Pragmatism,' gives no indication that it is principally about Peirce. The reason, I think, is that there is an interwoven duality of, or tension between, the tasks that Ibri has taken upon himself to accomplish in the intellectual journey manifested in the book's contents: (a) Thinking about Peirce, on the one hand, and (b) Thinking with and through Peirce, on the other. This duality of tasks accounts both for the expository and argumentative richness of Peircean themes and the accompanying sense of intellectual engagement and exploration as they are taken up in the various parts of the book: art as an articulated realm of 'nameless things,' the presence of a poetic ground and its links to Schelling in Peirce's philosophy, the nature of abduction and of agapism as heuristic principles, the scope of Peirce's theory of signs and interpretants, the theory of beliefs and the intellectual dangers and poverty of dogmatism, the nature of habits and rational conduct, the centrality of the categories for Peircean pragmatism and objective idealism, the relations between pragmatism, pragmaticism, and neopragmatism, and other technical and subsidiary topics of current social and political importance. The discussion of these themes involves wide-ranging and generous linkages to other parallel discussions that support or expand Ibri's own positions and existential commitments.Ibri frames in a variety of ways the inextricably intertwined strands of semiotics and pragmatism (or pragmaticism) in Peirce's work and argues forcefully in other chapters for Peirce's metaphysical vision of an emergent creative universe marked by the "infinite faces of chance" (122), a vision rooted in Schelling's objective idealism and in scientific discoveries of the 19th century. The organization of the book is thematic and does not develop in linear fashion as a treatise. It can be seen as sequence of engagements or as a series of analytical spirals in which the topics and issues of the book, focused on Peirce's heuristic fertility, are taken up in a kind of dialectical dance of 'retrievals and continuations,' leading inevitably, as Ibri points out, to a high number of repetitions and recapitulations. This is partially due to each chapter in the book, while free standing, functioning as a heuristic device for exploring and arguing for the nature and power of Peirce's interlocking main positions and their shared conceptual underpinnings.In a stimulating chapter on 'The Poetics of Nameless things,' Ibri writes that the Peircean claim of a "correspondence between external and internal worlds" is the "deepest root of pragmatism" (60). This root gives rise to a system of spiraling tendrils marking the growth of the [End Page 258] Peircean philosophical project. We can think of the chapters of Ibri's book as themselves spiraling, and at times entangled, analytical tendrils that support the growth of our... (shrink)

We examine three critical aspects of Popper’s formulation of the ‘ Logic of Scientific Discovery ’—evidence, content and degree of corroboration—and place these concepts in the context of the Tree of Life (ToL) problem with particular reference to molecular systematics. Content, in the sense discussed by Popper, refers to the breadth and scope of existence that a hypothesis purports to explain. Content, in conjunction with the amount of available and relevant evidence, determines the testability, or potential degree of corroboration, (...) of a statement; content distinguishes scientific hypotheses from metaphysical assertions. Degree of corroboration refers to the relative and tentative confidence assigned to one hypothesis over another, based upon the performance of each under critical tests. Here we suggest that systematists attempt to maximize content and evidence to increase the potential degree of corroboration in all phylogenetic endeavors. Discussion of this “total evidence” approach leads to several interesting conclusions about generating ToL hypotheses. (shrink)

The papers included are divided into five sections: Psychology and Philosophy of Perception and Discovery, Integrations of Experimental Findings, Theoretical Developments, Experimental Results from Neurophysiology and Psychology Pertinent to Model Building, and Computer Simulations of Complex Models. The last of these sections will probably prove most interesting to the contemporary philosopher of mind. Peirce, Cassirer, and Wittgenstein are the philosophers who make the scene in the first section; inclusion of material from the last of these is no mean editorial (...) feat. The volume aims to be comprehensive rather than intensive and while this makes it ideal for the philosopher, the psychologist may find it thin in spots.—E. A. R. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Knowledge and Faıth in Thomas Aquinas by John I. JenkinsE.J. AshworthJohn I. Jenkins. Knowledge and Faıth in Thomas Aquinas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. xv + 267. Cloth, $59.95.There is a strong tension in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. On the one hand, he is strongly naturalist. He insists that our cognition is rooted in sense-perception and that [End Page 673] it is normally reliable. He insists (...) that our moral life is grounded in our nature both as physical beings, able to feel pain and pleasure, and as social beings, depending on each other for our welfare. But he is also strongly supernaturalist. Human nature by virtue of its cognitive orientation toward the physical is not able through its own powers to know God. Still less is human nature able to achieve moral virtue by its own powers. This is not just because we are cut off from God by original sin; rather, there is a primal lack that was there even before the Fall. To achieve our true end, both cognitive and moral, we depend on God’s free gift of grace which elevates our nature and renders it able both to know God through the beatific vision in Heaven and to respond to God through loving, virtuous action. The gift of faith becomes central to human nature and destiny in a way that was to worry later thinkers such as Duns Scotus, who pertinently asked how our intellect can have the ultimate end of knowing God if it has to be made a different intellect before it achieves that end.Jenkins does not worry about the point raised by Scotus. Instead, he sets out to give an interpretation of the Summa theologiae which will help us understand more deeply the interplay between the natural and the supernatural in Aquinas. He begins by taking advantage of new readings of Aristode’s Posterior Analytics which present Aristode’s account of the demonstration which moves from cause to effect, not just as a pedagogic device for presenting material obtained by moving from effect to cause, but as a recipe for cognitive restructuring. Certainly we have to begin with mere observation, and with the piecemeal discovery of causes, but to achieve true scıentia (to use the medieval Latin term for organized, necessary knowledge) we need to acquire a new vision of how reality is structured and to see how effects flow necessarily from their causes. True demonstration is an expression of this new vision. Jenkins applies this reading of Aristotle to Aquinas. He takes with absolute seriousness Aquinas’s claim at the beginning of the Summa theologıae that theology too is an Aristotelian scientıa, and he sees the work as presenting a recipe for the cognitive restructuring of apprentice theologians (those to whom the work is addressed).The scientıa of the Summa theologiae differs from the scientia of the Posterior Analytics in two ways. First, Aquinas allows the term scientia to have an extended sense, so that God too can have scientia, even though he does not move from principles to conclusions by a process of syllogistic demonstration, but instead grasps all that is knowable in one simple act. Second, the basic principles which are the foundation of theological demonstration are the articles of faith, especially those of the creeds, which cannot be known by us in any naturalistic way. It is through God’s infused light that we assent to these articles as divinely revealed. After a lengthy examination of the role of faith in Aquinas’s account, Jenkins describes the epistemology involved as supernatural externalism.Although Jenkins’s presentation of the relationship between scientıa and faith in the Summa is carefully and lucidly argued, there are two aspects of the book that I would question.First, while it is true that Aquinas does present theology as an Aristotelian scientia, I doubt that this single fact “determines the purpose and structure of the Summa theologiae” (15) in any very detailed way. Jenkins further claims that the structure of the Summa is determined by the structure of God’s knowledge (220), but if God is truly [End... (shrink)

What general conclusions can be drawn about the reception of zymase, its relation to the larger shift from a protoplasm to an enzyme theory of life, and its status as a social phenomenon?The most striking and to me unexpected pattern is the close correlation between attitude toward zymase and professional background. The disbelief of the fermentation technologists, Will, Delbrück, Wehmer, and even Stavenhagen, was as sharp and unanimous as the enthusiasm of the immunologists and enzymologists, Duclaux, Roux, Fernback, and Bertrand, (...) and of Pfeffer, the experimental plant physiologist. Other skeptics—Voit, Kupffer, and Fischer—were conservatives in traditional fields. In all these cases it seems clear that professional commitments and outlook profoundly influenced the reception of zymase.In some cases there is a correlation with a specific earlier statement favoring the protoplasm theory or predicting a fermentation enzyme. Reynolds Green is a striking case of both. In 1893 he stated his belief that life processes in higher plants and fungi were identical, both being mediated by protoplasm.109 Thus he claimed that digestion was not carried out by enzymes, as in higher animals, but by the whole protoplasm, and so too fermentation in yeast: “All the metabolic processes must be carried out in the unicellular organism in the same mass of protoplasm.”110 But Green also insisted that there was no essential difference between “organized” and “unorganized ferments”; enzymes were simply more highly differentiated and specialized forms of primitive protoplasm. He spoke of “the alcoholic ferment” (that is, enzyme), and of intracellular enzymes—very advanced beliefs for 1893. Thus it is understandable why Green saw no reason to doubt his first negative results with yeast juice, and rushed into print. But it is also understandable that he persisted and soon became an outspoken advocate of Buchner's view; like Wroblewski and Pfeffer, he had already accepted the idea of an intracellular fermentation enzyme.The physiological chemists also fit the pattern in a special way. Physiological chemistry is generally regarded as the source of biochemistry; indeed, many early biochemists were trained in physiological chemistry, and imbibed there a progressive interest in enzymes and metabolism. It is not surprising, therefore, that on the whole Neumeister, Madfadyen, Wroblewski, and Loew accepted cell-free fermentation. But what is surprising, and significant, is the diversity of opinion in this group, from Abeles' living protoplasm to Wroblewski's organized array of active proteins. The feelings of the physiological chemists were mixed, and there was enough of the old protoplasm view in Macfadyen's and even Wroblewski's views to allow Buchner to see them as attacks on zymase. The ideas of physiological chemistry were also changing; the idea of protoplasm was already adjusting to the new interest in enzymes in the early 1890's. But in contrast to immunochemistry, the change in physiological chemistry was gradual, uneven, undramatic, and relatively invisible. For the new biochemistry, the tradition of physiological chemistry was the source of traditional conservatism as well as of new ideas of enzymes.In general, then, I claim that it was not experimental facts that determined attitudes toward zymase so much as previous commitments, experience, and expectations. Initially, at least, zymase was less a determinant of opinion than a touchstone of pre-existing opinion. Like a prism, it revealed the spectrum of existing attitudes toward vital phenomena.Also relevant here is the fact that the experimental evidence was entirely ambiguous; the interpretation of Buchner's experiments with antiseptics or dried yeast depended entirely on how far one was willing to stretch the scope of the terms “protoplasm” and “enzyme”. Likewise, how important one judged the instability of zymase to be, or the low level of in vitro activity, depended largely on one's point of view. There was no crucial experiment, no certain proof. Logically zymase could be regarded as protoplasm. A. Fischer did so in 1900;111 Macfadyen was still wavering in 1907;112 and Beijerinck was holding out as late as 1916.113 There were undoubtedly others. Besides the special case of Reynolds Green and the technologists, there are no recorded cases of conversion.But if there was no evidence to convert a dedicated protoplasmist, there was plenty to encourage a dedicated belief in the enzyme theory, and that, I believe, is precisely what happened. The arguments of Buchner et al in support of zymase had the greatest effect not on the protoplasmists but on those who were already predisposed toward the biochemical view. The zymase debate enabled the emerging group of biochemists to recognizethemselves as a group with a community of out-look and objectives; it brought the issue of protoplasm vs. enzyme into the open and gave it a specific and concrete issue on which to turn. The debate sharpened the biochemists' awareness that their point of view was becoming the new mainstream of biochemical thought.All this of course had an important secondary effect on those who opposed the new view, or who were not immediately concerned with it. After the zymase debate, it would have been almost impossible to ignore the new ideas; the dramatic and wide publicity the debate enjoyed would have made it difficult not to take sides. Buchner's successful defense of zymase itself became an important influence on opinion; the new movement had to be looked at with respect. But the primary effect of the debate, I assert, was on those who were already inclined to the new view. The outcome was not a mass conversion of individuals, nor the ejection of one idea by another. The sides probably did not change much; the real change was in the way each side regarded itself and its place in history. The zymase debate may perhaps best be regarded as a process of selection. Buchner's party became aware of itself as the new progressive point of view, while those holding the traditional view could no longer expound it publicly without appearing obstinate or old-fashioned. Thus the way was clear for the gradually wider establishment of the new ideas, especially among the new generation of biochemists. In this specific sense, the acceptance of zymase was a social phenomenon.This way of looking at the zymase debate also illuminates its coincidence with the emergence of biochemistry as a profession. The new professional trappings and organizations were the social manifestation of the new self-awareness gained from the zymase controversy. One of the most important effects on those disposed toward the new view was the awareness of an intellectual community and of the need to give that community social forms. The almost mythical importance of Buchner's “victory” over the old protoplasm theory that later became current is readily understandable. It was a useful ideology for a group anxious to assert the novelty of their approach, a novelty which they in fact felt quite keenly.But if the primary effect of the zymase controversy was on those predisposed to accept zymase, then obviously the success of zymase depended on the fact that change had already begun to occur. Indeed, one of the most striking, and again unexpected, results of this study is the extent to which the importance of enzymes was already recognized in the early 1890's. The new immunology clearly pointed the way. Macfadyen and Hans Buchner were looking for active proteins inside the cell in 1893. Reynolds Green, Wroblewski, and Pfeffer had all anticipated the discovery of a fermentation enzyme. Other discoveries in enzymology in the 1890's pointed the same way.114 Moreover, it is clear from this study that the old protoplams theory was adapting to the new discoveries concerning the importance of enzymes. The sidechains of the old protoplasm molecule were simply reinterpreted as enzymes, as in Wroblewski's theory, for example, or in Paul Ehrlich's extremely influential “sidechain theory” of antibody formation (1897). Despite the later views of Hopkins et al., the old protoplasm and the new enzyme theories were not irreconcilable; a continuity of development had already begun when zymase came so dramatically on the scene. Buchner himself observed that the difference between the two views had become largely verbal; in retrospect we might say, not verbal, but social and historical. The gap between the continuous change in ideas and the contemporary feeling of sharply discontnuous change is a measure of the elusive but real social and historical implications of the zymase debate, of the demise of an old establishment, and the emergence of a new.In retrospect, then, it is clear that a trend was already under way in various quarters when zymase appeared. But it was still a collection of isolated and dispersed events. The zymase controversy made the trend visible and gave it a dramatic unity. The debate influenced those who had already begun to change. It was so effective because things had begun to change and because it coincided with the direction of that trend. (shrink)