Abstract

This particular collaboration with Jim helped me understand more fully the unique role of laboratory experiments vis-a-vis mathematical models in understanding and explaining patterns in nature. My collaboration with Jim began when he invited me to be a member of his doctoral committee at the University of Chicago in Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science; this was my first inter-disciplinary doctoral committee. Our collaboration was reinvigorated when several years later Jim elected to conduct a sabbatical in my laboratory. Collaborating with Jim has helped me better understand myself as a research scientist and to understand why some of my best research papers have become nodes in citation networks, connecting theoretical papers on the one hand with those on laboratory experiments and field observations on the other. From very early on, Jim convinced me that evolutionary biologists would be better scientists and do better experiments if they had a better understanding of the history and philosophy of biological science. This conviction spurred me to attend seminars sponsored by the Committee on Conceptual Foundations and to co-teach with Bill Wimsatt at the University of Chicago. It also motivated me to take graduate courses in the history of genetics from Fred Churchill and two graduate courses on the structure and confirmation of evolutionary theory from Elizabeth Lloyd at Indiana University.