Michael Dietrich, Univ. of Pittsburgh, Dept. of HPS
"The Politics of Embryology: Johannes Holtfreter’s Flight from Nazi Germany"
This talk was originally presented on Tuesday, September 15, 2020 as part of the Center for Philosophy of Science's Lunchtime Talk Colloquia.
ABSTRACT: Johannes Holtfreter was forced to leave Nazi Germany. Unlike other exiled biologists though, Holtfreter was not of Jewish ancestry. He was a rare political refugee. But, did his forced migration have an impact on his work in developmental biology? Contrary to other scholars, I will argue that Holtfreter’s work on gastrulation and embryonic induction underwent a significant shift during the war years. Holtfreter’s flight from Nazi Germany in 1939 and his subsequent experiences as a refugee scholar led him to argue against Hans Spemann’s “organismic” approach to experimental embryology. In its place, Holtfreter offered a mechanistic understanding of fundamental embryonic processes such as gastrulation. For Holtfreter, the politics of embryology motivated his turn to more reductionistic and mechanistic explanations of developmental phenomena.
