Professor Smocovitis’s research program is comprised of three related areas. The first is concerned with the “new” intellectual/cultural history of modern evolutionary biology and genetics; the second with the history of twentieth century American botany especially as it has shaped plant evolutionary biology; and the third with the historiography of science (meaning here the writing of the history of science that includes theoretical, methodological and philosophical concerns). All three converge on a career-long interest in understanding the historical event known as the “evolutionary synthesis,” also known as the “modern synthesis of evolution,” or “neo-Darwinism,” associated with the interval of time roughly between 1920-1950. Generally regarded as the critical, indeed to some central, event in the history of the modern biological sciences, it has long eluded proper historical understanding.

I.  The “Evolutionary Synthesis”

Her research to date has made the novel points that i. the event involved the emergence of the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology;  ii. that the new discipline, that came to be known as evolutionary biology, functioned as a unifying discipline for evolution; iii. that the unifying discipline of evolutionary biology in turn served to unify the modern biological sciences. These points, and others, were developed in a monograph article titled “Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology” (Smocovitis, 1992a). The argument she made for discipline formation during the period of the synthesis, was explored further by examining some of the mechanisms of discipline formation in the way of the organizational apparatus assembled by the founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and the journal Evolution (Smocovitis, 1994a) through an examination of previously unexplored sources (the SSE papers which she traced from successive secretaries), and the chief role played by Ernst Mayr and others as “discipline builders” in the new science of evolutionary biology (Smocovitis, 1994b). Understanding more precisely how the new discipline identified itself and the cultural mechanisms by which the identity of the community was negotiated led to an examination of the period immediately after the “evolutionary synthesis,” in the interval of time between 1950-1960 through a novel exploration of the events surrounding the centenary of the publication of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, in 1959. This involved extensive research into the subject of commemorations in science and into archival documents  located at the University of Chicago previously ignored by historians of science. Using approaches from historical ethnography and the work of scholars like Pnina Abir-Am, she explored how such celebratory events facilitated social cohesion, established canonical texts, designated or marked “key” figures, as well as inventing originary narratives about the collective that included “founding father” stories (here she argued that Charles Darwin was reinvented as the founding father of the new discipline called evolutionary biology). Historical ethnography thus facilitated viewing the discipline in terms of cultural dynamics. These insights, along with an examination and application of the “new” intellectual/cultural history, came together in the 1996 monograph with Princeton University Press titled Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology. This book also argued that science could be viewed as a discourse and a culture of its own complete with its canonical works, rituals, narratives, and discourses. In keeping with the view that science is a discourse and culture, she recently extended the work on Darwin celebrations, by completing a study of Darwin in song and musical production in time for the 2009 celebrations (Smocovitis, 2009b).

In addition to extending the initial argument about the emergence of the discipline, and exploring disciplinary cultures, the project on the Darwin Centennial was an opportunity to explore the history of anthropology, and its near absence from the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s. The project also led to the realization that it was the very success of Darwinian evolution and the fact that the celebration was promoted greatly in American popular culture, that galvanized American fundamentalists and led to their organized resistance against Darwinism with works like Henry Morris’s The Genesis Flood. This and other works assaulting Darwinian evolution,  ushered in the movement that eventually came to be known as “scientific creationism.” These—and other insights—gleaned from research on the 1959 Darwin Centennial were summarized in an article published in Osiris (Smocovitis, 1999a).

Two additional articles added to understanding the evolutionary synthesis further. The first (Smocovitis, 2003)  offered historiographic insights into the  “invisible subject” in existing histories, namely the science of zoology. The article compared understanding of zoology during this critical interval of time with the traditional “rival” science of botany. Although botany had been featured prominently in historical accounts of the synthesis (see below), little had been made of zoology. After exploring specific contributions of zoology (and some notable zoologists), the article concluded with the claim that the absence of zoology is largely due to historiographic commitments made by some key zoologists, namely figures like Ernst Mayr, who wrote the early the historical accounts of the synthesis.

The second (Smocovitis, 2009d) centered on the figure of Julian Huxley, one of the key “architects” of the evolutionary synthesis (and one of the protagonists in the Darwin Centennial Celebrations), to explore how science, ideology and worldview played out in the evolutionary synthesis. In particular, it explored Huxley’s philosophical position with respect to evolutionary humanism in the contexts of his efforts to unify biology. It also explored how these philosophical and scientific beliefs were taken into the wider political sphere, not only through his use of contemporary media like radio and the popular press, but also by his direct involvement with UNESCO.

Other articles, essay reviews or commentaries extended existing understanding or offered critical perspectives on the “evolutionary synthesis” (Smocovitis, 1999b; 2000b), the contributions of some of its protagonists (Smocovitis, 2008b and see below),  a rethinking of “The Darwinian Revolution” (Smocovitis, 2005), or the applications of evolutionary principles to understanding humanity (Smocovitis 1992b; 2002d). Yet another article extends her work on the synthesis to understanding human evolution, on the origins of biological anthropology and on understanding the complex relationship between anthropology and the evolutionary synthesis (Smocovitis, 2012).

II. Botany and the “Evolutionary Synthesis:” The Life and Work of G. Ledyard Stebbins

The second area interest can best be described as a “local” feature of the “evolutionary synthesis, ” namely examining the complex role that botany, and botanists, played in it. A key background question was resolved in one article (Smocovitis, 1992c), which explored what had historically counted as botany (or the process of “disciplining botany”) and its relations to areas like plant biology and the plant sciences, broadly construed; but the major component of the project exploring botany and the evolutionary synthesis is organized around a biographical analysis of the chief botanical “architect” of of the synthesis, G. Ledyard Stebbins and his circle of friends and acquaintances including botanical figures like E. B. Babcock, Edgar Anderson, Carl Epling, Jens Clausen, David Keck and William Hiesey, along with his relationships to other “architects” like Theodosius Dobzhansky.  Research to date has led to a number of publications including a lead article on Stebbins in the American Journal of Botany (Smocovitis, 1997), followed by an examination of his relationship to Theodosius Dobzhansky that drew parallels in their careers as well as their organismic systems (plants and insects) which later became the subjects of co-evolution (Smocovitis, 2006a). Yet another article (Smocovitis, 2009a) focuses on the figure of E. B. Babcock, the genus Crepis, and the building of genetics research programs at the University of California, all of which were crucial backdrop to Stebbins’s early career. In addition to a number of retrospective pieces, dictionary entries and and obituaries published after Stebbins’s death in 2000, a major project was completed in collaboration with plant systematist Daniel Crawford to assess Stebbins’s scientific contributions by examining his major scientific papers (Crawford and Smocovitis, 2004), while another project, involved complex editorial work on Stebbins’s autobiography titled The Lady Slipper and I (2007, with Missouri Botanical Garden Press) left incomplete at the time of his death. Other publications on Stebbins explore methodological problems raised by working with a living biographical subject (Smocovitis, 1997; 2007).  Stebbins’s death in 2000 released a number of sources that she has been exploring, along with documents made available for the centennial of the Botanical Society of America (BSA; Stebbins was one of the past presidents).  A comprehensive survey of the BSA materials led to the completion of her “brief” history of the society from its inception to the twenty-first century, published as the lead article in American Journal of Botany in 2006. She has been preparing a short monograph on the history of the BSA that will also provide a critical backdrop to understanding the history of the botanical sciences in America. Future work she is exploring is systematic botany’s involvement during the second world war in procuring Cinchona, the source of the anti-malarial quinine.

1.III.The Historiography and Methodology of Science

A final area of interest falls into the category of methodology, or the theory and practice of history, and gaining new historical perspectives through the development and use of critical historiography. She has explored a range of critical approaches to science through literary theory and science studies (Smocovitis, 1991; 1992b; 1994d), the transition from science studies to cultural studies (Smocovitis, 1995), and offered perspectives on future directions for the history of science (Smocovitis, 2000). She has worked at developing a view of the history of science that includes simultaneous consideration of what have been called the “internal” and “external” aspects of the science in what has been called the “new” intellectual/cultural history of science that is inclusive of the perspectives or voices of the historical actors (Smocovitis, 1996). Her approach was included in an essay by Donald R. Kelley titled “Intellectual History and Cultural history: the Inside and the Outside” (Kelley 2002.pdf) as well as his more recent essay “Intellectual History in a Global Age) (Kelley 2005.pdf), and has made its way as part of the New Dictionary of the History of Ideas (2004) where she served as the associate editor for the history of science entries and author of two of the major essays (“Evolution,” and “Biology”).