Michael T. Ghiselin (born May 13, 1939) is an American biologist and philosopher as well as historian of biology, formerly at the

California Academy of Sciences The California Academy of Sciences is a research institute and natural history museum in San Francisco, California, that is among the largest museums of natural history in the world, housing over 46 million specimens. The Academy began in 1853 ...

. He is known for his work on

sea slug Sea slug is a common name for some marine invertebrates with varying levels of resemblance to terrestrial slugs. Most creatures known as sea slugs are gastropods, i.e. they are sea snails (marine gastropod mollusks) that over evolutionary t ...

s, and for his criticism of the falsification of the history of

Lamarckism Lamarckism, also known as Lamarckian inheritance or neo-Lamarckism, is the notion that an organism can pass on to its offspring physical characteristics that the parent organism acquired through use or disuse during its lifetime. It is also calle ...

in biology textbooks.

Academic life

Ghiselin received his B.A. in 1960 from the

University of Utah The University of Utah (U of U, UofU, or simply The U) is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. It is the flagship institution of the Utah System of Higher Education. The university was established in 1850 as the University of De ...

and his Ph.D. from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is consider ...

in 1965. He became a Postdoctoral Fellow at

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

(1964–65) and moved on to become Postdoctoral Fellow at the

Marine Biological Laboratory The Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) is an international center for research and education in biological and environmental science. Founded in Woods Hole, Massachusetts, in 1888, the MBL is a private, nonprofit institution that was independent ...

in 1965. There he stayed until 1967 as he was appointed Assistant Professor of Zoology at the

University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...

and later was picked as a Guggenheim Fellow (1978–79). Ghiselin served as Research Professor of Biology at the

(1980–83) and was MacArthur Prize Fellow from 1981 to 1986. Since 1983 he has been a senior research fellow at the

Career

Ghiselin is famous for his work on

s, and has had both a species ('' Hypselodoris ghiselini'') and the defensive chemical that it contains (''ghiselinin'') named after him. In 2009 he co-authored a major study on chemical defense with Guido Cimino: ''Chemical Defense and the Evolution of Opisthobranch Gastropods''. Anemone purple anemonefish

In 1969 he proposed three models including the size-advantage model to explain

sequential hermaphroditism Sequential hermaphroditism (called dichogamy in botany) is a type of hermaphroditism that occurs in many fish, gastropods, and plants. Sequential hermaphroditism occurs when the individual changes its sex at some point in its life. In particular, ...

. In some fish species, he reasoned, males can maximize their reproductive success by breeding with a harem of females rather than breeding only once as a female. In other species, where the fish live in pairs, it is to an individual's advantage to be male when small and to turn into a female when it is larger. Ghiselin has also worked on the history and philosophy of

evolutionary biology Evolutionary biology is the subfield of biology that studies the evolutionary processes (natural selection, common descent, speciation) that produced the diversity of life on Earth. It is also defined as the study of the history of life fo ...

. His historical publications have dealt mainly with Darwin and the history of comparative zoology. They include such topics as the influence of alchemy on nineteenth century zoology and the history of the Zoological Station at Naples, Italy. His thought on Darwin's view of selection, whether to the individual or to the group, and sometimes apparently

kin selection Kin selection is the evolutionary strategy that favours the reproductive success of an organism's relatives, even when at a cost to the organism's own survival and reproduction. Kin altruism can look like altruistic behaviour whose evolution i ...

ist, has been criticised as inconsistent by

Helena Cronin Helena Cronin (born 1942) is a British Darwinian philosopher and rationalist. She is the co-director of the Centre for Philosophy of Natural and Social Science and the Darwin Centre at the London School of Economics. Cronin's important work is ...

. He has criticised the falsification of the history of Lamarck's theory of evolution, where in his view schoolbooks and "textbook-writers have imbued the fictitious Lamarck with an importance that the real Lamarck never had, and they have credited him with ideas that the real Lamarck did not hold. They also have invented a myth in which those ideas are compared falsely with Darwin's ideas, to produce a bogus dichotomy." He has also criticized the views of

creationist Creationism is the religious belief that nature, and aspects such as the universe, Earth, life, and humans, originated with supernatural acts of divine creation. Gunn 2004, p. 9, "The ''Concise Oxford Dictionary'' says that creationism is 'th ...

s as non-scientific. His main contribution to philosophy concerns the principles of classification (systematics or taxonomy). He is given much of the credit for first theorizing that biological species are not ''kinds'' of organisms, but are rather ''individuals'' in a philosophical sense (in the manner that an individual population is an individual entity, rather than an abstract type). A human being is not a ''Homo sapiens'' for the same reason that

Ontario Ontario ( ; ) is one of the thirteen provinces and territories of Canada.Ontario is located in the geographic eastern half of Canada, but it has historically and politically been considered to be part of Central Canada. Located in Central Ca ...

is not a Canada. Ghiselin was also the originator of the term "chunks of the genealogical nexus" to describe species. Ghiselin has many interdisciplinary interests, among which is forging links between biology and

economics Economics () is the social science that studies the Production (economics), production, distribution (economics), distribution, and Consumption (economics), consumption of goods and services. Economics focuses on the behaviour and intera ...

. He is Vice President of the International Society for Bioeconomics, and has served as the Co-Editor of the ''Journal of Bioeconomics'' since it was established in 1998. The first academic chair of bioeconomics was established at the

University of Siena The University of Siena ( it, Università degli Studi di Siena, abbreviation: UNISI) in Siena, Tuscany, is one of the oldest and first publicly funded universities in Italy. Originally called ''Studium Senese'', the institution was founded in 1240 ...

; as a visiting professor he was its first occupant. As Chair of the Center for the History and Philosophy of Science his main responsibility has been to organize scholarly meetings and to serve as Editor of the volumes based on them. He was made a Guggenheim fellow in 1978.

Works

* Ghiselin, Michael T. and Leviton, Alan E.: "Darwin and the Galapagos", in the Proceedings of the California Academy of Sciences for 2010 Volume 61, Supplement 2. * ''The Triumph of the Darwinian Method''. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1969. * Barbour, M. G., Craig, R. B., Drysdale, F. R., and Ghiselin, M. T.: ''Coastal Ecology: Bodega Head''. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1973. * ''The Economy of Nature and the Evolution of Sex''. University of California Press, Berkeley, 1974. * ''Intellectual Compromise: The Bottom Line''. Paragon House, New York, 1989. *
Metaphysics and the Origin of Species
'. State University of New York Press, Albany, 1997.
''Darwin: A Reader's Guide''
Occasional Papers of the California Academy of Sciences 155: 1-185, 2009. * ''Darwin and Evolution''. Carmichael & Carmichael, and Knowledge Products Blackstone Audio, 1993 (audiobook).

References

External links

California Academy of Sciences.org: Michael Ghiselin Homepage
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ghiselin, Michael 21st-century American biologists 1939 births Living people MacArthur Fellows People associated with the California Academy of Sciences Charles Darwin biographers Critics of creationism Harvard University people University of California, Berkeley faculty University of Utah faculty Stanford University alumni University of Utah alumni Scientists from the San Francisco Bay Area 20th-century American biologists