ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

The Priority Dispute in Early 20th-Century Chinese Biology: Competing Epistemic Frameworks of Geneticists and Embryologists

• In Event: The Evolution of Science and Technology in China: Tradition and Modernity in a Global Perspective 2

English Abstract

This case study examines the 1930s priority dispute between geneticist Ju-chi Li and embryologist Tchou Su, both of whom independently identified a parasite as the new subspecies Ascaris megalocephala trivalens. The analysis proceeds on three interconnected levels.
First, at the individual level, the contenders' appreciation of their discovery within distinct theoretical frameworks reveals that the self-recognition of academic credentials—achieved by elucidating the theoretical implications of a new model organism—served as an intrinsic reward system motivating the contention.
Second, at the disciplinary level, situating the competitors' understanding of ontogenetic mechanisms within their rival research programs—genetics and embryology—in the early twentieth-century intellectual context suggests that their fundamentally discrepant views on the possibility of a theoretical "synthesis" account for the dispute's inevitability.
Third, a discussion of priority attribution based on heterogeneous criteria elucidates the influence of social agents on scientific practice. Judged by the contemporaneous social identification and the actual outcome, Tchou would be justified as the victor. However, applying a Kuhnian perspective, which views discovery as an extended process rather than a single event, leads to the contrary conclusion, favoring Li.

Author

• Jiayuan Liang