Agnes Arber - Philosophical Studies

Philosophical Studies

During the Second World War Arber found it difficult to maintain her small laboratory, as supplies were becoming more difficult to obtain. This led to her decision to stop performing laboratory work and to concentrate more on philosophical and historical issues. Arber published work on historical botanists, including a comparison between Nehemiah Grew and Marcello Malpighi in 1942, John Ray in 1943 and Sir Joseph Banks in 1945.

Arber had been introduced to the work of Goethe while at school and remained fascinated by his ideas about botany. In 1946 she published Goethe's Botany, a translation of Goethe's Metamorphosis of Plants (1790) and Georg Christoph Tobler's (1757–1812) Die Natur with an introduction and interpretation of the texts.

The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form, published in 1950 has been considered the most important of Arber's books. Arber discusses the processes behind forming a concept from research and examines the philosophy of plant morphology. Arber uses this to examine the structure of flowering plants, and proposes the partial-shoot theory of the leaf. According to this theory, each element of the plant is a shoot or a partial shoot. Leaves are partial shoots that show reduced growth capacity. She mentions: “the leaf is a partial-shoot, revealing an inherent urge towards becoming a whole shoot, but never actually attaining this goal, since radial symmetry and the capacity for apical growth suffer inhibition”. The parallelism of leaf and shoot dates back to Goethe, who first described compound leaves as in “reality branches, the buds of which cannot develop, since the common stalk is too frail”. For Arber, compound leaves are clusters of united partial-shoots. Recent developmental genetic evidence has supported aspects of the partial shoot-theory of the leaf, especially in the case of compound leaves.

Her studies on the philosophy of plant morphology led her to take a broader view of the links between science and philosophy. The Mind and the Eye: A Biologist's Standpoint published in 1954 provides an introduction to biological research and develops a methodology for performing this research. Arber describes research as taking place in six stages: the identification of research question or topic; the collection of data through experiments or observation; the interpretation of the data; testing the validity of the interpretation; communicating the results; and considering the research in context. For Arber, the context includes interpreting the result in terms of history and philosophy and covers half of the book. Arber's book is distinctive in that it was written before Thomas Kuhn demonstrated that scientist's views are influenced by the views of others in their field and before Ernst Mayr's criticism of describing the philosophy of biology in the same way as the philosophy of physics.

Her final book, The Manifold and the One published in 1957 is concerned with wider philosophical questions. The book is a wide-ranging and syncretic survey, drawing on literary, scientific, religious, mystical and philosophical traditions, incorporating Buddhist, Hindu and Taoist philosophy with European philosophy., in pursuit of a discussion of the mystical experience which Arber defines as “that direct and unmediated contemplation which is characterised by a peculiarly intense awareness of a Whole as the Unity of all things”.