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The Disciplinary Stake: The Case of ChronobiologyAuthor(s): Alberto Cambrosio and Peter KeatingSource: Social Studies of Science, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Aug., 1983), pp. 323-353Published by: Sage Publications, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/284795

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* ABSTRACT

The differentiation of knowledge is a problem that in the sociology of science has

mainly been treated in terms of units of innovation known as 'scientific

specialties' or 'research networks'. These units have thus achieved the status of

sociologically constructed concepts. Disciplines, on the contrary, have been

relatively ignored and their conceptualization has, for the most part, remained at

the level of common sense. In this paper, an attempt is made, with the aid of the

quite particularcase of chronobiology, to confront the problem of disciplines,

startingwithin the theoretical framework of Bourdieu's 'scientific field'. In this

light, the conquest of the disciplinaryform appears as a kind of struggle in the

'field'. The derivative institutional frontiers can then be understood as the

consequence of the reification of what one may call the 'disciplinarystake',which corresponds to an attempt to exercise a professional mode of control in a

particulardomain of knowledge. The 'disciplinarystake' is further distinguishedfrom other stakes or goals which arise within the environment of the already

constituted discipline.

The Disciplinary Stake:The Case of Chronobiology

Alberto Cambrosio andPeter Keating

In the mid-1960s, a group of scientists involved in research on

biological rhythms proposed that this field of study shouldhenceforth be considered a distinct discipline, as it had attained asufficient degree of maturity, not only at the level of method, butalso at the level of results. The new discipline was baptized'Chronobiology'. This act was not, however, only a question of

naming; it entailed, in effect, a series of practical consequences -

including, among others, the creation of specialized journals and

Social Studies of Science (SAGE, London, Beverly Hillsand New Delhi),Vol. 13 (1983), 323-53



Social Studies of Science

scientific societies, and the establishment of university courses

resulting in a diploma in chronobiology. Yet not all researchersworking on biological rhythms wanted a new discipline. In fact,

many thought that the study of rhythms would be best undertaken

within the separate disciplines which had heretofore made up the

domain.' But in spite of this opposition, the chronobiologists2

pursued their strategy of disciplinarization and, during the 1970s,established those structures that their 'spontaneous sociology'

designated as essential to a discipline.A debate among scientists over disciplinarization is of particular

interest to historians and sociologists of science. For several years,the study of the differentiation of knowledge (savoir) and of

scientific institutions (and connected problems, such as the

emergence and development of scientific specialties, the dynamic of

disciplines and the professionalization of the sciences) has occupieda privileged position among their preoccupations. However, in

spite of the many papers in the sociology of science purporting to

be about disciplines, very few treat disciplines per se. Leaving aside

that tradition in which an ontological notion of scientificdisciplines is used to elaborate a classification of the sciences,3 one

could say that much recent work has tended to treat 'disciplines' as

interchangeable with 'research networks', 'specialties', and the

like. For example, despite the indicative title, many of the

contributions in the collaborative work Perspectives on the

Emergence of Scientific Disciplines4 are, in fact, about scientific

specialties. Moreover, more recent trends in the sociology of

science leave the distinct impression that the problems posed by theorganization of modern science into disciplines have either been

solved or are of so little interest as to be unworthy of attention.

Certainly the present tendency towards microanalysis of scientific

activity takes for granted, though not naively, a body of knowledge

concerning the macrostructure of science. So, while specialties and

research networks have attained a precise sociological status,

disciplines, with few exceptions, have either been ignored or treated

as self-explanatory.

The latter is most notable in Daryl Chubin's review of theliterature on specialties.5 Although his paper is mainly concerned

with the conceptualization of scientific specialties, Chubin feels

obliged to begin by distinguishing between specialties and

disciplines. This he does by equating the former with research and

the latter with teaching.6 Chubin then goes on to give a sociological

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Cambrosio and Keating: Chronobiology

account of specialties, leaving the definition of disciplines at the

level of common sense. Thus specialties receive extended treatmentin terms of their bibliometric and scientometric construction,

whereas disciplines are taken to be anterior to sociological work

and are referred to, briefly, as divisions of the scientific domain

corresponding roughly with academic departments.As Camille Limoges has pointed out,7 the problem here is that

when the time comes to articulate the two entities, there are some

unavoidable antimonies. If, for example, disciplines are presumedto fulfil only a teaching function, how does one explain the

involvement of graduate students - who, in this perspective,would have the status of apprentice and not researcher - in

research? Or, again, if research is 'paradigm-bound', how is it

possible to avoid discussion of the processes of inculcation -

supposedly the domain of disciplines - which are an essential

aspect of the concept of paradigm? In terms of methodology, the

connection of the sociologically constructed with notions whose

only referent is common sense leads inevitably to contradiction.

To our knowledge, the only major attempt to conceptualizescientific disciplines is to be found in a paper by Richard Whitley.8

Contrary to Chubin, Whitley's view of disciplines does not reduce

to pure reproduction, and is constituted in relation to research

specialties. In addition, Whitley works with three levels of scientific

organization, corresponding to varying degrees of institutional-

ization. There are, first of all, 'disciplines', which are considered to

be the 'major mode of institutionalization in science'. 'Specialties'

refer to a partially institutionalized sub-disciplinary entity; while'research areas', a more restrictive category again, are

approximately equivalent to the American notion of 'specialty'.

However, Whitley's levels of scientific organization contain an

important epistemological dimension: this allows him to

distinguish between the three units on the basis of the degree of

cognitive solidarity, each unit implying commitment to a different

epistemological level. So, just as disciplines denote adherence to 'a

particular set of scientific values' (an 'ordering principle'),

specialties involve commitment to 'explanatory models and

definitions', while research areas are 'based on some degree of

commitment to a set of research practices and techniques'.9The main point of Whitley's paper is the distinction between

'umbrella' and 'polytheistic' disciplines. This distinction is based

on the relations maintained between the discipline and the

325




specialty. In the first case, the discipline acts as a mere frame for

the diverse specialties, and has little influence (Whitley's term) onresearch; the latter is organized at the specialty and research area

levels, and thus remains relatively autonomous with respect to the

discipline. In the second case, research is far less autonomous:

cognitive commitments, even at the research area level, contain an

important disciplinary dimension, making it possible to say that the

conduct of research results in the formation of 'disciplinaryidentities'. These two types of relations are the result of the

institutionalization of a disciplinary 'ordering principle', which

serves either to promote autonomous research (as in the first case)

through adherence to fundamental principles, or to inhibit

autonomous research (as in the second) through constant

questioning of the principles to which the members of the discipline

apparently subscribe.

To summarize, then, Whitley attempts an analysis of disciplinesin terms of the institutionalization of 'ordering principles' which

give rise to different relations between the discipline and the

conduct of research. Unlike Chubin, Whitley does not begin withan a priori distinction between teaching and research; rather, he

attempts to connect the two by analyzing the role that disciplines

play in the organization of research.

Both Chubin and Whitley are interested in the relations of powerand authority which structure scientific organization. However,

both accounts are, in our opinion, inadequate. Chubin gives a

detailed description of the dynamic of control in specialties - yet

the role of disciplines in the constitution of scientific authority isleft aside (because disciplines, for Chubin, are unproblematic).

Whitley, on the other hand, pursues the question of authority in

science in terms of the relations between specialties and disciplines- yet, here, the explanation is limited by the fact that his units of

analysis are primarily epistemological categories.In our opinion, an adequate discussion of scientific disciplines is

best begunby locating it explicitlywithinthe generalframeworkof an

analysis of authority structure in science. We thus start with the

concept of 'scientific field', as defined by Bourdieu.'?The concept of

field is opposed to that of 'scientific community',11which has for a

long time supported much work in the sociology of science. This

opposition its not simply a question of the substitutionof conflict for

exchange, or struggle for mutual recognition. The difference

326




between the two approaches relies on more than that, and can be

seen in the way in which each conceptualizes scientific disciplines.In the theory of the scientific community, the problem of

disciplines is annulled in advance. The distinction between the

'cognitive' and the 'social' refers the question of the differentiationof knowledge to the purely internal logic of scientific processes,which is supposed to be incapable of analysis in sociological terms.What is more, partition of knowledge into disciplines, rather than

being considered as part of an analysis of scientific activity, is seen,

instead, as flowing naturally from the processes of competition and

recognition. With the notion of field, however, the existence ofscientific disciplines is decidedly problematic.

According to some researchers, who have also adoptedBourdieu's perspective, scientific disciplines should be analyzed as'sub-fields' - in other words, a discipline would recapitulate thefunctions of the field on a reduced scale.12In our opinion, such a

perspective, which seems to involve a regressin the form of Russian

dolls, cannot account for the dynamic of scientific disciplines. The

principal consequence of such a perspective is an elision ofsignificant theoretical implications: by reifying the notion of field,one effectively denies its analytical character. Moreover, given that

any field is historically constituted and can therefore only bereconstructed through historical work, the partition of knowledgein effect at any given moment is, in fact, a series of 'stakes' and notthe set of objective 'frontiers' which some sociologists use as a

starting point for their analysis.'3

Instead of treating the discipline as a field, it would appear to beof greater interest to try to situate the discipline with respect to thefield. The process of disciplinarization can then be seen as one kindof struggle, among others possible, within the field. We can speakof a disciplinary form and of a disciplinary stake - where the

disciplinary stake for a scientific practice would be to exist in theform of a discipline. In other words, before there is a discipline,there is, first of all, a stake in the field which can be apprehendedonly by the strategies which tend towards it. The disciplinary stake

(which is in a process given or perceived as relation - the relationbetween the disciplinary form and the field) is, essentially, aninstitutional stake.'4 The field is characterized by a differentialdistribution of legitimacy. Agents operating in this space have, inother words, 'a common interest in defining themselves only in and

327




by the competition which puts them in mutual opposition and in

the antagonistic strategies through which they aim at thetransformation of the established order in order to assure

themselves a recognized place'.15 To constitute oneself in a

disciplinary form, which defines the rules of the rules of the game,is to release oneself from the domination of one's competitors and

to dictate, in relative autonomy, one's own rules of the game: the

disciplinary form thus functions as a machine which (re)-producesits own rules of legitimation.

This point may also be expressed in a complementary schema.

Terence Johnson, in a book on the sociology of the professions,16after having defined the profession as a mode of occupational

control, describes three types of control - patronage, mediative

and professional - the last being occupational control by

producers. Johnston and Robbins have extended this model to

scientific activity.17They have established a relation between the

professional mode of control and academic scientific activity which

one could also, like Bourdieu, characterize as 'production for

producers'. Relating the notion of disciplinary stake to this schema- and this has been done by Camille Limoges1 - one could

hypothesize that the reason for the existence of the disciplinaryform as a stake is that it amounts to the recognition of the

legitimacy of the exercise of professional control. The disciplinarystake would then be characterized by the power, held by the

producers, to define the doctrinal corpus to be transmitted, the

curriculum, the rules of apprenticeship and finally the methods of

certification and sanction.19As an aside, it may be said that the notion of disciplinary form

can be used to avoid taxonomic tendencies: there is no need to resp-ond to those questions intended to determine, once and for all, if

such and such a scientific practice does indeed constitute a

discipline. The notion of a disciplinary form gives the idea of a

discipline a meaning which is not static or descriptive but analytic.This implies, for example, that if biology can function as a

discipline (it is not a discipline, but may take a disciplinary form)

with respect to the scientific field, in the general sense of the term,then this same biology may constitute the scientific field with

respect to which chronobiology, for example, can function as a

discipline. Biology may thus be submitted to the legitimation

processes of the general scientific field which define a hierarchy of

disciplines (biology versus physics, and so on) but may also possess

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its own modes of legitimation which sanction a hierarchy of

biological disciplines.

The Emergence and the Evolution of the

Disciplinary Stake: the Chronobiology Debate

The debate over the disciplinarization of the study of biological

rhythms began in the mid-1960s. During the conference on

'Circadian Clocks', held in 1964 at Feldafing, near Munich,informal discussions involving such well-known rhythmresearchers as Franz Halberg and Alain Reinberg led to the

question of the existence of chronobiology as a discipline: theythus raised what we have called the disciplinary stake. The

reaction of certain researchers, including C.S. Pittendrigh and

Jtirgen Aschoff, was negative.20In 1979 participants at the 14th Congress of the 'International

Society for Chronobiology' (ISC) formally recognized that

'chronobiology should become an academic discipline on its ownright' by voting a new constitution which clearly formulated this

aim.21

We will study the evolution of the disciplinary stake during the

fifteen years which separate these two events, as well as the

conditions which permitted its emergence. In order to do so, it is

first necessary to take into consideration the historical developmentof the study of biological rhythms - not only for reasons of

general comprehension but, more importantly, because the notionof field used in this paper requires an historical perspective.Nevertheless, we do not intend to present a strict chronology of

notable events. Rather, we will begin within the sociologicaldomain by summarizing the opposing historical viewpoints of thetwo major figures in the debate on disciplinarization, Colin

Pittendrigh and Franz Halberg.22 n doing so, we hope to show howthe objectives of the present conflict structurethe reconstruction ofthe past - or, to put it another way, to show how the history of a

scientific domain can become a stake for competing scientists in thesame area23

As far as the history of their domain is concerned, Halberg and

Pittendrigh agree on at least one point: whereas both recognize thevalue and importance of work carried out in the 1930s, especiallyby German botanists,24they locate the true beginning of modern

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research on this topic at the start of the 1950s. There, however,the

agreementends. Where

Pittendrigh sees successivedevelopments in terms of specialization within biology, Halbergsees a process of synthesis which, with the help of statistical

methods, cuts across many domains in the biomedical sector. For

Pittendrigh, rhythm studies commenced with the demonstration

of the existence of 'biological clocks'25 and proceeded, in an

orderly fashion, to the proposal of a 'self-sustaining oscillator'

model - presumably the first step towards the discovery of the

formal properties of circadian rhythms26and the biological basis

of oscillators and their mechanisms. For Halberg27the study of

rhythms includes not only circadian rhythms but also the problemof growth, development and ageing: in other words, those

concerned include not only biologists but gerontologists,

pediatricians and, in general, medical practitioners. Moreover,

Pittendrigh's 'breakthrough' (that is, the oscillator model) is for

Halberg an obstacle which must be overcome in order to begin the

modern study of rhythms, based on the use of inferential

statistics.28And whereas, according to Pittendrigh, we are seeing afractionation of the domain in accordance with the hypothesis of

different biological bases for circadian mechanisms in different

species and the existence of different levels of investigation

(cellular, subcellular, and so on),29with Halberg we are seeing a

process leading to a 'united set of objective concepts, methods

and facts, that apply across species and organization levels'.30At

this point it is less biochronometry (or the study, from a biological

point of view, of the different mechanisms throughwhich an

organism measures time) which is at issue, than chronobiology, or

biology (in a wide sense) considered from the unifying aspect of

temporal phenomena.This disagreement over the orientation of studies of biological

rhythms, and over the tendency that the domain has followed, is

repeated when the opponents consider the past in terms of

significant social events. The turning point in rhythm studies,

according to Pittendrigh, was the Cold Spring Harbor Symposium

on Biological Clocks held in 1960. Although preceded by severalother conferences during the 1950s, it was this Symposium which

sanctioned the scientific legitimization of the domain.31

Pittendrigh neglects, however, to mention the 'Society for Biological

Rhythms' (SBR), which was founded in 1937 by a small group of

mainlymedicalresearchers,mostly Swedish,GermanandDutch. This

330




latter organization held nine conferences on biological rhythms

between 1937 and 1967. In 1967, Halberg took over the presidencyand introduced his own programme into what was then a marginal

society. Its marginality was reflected by, among other things, theeclecticism of the contributions of its conference participants, andits eurocentrism and medical character is confirmed by a glance atits membership.32

It is hardly surprising that Halberg's view of the past isconnected with the SBR, a society ignored by Pittendrigh: for if,

according to the dictates of the spontaneous philosophy of

scientists, every discipline corresponds to a natural object, then theSBR would be the organization of choice for a partisan of the

disciplinary viewpoint. The conferences organized by the SBR

revolved, for all practical purposes, around a common-sense object- rhythms - which was not, in that context, the result of anyspecific process of scientific construction;33while the Cold SpringHarbor Symposium, and the conferences which preceded andfollowed it, combined an ensemble of scientific practices to focus

on a particularproblem. The latter is thus closer to accounts of theorigin and development of a specialty.

As we shall see later, these contending views of the past havetheir roots in diverging practices linked to the emergence of a

disciplinary tendency within the last three decades. It is possible to

distinguish several periods in the emergence and evolution of the

chronobiological disciplinary stake.34 A first period, whose roots

may be traced back to several papers by Halberg in the early 1950s,

correspondsto the

emergenceof

the conditions of possibility of thedisciplinary stake. A second period, which covers, in general, thesecond half of the 1960s, corresponds to the construction of the

disciplinary stake and the programmatic announcement of the

discipline. The third period, situated at the beginning of the 1970s,is one of assemblage and articulation of disciplinary structure. Thefourth period, continuous with the third, sees the chronobiologistsfunction in a disciplined manner: the four elements whichcharacterize the disciplinary form - the power to define the

transmissable corpus, the curriculum, the rules and methods ofapprenticeship, as well as the control of sanctions and certification- while perhaps already present as singularities, are called upon tofunction together; one element can no longer be invoked withoutthe concomitant invocation of another. Let us examine eachperiod more closely.

331




The Emergence of the Disciplinary Stake

The beginning of the 1950s, as we have already argued, saw a

movement towards the consolidation of two distinct lines of

research in the study of biological rhythms:one line, represented byC. Pittendrigh, which could qualify as properly 'biological', and

another, represented by F. Halberg, of a more 'medical' tendency.The distance between these two lines of research was accentuated

by the opposition of circadian physiology to the temporal structure

of the organism, statistical description to model specification, and

so on. Nevertheless, this opposition cannot be construed as the

'root' of the disciplinary stake. Rather, the latter emerged as a

conflict within the medical field.

In 1953, in an article in which he proposed the adrenal cortical

cycle as one of the possible mechanisms underlying circadian

periodicity, Halberg remarked that, despite the existence of a

relatively copious literature on circadian rhythms, the latter had

been ignored, for all practical purposes, by basic and clinical

medicine.35According to Halberg, the reason for this situation layin the inability to identify an endogenous mechanism which would

give a basis to circadian periodicity.36Halberg went on to confront

the indifference of his colleagues through a reconsideration of the

key principle of medical physiology, that of homeostasis:

The conception suggested here resembles Cannon's principle of homeostasis with

the important difference that the base-line about which variations are held to

occur is not the straight line (and its range of 'common variation') which has

been postulated since Claude Bernarddeveloped the concept of the constancy ofour internal environment. The 'base-line' is rather the curve of the rhythm cycle,

an essential part of bodily function and thus of physiology.37

There is, of course, no break with the doctrine of homeostasis: the

validity of the concept is reaffirmed, although a 'curve' is

substituted for the 'base-line'.

This sametheme was reiterated n an articlewritten six yearslater.38

The continuing indifference of physicians and physiologists towards

researchconcerning periodic phenomena was, this time, imputed to

several factors. The identification of the mechanisms of periodicitywas still a problem, and Halberg re-proposed the adrenal cortical

cycle as an example of a concrete mechanism. Another factor

was now the terminological confusion which reigned

332




in the domain. This problem had forced the SBR to create, in 1953, a

nomenclature committee, of which Halberg was a member.Reporting the discussions which took place in this committee,

Halberg proposed, in this article, the introduction of the term

'circadian', which henceforth attained universal acceptance. Thethird factor was, finally, the lack of rigorous quantification:

[T]his phenomenon [24-hour periodicity] will become one of cardinal interest to

physiologists as soon as it can be described by appropriate scientific means.

24-hour periodicity will cease to constitute merely a physiologic truism, not only

self-evident but trite, to the degree to which it will become amenable to rigoroustneasurement under suitable circumstances.39

A long section of the article was then devoted to the exposition of

quantitative methods, although the 'cosinor' method, later to

become central to the chronobiological project, had yet to be

invented. Unsurprisingly, the article contained one of the first

allusions to the disciplinary project:

Twenty-four-hour changes in physiologic functions are recognized, of course, as

a 'source of variability', as another 'factor' to be kept in mind when dealing with

biologic data; by the same token, heredity is 'another factor', as is also diet, to

cite but a few examples. In these cases, however, concern with 'another factor'

for its own sake has developed into the basic disciplines of genetics and nutrition

that contribute to our understandingof health and disease. By comparison, what

can we expect eventually from studies of physiologic variations?40

In the second to last section of the paper, Halberg re-examined

the relationship - now more conflictual - between periodicityand homeostasis. Homeostasis, he observed, foresees the existenceof variations within a certain range, but is incapable of accountingfor the laws of variation. These variations are not only widespreadwithin the organism but are of such a regularity that they may bemeasured: this is precisely the object of 'periodicity analysis'. And

yet the tone was conciliatory. There was no question of substitutingperiodicity for homeostasis:

As the case may be, we may integrate these [time-varying laws of physiologicperiodicity] with the broad generalization of homeostasis, or may substitute

periodicity for homeostasis, in our thinking about certain specific sets ofconditions and variables.... Theoretically, we may reconcile periodicity andhomeostasis by assuming that a basic periodic behavior of many body functions

333




underlies their superficial constancy within limits that are drawn by the

exigencies of functional integration within the body.41

Halberg then compared the relationship between periodicity and

homeostasis in terms of that between histology and macroscopic

anatomy: one completes the other rather than substitutes for it.

In 1966, Halberg pushed the analogy between the study of

biological rhythms and histology to its extreme in an article entitled

'Resolving Power of Electronic Computers in Chronopathology:An Analogy to Microscopy'.42Simply put, the argument is that the

use of the computer, complemented with methods from inferentialstatistics (including the recently invented 'cosinor'), has enabled the

elucidation of rhythms heretofore unnoticeable when approached

macroscopically - that is, by the simple representation of

biological variables as a function of time. It has thus permitted the

penetration of the temporal structure of an organism, just as the

microscope permitted the penetration of the cellular or spatial

structure of an organism.

But the article has several other aspects worthy of comment.First of all, there is a continued insistence on quantitative methods

- although, this time, the cosinor is less a method than the

foundation of the chronobiological enterprise. The cosinor no

longer analyzes rhythms, but brings into being a new scientific

object - temporal structure- for which it is now possible to claim

a material existence equivalent to that of the cell. In fact, Halberg

went so far as to speak of 'rhythms as body "constituents" in time

-comparable

to the cells as spatial aspects of organisms'.43It is

further possible to posit the existence of 'temporal pathologists',

even if 'most of the work towards the establishment of

chronopathology remains yet to be done'.44 The allusions to the

discipline, already present in the 1959/60 article, take on a more

aggressive tone. This can be seen in the following comment on the

analogy between microscopic pathology and the statistical study of

biological rhythms:

From the resolving power of the microscopic method, a now classical disciplineof microscopic pathology derives its decisive usefulness; and failure to use it, e.g.

when facing decisions concerning the indications for surgery, say, on cancer

patients, can be rightly condemned as grave negligence.4

This 1966 article appeared in the second period, during the

334




programmatic announcement of the discipline. Before moving on

to thisperiod,

several final remarksconcerning

the first are

required. We hope to have shown that in the bio-medical field

research on biological rhythms incited, if not opposition, at least

the indifference of researchersand physicians. (This, at least, is the

impression one gains from Halberg's writings.) The 'medical'

faction within the domain of rhythm studies then had to comparethemselves openly with physiologists and the medical corps in

general. However, in the early 1960s, the institutional conditions

for such a confrontation were hardly propitious. As we have seen,

the SBR was an extremely marginal organization. Even in 1961,

Sollberger, then secretary of the SBR, was obliged to remind

'experts' in the study of rhythms, gathered for a symposium held

by the New York Academy of Sciences, that 'there exists an

international Society for Biological Rhythms with the aim of

facilitating contacts between workers in the field, establishing a

library and arranging conferences'.46 In other words, after twenty-four years, the existence of the SBR was not well known.

The Construction of the Disciplinary Stake

During the second period, the construction of the disciplinary stakewas played out on two fronts. The chronobiologists, while still in

competition for territory controlled by medical physiology, nowfound themselves in conflict with those among the biologists whom

they qualified as 'naturalists' or 'macroscopists', for the control of

the domain of rhythm studies. In effect, it became evident that if, inorder to confront their medical colleagues, it was essential for the

chronobiologists to possess a discipline which would assure theirconditions of (re)-production, the creation of the discipline must

begin with the exclusive control of the domain of rhythms.The opposition between homeostasis and periodicitybecamemore

marked in Halberg's writings in this period. In 1969, for example, atext appeared in which Halberg directly confronted ClaudeBernard.47The

integrationof homeostasis and

periodicity was nolonger possible, and if physiology were to continue to make theformer its basic concept, chronobiology would no longer justcomplete physiology, but would substitute for it:

A shielding [of the organism from the environment by an internal milieu that is

constant] by basic constancy should not be confused with the view of basic

335




rhythmic physiologic interactions underlying a superficial constancy or, rather, a

limited variability. In the former view, rhythms remain secondary or even trivial

considerations as to both interpretation of body function and experimentalmethod. In the latter view, rhythms become primary basic features of temporal

integration and adaptation in organisms.48

Beginning this same year, a series of papers appeared (some in

English, some in French, some signed by Halberg, some by

Reinberg, some by other chronobiologists), announcing the birth

of chronobiology.49 Similar themes traverse all of them: the

superiority of statistical methods for the analysis of rhythms; the

secondary nature of analyses using models (be they oscillators or

'black boxes'); and the necessity for any biologist (and a very wide

sense is here intended) to take account of the fundamental nature

of rhythms, and to include them in the analysis of physiologicalfunctions.

Consider, for example, a paper presented before the 'First

International Conference on Theoretical Physics and Biology' - a

meeting held at Versailles in 1968 in the presence of several Nobel

prize winners, and under the patronage of the French Ministry ofState for Scientific Research and Atomic and Spatial Questions and

the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics.50Before this

body, Halberg elaborated the theoretical niche that chronobiologywould occupy within a disciplinary topography. In the study of

biological phenomena, the determination of 'where' the

phenomena are situated falls necessarily within the domain of

morphology (anatomy, histology, and so on); the determination of

their nature, the 'what', to biochemistry and biophysics; and,finally, the determination of 'when' to chronobiology, 'a disciplinein statu nascendi occupied inter alia with rhythmic activity'.

Furthermore, although still only in statu nascendi, chronobiology,

according to the dictates of Halberg's 'spontaneous sociology', was

already equipped with specialties: 'chronophysiology, chrono-

pathology, chronopharmacology and chronotoxicology'.The opposition of many biologists to the creation of a

chronobiological discipline centred mainly on what was perceived

as an attempt to occupy any area where time would play a role in

biological analysis. According to Pittendrigh, the matter can be

first of all framed as a question of terms: 'The term

"chronobiology" is something I oppose because it is unnecessary,

pretentious, and inaccurate'.5"And, more importantly, as there is

not necessarily any common mechanism underlying rhythmic

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phenomena, then there is a still greater reason for opposing the

disciplinarization of chronobiology:

... I had reached this position already in 1965 when the proposal arose to create

a society for the study of the phenomena. It seemed to me that this would be

comparable to some physiologist like Bernard suggesting there ought to be a

society for the study of homeostasis.52

After having been refused the collaboration of researchers such

as Pittendrigh and Aschoff in his initial 1964 project for the

creation ofchronobiological

societies and journals, Halberg finally

accepted the presidency of the SBR, then in full decline. In the

years that followed, with the help of chronobiologists like

Lawrence E. Scheving, Professor of Anatomy in Little Rock,

Arkansas, and future secretary-treasurer of the International

Society for Chronobiology, Halberg undertook the reconstruction

of the SBR. This brings us to the third period, and the structuringof the domain through societies and journals.

The Assemblage of the Disciplinary Structure

What was the institutional state of the domain at the end of the

1960s? Besides the SBR, there was another society concerned with

rhythms, the 'Foundation for the Study of Cycles'. This was

created in 1940 by G.E. Dewey, an economist, who, after havingtried to use the study of cycles to predict stock market variations,became convinced that a major role was played by the environment

- and even extraterrestrial forces - in the genesis andmaintenance of cycles (whether they were economic, biological,social, or whatever). While the Foundation remained peripheral to

the scientific field, it gave birth in 1969 to a European branch,installed in Leiden, and known as the 'International Institute for

Interdisciplinary Cycle Research'. In 1970, this began to publishthe Journal of Interdisciplinary Cycle Research (JICR). The

journal maintains a wide disciplinary spread, mediated by the

presence of 93 'Co-editors'. Its existence is justified, according toeditorial policy, by the 'increasing conviction of many scientists

that, apart from direct mechanisms involved in cyclic phenomena,other still unknown exogenous forces, partly of an extraterrestrial

origin, seem to be responsible for long term endogenous rhythms in

the living organisms: plants, animals, and man'.53One section of the journal is devoted to biological rhythms: the

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JICR thus constituted the first 'specialized' journal for chrono-

biologists. Before it appeared, hundreds of researchers 'in the fieldof cycle research and biometeorology' were contacted in order to

ensure a potential public. Moreover, 'leading members of the

International Society for Biological Rhythms' were consulted to

avoid a 'clash of interests'. Not only is there a ten percent overlapbetween the Editorial Board of the JICR and that of the future

International Journal of Chronobiology, but Sollberger, former

secretary of the SBR, is presently chief editor of the JICR.

In the same interdisciplinary direction, there were two

conferences organized by the New York Academy of Sciences.

During the first, held in 1961, and entitled 'Rhythmic Functions in

the Living System', Sollberger, after having explained that

Biological rhythm research is a young but rapidly expanding science that touches

many disciplines: botany, forestry, agriculture, various branches of theoretical

and applied zoology, veterinaryand human medicine, psychology, mathematics,

statistics, cybernetics, and philosophy.54

introduced the term 'chronobiology':

Biological life displays incessant movement both in space and time. We may call

the study of the latter phenomenon chronobiology. The biological rhythms

belong here.55

During the second conference, entitled 'Interdisciplinary

Perspectives of Time', and which took place in 1966, the

'International Society for the Study of Time' was founded. As theirproject is even vaguer and more multidisciplinary than that of the

Foundation for the Study of Cycles, we will not go into it here.56

The interdisciplinarity discussed thus far has brought together

disciplines both within and without the biological field. There is,

however, a possible interdisciplinary strategy unfolding entirelywithin the biological and bio-medical field. This seems to be the

route chosen by the 'Groupe d'Etudes des Rythmes Biologiques'

(GERB). Founded in 1968-69 and containing about 400 members

- the number does not seem to have risen since, despite a high rate

of rotation - GERB can be distinguished from the SBR (with

which, theoretically, it shared the same goals) by its choice of a

national dimension, solely French. Apparently it was 'less and less

normal for French chronobiologists... to attend the babelising

whirlpool of an international congress in order to meet each

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other'.57 And so, with the accord of the SBR, GERB was

founded. From the list of 'Conseil' and 'Bureau' members, it isalso possible to distinguish the GERB from the SBR on the basis

of a higher percentage of biologists than physicians. Althoughthere are members of GERB who identify with the chronobiology

project (for example, A. Reinberg), there is also an inter-

disciplinary tendency which seems to predominate. This is how an

anonymous representative of this tendency describes the status of

the study of rhythms:

Biological rhythms entered science as particular cases; they broke with the

traditional framework of biology once researchers began to underline the

general character of their results. There do not exist biological rhythmlaboratories where one would consider with equal interest rhythms of all

periods, where biological material is chosen for its chronostructural interest

(and not for applied reasons or from motives derived from the nomenclature of

university chairs), and where the preoccupations would extend from life in a

natural environment to the search for intimate mechanisms. Considered in this

light, genetics has an objective existence; temporal biology, on the other hand,exists only insofar as there is a will, on behalf of certain biologists, towards

synthesis. This existence has been made possible by the creation of the Societyfor Biological Rhythms and by the Groupe d'Etude des Rythmes Biologiques.58

And yet this interdisciplinarity, which would make the groupcreated around Halberg one of a series of factions in the domain

of the study of rhythm and not the sole representative of

chronobiology, can itself lead to disciplinary conduct. During the

creation, in 1975, of the 'Society of Ecophysiology', which

projected the appropriation of the domain of 'systems ofphysiological regulations of living beings (Man, Animals and

Plants) in function of environment factors', a domain which

contained the problems of rhythmology, the GERB Bulletin

pointed out that 'Rhythms already have their own group', and

then added that 'the true danger is the possible extension to the

ecophysiology society of chronobiology papers whose quality is so

mediocre that the authors would not have presented them toGERB'.59 In so doing, the GERB insisted on its

rightsboth to

control and to define the limits within which quality was to becontrolled - a notion typical of a disciplinary context.

Within this terrain, in 1971, the 10th Congress of the SBR (andthe first in the USA) was held at Little Rock. It was decided to

change the name of the Society to the International Society for

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Chronobiology: seemingly, four years had been necessary for the

reorganization of the Society under Halberg's presidency, the lastcongress having been held in 1967. The 1971 congress was a

success, not only in the number of participants, but also in the

variety of papers presented. Lawrence Scheving defined the

meeting as a 'milestone for the Society' and affirmed, as a

consequence, that 'clearly, by 1972 chronobiology was emerging as

an integrating discipline of biology which promises to rank equallyas important as the other integrating disciplines, namely genetics,

developmental biology, and evolution'.60

The cornerstone of the disciplinary apparatus in place, thesuccessive institutional displacements of the chronobiologists were

almost automatic. In 1972-73, Alain Reinberg took the intiative of

creating the International Journal of Chronobiology (IJC). In a

letter addressed to his colleagues explaining his intentions,

Reinberg insisted on 'the fact that since there have been

international chronobiological meetings, there is no need to do

without a specialized journal'.61At the 11th Congress of the ISC,

Halberg established relations with the Italian publishing house IlPonte via a Dr Agostino Carandente, an Italian chronobiologisttied to the Hoechst Foundation; this resulted in the publication of a

second journal, Chronobiologia which, in 1974, became the official

organ of the ISC.

In the editorial of the first issue of the IJC, the separate

disciplinary identity of chronobiology was presented as resting on

three points:

1. It has a clearly defined aim, i.e., an evaluation of the anatomy-in-time of

living material.

2. It has an original objective statistical methodology.3. It has a rapidly broadening base of facts.62

Chronobiology was defined as:

the science of quantitative and predictable temporal phenomena including

biological rhythms, developmental changes and aging. Such phenomena are

thought to occur at all levels of life. .63

The editorial was followed by a number of 'position papers' in

which different authors described the role and importance of the

new discipline. All expressed a central characteristic of the

disciplinary stake: the legitimacy and the necessity of a new

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discipline does not reside in the abstract, but is posed against other

disciplines. Three short quotations will suffice to illustrate this

point. One from Halberg:

Many a classical physiologic dogma may not only be reversed but proved wrongif chronobiologic information can be substituted for the pitfalls associated with

ignorance of rhythms.64

One from H.S. Lipscomb:

It is no longer sufficient to classify health as the absence of disease ... Clearly,

chronobiologic studies and recognition of the temporal organization of

functional men may provide us with the first valid glimpse of what constitutes

'health' as distinct from disease.65

One, finally, from L. Scheving:

The facts rendercompletely untenable the concept of homeostatic balance as it is

taught at the present time in many freshmen medical school physiology66

courses.

This last remark was later expressed as a direct call for the

replacement of the 'old' physiology:

In order to progress, medicine is currentlyin need of a new physiology quantifiedin statistical and microscopic terms, as was the case in statistical and microscopicphysics.67

and for the conquest of medicine and biology in their entirety:

Progress in biology and in medicine will depend eventually on the dispensabilityof the chrono- as a prefix. Good biology and good medicine will then be eo ipsochronobiology and chronomedicine; many a remaining chrono- should become

superfluous as a prefix except in such terms as chronopsies, chronodesms andother words designating truly novel concepts and facts.68

As we have already pointed out, the major obstacle to the

discipline had been those already residing within the domain and

known, contemptuously, as 'clockwatchers'. The journaldemarcated itself from the latter by invoking the distinctionbetween speculation and disciplined practice:

The attitude prevails among a few scientists that the only significant or relevantwork in chronobiology is that which revolves around locating the controllingmechanism or the so-called 'biological clock'. I readily admit that to elucidate

341




the mechanism of rhythmicity would be as big a scientific breakthrough as an

adequate explanation of the mechanism of cell division; to date there has been

little success in explaining adequately either mechanism.69

The position papers were followed by a 'chronobiological

glossary', occupying some 32 pages.70 As we have seen, the

necessity of a common language had been felt since 1953, when theSBR created a committee on nomenclature. Later, in 1964, one

finds a 'circadian vocabulary' contained in the proceedings of the

Feldafing Conference.71The 'chronobiological glossary' surpassed

the latter in number of terms (104 against 30), presented in 11languages. The glossary was followed in 1977 by yet another,

considerably enlarged and published as a bilingual manual of 189

pages.72These glossaries may be seen as an expression of one of the

characteristics of the disciplinary form, since they attempt, throughthe standardization of scientific terms, to control the transmissable

doctrinal corpus. This does not imply, of course, that a scientific

glossary is the result of an unscientific practice. To paraphrase

Bourdieu, it is simply a question of the indissoluble association ofany scientific dimension with a political dimension. In the present

instance, this association is particularlyevident. So, for example, in

the introduction to the 1977 glossary, one may read that:

Little if any reference is here made to anatomically or biochemically undefined

clocks and oscillators; these models can serve transiently as useful scaffolding,

yet they constitute no substitute for defining and quantifying the characteristics

of rhythms in the collection of relevant basic if not useful biomedical facts.73

Through the imposition of more than a hundred terms, there is,

necessarily, a certain type of scientific practice - antagonistic to

those already present in the same domain - that is more than

proposed. There were, unsurprisingly, negative reactions: 'Those

people [the chronobiologists] are given to elaborate terminologyalmost as an end in itself and that terminology turns off goodworkers who are concerned with problems rather than

lexicography'.74 Erwin Bunning's comments are remarkablysimilar:

Many believe that it is possible to partially solve a problem through the massive

use of terminology and symbols. At least it gives the appearance of being very,

very scientific. This makes me think of the philosophy that some define in the

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following manner: the art of systematically twisting concepts using a terminologyinvented

preciselyfor this end.75

With the transformation of the Society and the foundation of the

two journals, the capture of the disciplinary form was considerably

advanced, although not achieved, for the disciplinary form is never

definitively acquired. Conceived as a stake, it is submitted to a

process of continual negotiation within the field. For the most partof the 1970s, however, the chronobiological project could not even

count on the central attribute of the disciplinary form - an

institutionally recognized teaching which actualizes the possibilityof defining the doctrinal corpus, the curriculum, the norms and the

methods. In effect, despite several courses given here and there, it

would be necessary to wait until 1980 for a chair of chronobiology

(University of L'Aquila, Italy), and a university diploma in

chronobiology (Universite Rene Descartes, Paris).76 It should,

however, be noticed that both these centres still teach within the

discipline (teaching for chronobiologists), and do not teach the

disciplinewithin the largerframework of a bio-medical curriculuma necessarycondition for the developmentof the pharmacologicaland

therapeutic aspects of chronobiology.77In both these latter cases,

however, the teachingis as much a stakefor its standardizationeffects

as for any others, since the construction of researchnorms is oftentransferred to the production of a normal clientele, which in turnbecomes a factor in the developmentof a normal practice.

Disciplined Behaviour

The chronobiologists did not wait for the institutional recognitioncorresponding to the establishment of university courses in order tofunction as a discipline: they had done so since the beginning of the1970s. The last part of our paper will be concerned with this fourth

period. To analyze this step, it seems necessary to distinguish whatwe have heretofore termed the disciplinary stake from a set of

objectives made possible by the existence of a discipline. We haveseen that the disciplinary stake is played out in and by the

relationship of the discipline to the field. Moreover, one mayconceive of stakes or objectives placed within the discipline andlinked to production for consumers, not just production for

producers. This distinction seems to imply that there is a linear

343




process in time - that is, that a discipline must first be constituted

in order for theobjectives

to come into view. Infact, the distinctionis only analytical: the objectives arising from a disciplinary form of

existence are empirically co-present with the disciplinary stake,which they may even suppose, in time, and produce, in fact.

In our particularcase, it can be argued that the chronobiologists,

having temporarily captured the disciplinary form, were able to

recapture it by proposing objectives so defined as to include the

disciplinary stake. Once established in the field and perceived as a

fetish - that is to say, as a reification of the disciplinary stake -

and not as a form, the discipline serves as the site of transcriptionof symbolic capital78 nto economic capital. It allows one to think

of economic stakes in terms of the discipline, through the creation

of logical identities between thresholds of symbolic capital and

thresholds of economic capital.

Using a juridical analogy, one could say that if laboratories and

research teams are the firms of science, then the discipline must be

compared to a corporation, for the discipline intervenes as a

legitimate yet fictional persona in the multiple transactions andexchanges that make up scientific activity. This form of the

disciplinary stake is particularly evident, for example, during the

negotiation, in 1975, of a grant from the National Cancer Institute

(NCI) to the University of Minnesota for a chronoepidemiological

study of the incidence of breast cancer in Japanese and American

women: the ISC 'was to act as an intermediary between the NCI,the University of Minnesota and the Japanese team ...',79 while

the'chronobiology

laboratories' of FranzHalberg

at theUniversityof Minnesota were transformed into a centre of the International

Society. It is probably in this same sense that the steps taken by the

ISC to affiliate itself with the World Health Organization must be

understood.80

Those domains in which the destiny of the chronobiological

discipline are linked with economic stakes are not only multiple but

multiply (at least rhetorically) as chronobiology extends (again

rhetorically) its domain of expertise to include, for example,

chronoecology. Consider what appears to be a justification for theremarkable and continuous insistence by chronobiologists on the

possible practical applications of their science:

Among the irritating or embarrassingquestions that I have been asked, the ones

that return, a little too often for my taste, are the little phrases like

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'chronobiology, very nice, but what use is it?' - 'So what' - 'Chronobiology,

why bother?' These questions lead me to become conscious of the fact that

chronobiology would not be widely recognized until practical applications could

be proposed. Without renouncing the 'fundamental' side of research, I found it

necessary to demonstrate that chronobiology was susceptible to practical

applications. Chronobiologists were asked not only to know (savoir) but to know

how (pouvoir), since, unsurprisingly, in the present state of our society, a priorityseems to be given to the practical applications of science, on the one hand, and to

problems of power, in all the senses of this word, on the other.81

This quotation demonstrates an important and, of course, far from

neglected aspect of the problem: that the accumulation of symbolic

capital by the discipline permits the discipline, and the agents who

are hidden behind this fetish, to intervene in the economic field-

that is to say, the market of posts, subventions and technical goods.The cancer market, for example, has been the site of a continuing

confrontation between researchers adhering to the traditional

(homeostatic) approach and chronobiologists. In the first half of the

1970s, negotiations with the patron of cancer research, the National

Cancer Institute, seemed so unfruitful that, in 1975,

Halberg wrote:

At this time when a major effort of the US investment into medicine is said to be

focused on the cancerfield, chronobiologistshave lacked salesmengood enough to

persuadeadministrators o intitiate a rigorous, properlyscaled endeavorin clinical

tests of chronotherapy. Chronobiology encountered benign neglect as national

programs focused on a search for new molecules. Almost certainly less than a

fractionof one-thousandth of the available National CancerInstitutebudgetis now

used to exploitthealreadydemonstratedpossibilityof improvingtreatmentwithnew

or old moleculesaccording

to circadianrhythms.82

The chronobiologists had approachedresponsiblepartiesat the NCI

and attempted to convince them of the merits of a chrono-

chemotherapy. NCI's reaction was to propose a sort of 'crucial

experiment'.Thisconsisted of a comparisonof survivaltimesof mice,

exposed to an experimental leukemia, and who had subsequentlyreceived treatment with an anti-cancer agent according to either ahomeostatic pattern (4 fixed doses a day) or a chronobiologic schema

(the dosage varying in a sinusoidal manner). These two experimentswere contracted to two different research teams. Here is how the

chronobiologists described the successiveevents:

Chronobiology won this 'tournament' in terms of tolerance by intact mice and in

terms of survivaltime for leukemic mice. When such gains by chronotherapywerein hand, the 'tennis court' was changed: it was suggested that nothing short

345




of cure would count. Even on this revised 'tennis court' chronobiology won

again.83

Yet the story had not finished. Other researchers continued to

minimize or deny the results claimed by the chronobiologists, and

the polemic escalated to the point where it was argued that the

refusal of chronotherapeutic methods to patients resulted in

patients dying from medication rather then from cancer.84

We have reviewed the very symbolic case of cancer, but the same

process is at work in other illnesses and, hence, other treatments.

The chronobiological attempt to enter the technical field (medicaland otherwise) is thus made by the transformation of theoretical

oppositions made possible by the field into technical oppositions,

through the production of differences of efficiency. While we will

not go into specific cases in which this strategy has been used, it is

worth noting that the chronobiological offensive in the medical

domain itself goes beyond specific cases to address itself, in a

global way, to the general problem of health; it is then constituted

as a direct interlocutor of the state and international organizations.If health, until now, has been defined negatively as the absence of

sickness, chronobiology promises to be able, for the first time, to

arrive at a positive definition of (and, above all, to quantify)health.

Pharmaceutical companies also constitute a large source of

economic capital: but, because of their immanent presence in the

medical field, they may also serve as a possible channel of

legitimationfor

chronobiology,via its

'chronopharmacological'branch. In essence, chronopharmacology proposes, on the one

hand, to study the effect of rhythms on medicaments, and, on the

other, the effect of medicaments on rhythms. In the first case, the

pharmaceutical companies would be able to add an extra variable

to the qualities which differentiate their products from others -

one only need think of the idea of 'chronobioavailability' which

modifies the therapeutic equivalence of two drugs by adding a

temporal variable.85 n the second case, it would be possible to open

a new field of pharmacological intervention through thefabrication of drugs which correct a dyschronism by realigning an

altered temporal structure of an organism presumed to be at the

base of an illness. If it is easy to understand the advantage to be

gained by industry from a future chronopharmacology, one can

just as easily envisage the triumph that the realization of the

346




following prophecy would represent for chronobiology:

One may well anticipate someday the requirement of a label on certain drugs:'Tested and approved by an appropriate board (Approval No.) for

chronotherapeutic administration' and alternatively, the label 'Not tested for

chronotherapeutic indication' on a minority rather than on the ensemble of

drugs now available.86

It is obviously too early to analyze in detail the development ofso recent a dynamic. In the report Sciences de la vie et societe,87

concerning the applications of the life sciences to the social and

industrial domain, which eminent French scientists produced at

the behest of the President of the Republic, chronobiology is

described as having 'a bright future'; this is a sign, among others,of relative success, on a national basis, of the chronobiologists'

disciplinary strategy. One cannot help but be struck by the

difference in the effects evoked by the chronobiologists'

disciplinary manoeuvre in different national contexts. It is

undoubtedly Italy where chronobiology has achieved most

success: in the Halbergs' words, 'Italy has become the hub ofchronobiology'.88 This national success is marked principally bythe foundation, in 1976, of the Societd Italiana di Cronobiologia,affiliated with the ISC, and by the already mentioned constructionof the laboratories of the 'Chronobiological Research Centre' at

L'Aquila. This tends indirectly to confirm the suspicion that the

disciplinary stake is mainly an institutional stake, for then onewould expect differences linked to different national institutional

contexts.

Conclusion

We hope to have shown that there is an heuristic advantage in

posing the sociologically neglected problem of disciplines withinthe framework of Bourdieu's analysis of the 'scientific field'. Wehave furtherproposed that in this analysis disciplines (in oppositionto the ontological status often, implicitly or explicitly, accorded

them) may be conceived as one form of struggle among others inthe field. On similar lines, we have spoken of the disciplinary stakeas the attempt to exist within a disciplinary form in the field - or,in other words, to be able to exercise a 'collegiate' control of the

production and reproduction of knowledge. And it is the

347




connection of these two processes of production and reproductionwhich, to us, seems essential. It was finally necessary to single out

the disciplinary stake from those stakes which arise within analready constituted discipline. It remains to be seen how different

configurations of knowledge condition the processes discussed in

this paper: one could ask, for example, if and how the dynamic of

disciplines in the field of physics, which has its own historical

constitution and different modes of technical relations, is

comparable with that of biology. Further studies in this direction

would be enlightening.

* NOTES

A preliminaryversion of this paper was presented at a seminar held on the dynamicsof scientific disciplines at the Institut d'Histoire et de Sociopolitique des Sciences of

the Universite de Montreal duringthe academic year 1980-81. We would like to thank

Professor Camille Limoges who led the seminar, as well as the other participants,among whom we would particularlythank Jan Sapp who first drew our attention to

the study of biological rhythms. We would also like to thank Joseph Caron for his

comments.

1. See Alain Reinberg, Des rythmes biologiques d la chronobiologie (Paris:Gauthier Villars, 1979), 66.

2. In this paper, we will use the term 'chronobiologist' only for those who claim

adherence to the disciplinary project.3. The classical examples of this enterprise can be found in D'Alembert (see his

Discourspreliminaire de I'Encyclopedie)and Comte (see the first and second lesson ofhis Cours de philosophie positive).

4. G. Lemaineet al. (eds), Perspectives on theEmergence of Scientific Disciplines

(Paris: Mouton, 1977).5. D.E. Chubin, 'The Conceptualization of Scientific Specialties', The

Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 17 (1976), 448-76.

6. 'In short, disciplines form the teaching domain of science, while smaller

intellectual units (nestled within and between disciplines) comprise the research

domain. Within the sociology of science, these units have been termed "scientific

specialties".' (Ibid., 448.)

7. The presentsection of this paperdrawsheavily on discussions which took placeduring a seminar on scientific disciplines (mentioned above) directed by Camille

Limoges who produced, at the same time, several postscripts which summarized and

further developed the arguments raised in the course.

8. R. Whitley, 'Umbrella and Polytheistic Scientific Disciplines and TheirElites',

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 6 (1976), 471-97.

9. Ibid., 472-73.

10. The concept of 'field', central to Bourdieu's sociological enterprise, has been

348




specifically applied to the sociology of science. See P. Bourdieu, 'The Specificity ofthe Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of the Progress of Reason', SocialScience Information, Vol. 14, No. 6 (1975), 19-47. It is impossible to summarizehere all the implications of this concept, so we will limit ourselves to this quotation:

As a system of objective relations between positions already won (in previous

struggles), the scientific field is the locus of a competitive struggle, in which the

specific issue at stake is the monopoly of scientific authority, defined inseparablyas technical capacity and social power, or, to put it another way, the monopoly of

scientific competence, in the sense of a particular agent's socially recognized

capacity to speak and act legitimately (i.e. in an authorised and authoritative way)in scientific matters. (Ibid., 19.)

For other attempts to use Bourdieu's framework in the sociology of science, see, for

example, K.D. Knorr, 'Producing and Reproducing Knowledge: Descriptive orConstructive? Toward a Model of Research Production', Social Science

Information, Vol. 16, No. 6 (1977), 669-96.

11. For one of the best known variants of this theory see, of course, W.O.

Hagstrom, The Scientific Community (Carbondale and Edwardsville, Ill.: Southern

Illinois University Press, 1965).12. See, for example, M. Fournier et al., 'Le champ scientifique quebecois:

structure, fonctionnement et fonctions', Sociologie et societes, Vol. 7 (1975),119-32.

13. This is the case in N. Mullins, 'The Development of a Scientific Specialty',Minerva, Vol. 10 (1972), 51-82.

14. As is the case with 'discipline', so the notion of 'institution' should not be leftto common sense. For a stimulating elaboration of this notion see, for example, C.

Salomon-Bayet, L'institution de la science et l'experience du vivant (Paris:Flammarion, 1978).

15. P. Bourdieu, La distinction (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 1979), 272.16. T. Johnson, Profession and Power (London: Macmillan, 1972).17. R. Johnston and D. Robbins, 'The Development of Specialties in

Industrialized Science', The Sociological Review, Vol. 25 (1977), 87-108.18. C. Limoges, conferences given in seminar HSS-7001 at the Institut d'Histoire

et de Sociopolitique des Sciences, Universite de Montreal, Fall-Winter 1980/81.19. Ibid.

20. C. S. Pittendrigh, letter to the authors, 22 January 1981.21. E. Halberg, F. Halberg, J. Halberg and F. Halberg, 'Forging Chronobiology

and Pediatrics as well as Geriatrics - A Birthday Greeting For Theodor

Hellbrugge', International Journal of Chronobiology, Vol. 6 (1979), 135-43.22. Colin Pittendrigh and Franz Halberg are, respectively, Professor of Biology

at Stanford University and Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Pathology at the

University of Minnesota.

23. Of course, it is not the task of the sociologist of science to settle scientific

disputes: this is to be done by scientists themselves. It might be useful in this respectto recall the principles of 'sociological relativism' propounded by the adherents ofthe 'strong programme'.

24. For a brief (and amateurish) history of rhythms studies, see R.A. Ward, The

Living Clocks (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971). During the first decades of the

349




century the debate concerning biological rhythmswas focused on the question of the

source - exogenous or endogenous - of the rhythmicphenomena. Erwin Bunning,a partisan of the eventually generally accepted endogenous theory, was one of the

chief figures in this debate.

25. More precisely: K. von Frisch (with bees) and G. Kramer (with birds)demonstrated in 1950 the existence of an endogenous 'clock' allowing these animals

to use the daily displacement of the sun for the purpose of orientation. Pittendrigh'sview of the development of the domain can be found in C.S. Pittendrigh, 'BiologicalClocks: The Functions, Ancient and Modern, of Circadian Oscillations', in D.L.

Arm (ed.), Science in the Sixties: The Tenth Anniversary of AFOSR Scientific

Seminar, June 1965 (Albuquerque, New Mexico: University of New Mexico, 1965),

96-111; Pittendrigh, 'Circadian Oscillation in Cells and the Circadian Organizationof Multicellular Systems', in F.O. Schmitt and F.G. Worden (eds), The

Neurosciences: Third Study Program (Cambridge, Mass. and London: The MIT

Press, 1974), 437-58; Pittendrigh, op. cit. note 20.

26. Circadian rhythms are rhythms that in the absence of an external 'entraining

agent' or 'synchronizer' (the rhythm is then said to be 'free-running') have a periodof about 24 hours. One of the formal properties highlighted by Pittendrigh and co-

workers is, for example, the homeostasis of the frequency of circadian rhythms.27. F. Halberg, letter to the authors, 6 December 1980.

28. Central to the chronobiological enterprise is the so-called 'cosinor' method,

which permits a graphical representation, based on polar coordinates in a plane, of

the statistical analysis of rhythms. For more details, see F. Halberg et al., Glossary

of Chronobiology, Supplement 1 (1977) to Chronobiologia, 1-189, esp. 72-75.

29. Pittendrigh, op. cit. note 20.

30. Halberg, op. cit. note 27.

31. Pittendrigh, op. cit. note 20. See also the preface in E. Bunning, The

Physiological Clock (New York, Heidelberg and Berlin: Springer Verlag, 3rd edn,

1973): 'It is with the Symposium on Biological Clocks (1960) held at Cold Spring

Harbor, New York, that an era of intensified experimental work in this field was

ushered in.' For the proceedings of the Symposium, see 'Biological Clocks', Cold

Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology, Vol. 25 (1960).

32. The congresses of the SBR were held in Ronneby (Sweden, 1937), Utrecht

(1939), Hamburg (1949), Basle (1953), Stockholm (1955), Semmering (Austria,

1957), Siena (Italy, 1960), Hamburg (1963) and Wiesbaden (1967), this latter being a

part of the 73rd Congress of the German Society for Internal Medicine. American

scientists, including Halberg, had attended the SBR meetings since 1953.

33. A good example of this can be found in the fact that one of the leading

members (and eventually president) of the SBR, A. Jores, remained for a long time

convinced of the exogenous nature of rhythms, thus rejecting a view - the

endogenous one - which is the basis of the modern scientific construction of the

concept of rhythms.

34. These periods are, of course, relatively arbitraryand are made for descriptive

rather than prescriptive purposes.35. F. Halberg, 'Some Physiological and Clinical Aspects of 24-Hour

Periodicity' The Lancet, Vol. 73 (1953), 20-32.

36. Pittendrigh's point of view is rather different: 'In brief the prospect of a

common mechanism to incite us is slim only if we are too preoccupied with the

concrete and neglect our real business of elucidating organizational features of the

350




living system'; C.S. Pittendrigh, 'Circadian Rhythms and the Circadian

Organization of Living Systems', in Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative

Biology, Vol. 25 (1960), 159-82, quote at 181.

37. Halberg, op. cit. note 35, 29.

38. F. Halberg, 'Physiologic 24-hour Periodicity; General and ProceduralConsiderations With Reference to the Adrenal Cycle', Zeitschrift fur Vitamin-,Hormon- und Fermentforschung, Vol. 10, Nos 3/4 (1959/60), 225-96.

39. Ibid., 231.

40. Ibid., 228.

41. Ibid., 291.

42. F. Halberg, 'Resolving Power of Electronic Computers in Chronopathology:An Analogy to Microscopy', Scientia, Vol. 101 (1966), 412-19.

43. Ibid., 415.

44. Ibid., 416.

45. Ibid., 415.

46. A. Sollberger, 'General Properties of Biological Rhythms', in 'RhythmicFunctions in the Living System', Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,Vol. 98 (1962), 757-74, quote at 774.

47. F. Halberg, 'Claude Bernard and the "Extreme Variability of the Internal

Millieu'", in F. Grande and M.B. Visscher (eds), Claude Bernardand ExperimentalMedicine (Cambridge, Mass.: Schenkman, 1967), 193-210.

48. Ibid., 208.

49. F. Halberg, 'Chronobiologie, Rythmes and Physiologie Statistique', in M.

Marois (ed.), Physique theorique et biologie. Comptes rendus de la Premiere

Conference Internationale de Physique Theorique et Biologie (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1969), 347-93; Halberg, 'Chronobiology', AnnualReview of Physiology, Vol. 31 (1969), 675-725; Halberg and A. Reinberg, 'Rythmescircadiens et rythmes de basses frequences en physiologie humaine (Rapport a la

trent-cinquieme reunion de l'association des physiologistes)', Journal de

physiologie, Vol. 59, Pt. 1 (1967), 17-200; Halberg, W. Nelson, R. Doe, F.C.Bartter and Reinberg, 'Chronobiologie', Journal Europeen de Toxicologie, Vol. 6

(1969), 311-18; Reinberg, 'La chronobiologie', La recherche, Vol. 2, No. 10 (1971),242-50.

50. Halberg, 'Chronobiologie, Rythmes ...', op. cit. note 49.51. Pittendrigh, op. cit. note 20.

52. Ibid.

53. S.W. Tromp, 'Editorial', JICR, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1970), 1-2. On Dewey and theFoundation for the Study of Cycles, see A. Sollberger, 'In Memoriam: EdwardRussel Dewey (1895-1978)', JICR, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1978), 1-2.

54. A. Sollberger, op. cit. note 46, 757.

55. Ibid.

56. See 'Interdisciplinary Perspectives of Time', Annals of the New York

Academy of Sciences, Vol. 138, No. 2 (1967), 367-915.57. 'Raison d'etre du groupe; conseil; bureau; statuts', Bulletin du Groupe

d'Etude des Rythmes Biologiques (BGERB), Vol. 1, No. 1 (1969), 3-6, quote at 3.58. 'Informations: Ecophysiologie', BGERB, Vol. 8, No. 4 (1976), 177-80, quote

at 178.

59. Ibid., 179.

60. L. Scheving, letter to the authors, 5 March 1981.

351




61. A Reinberg, letter to the authors, 1 December 1980.

62. F. Halberg, A. Reinbergand H.W. Simpson, 'Editorial', IJC, Vol. 1(1973),

4.

63. Ibid.

64. F. Halberg, 'Chronobiology and Its Promise for Health Care and

Environmental Integrity', IJC, Vol. 1 (1973), 10-14, quote at 14.

65. H.S. Lipscomb, 'Role of Chronobiological Studies in Human Physiology',IJC, Vol. 1 (1973), 16.

66. L.E. Scheving, 'Some Ideas of the Problems Associated with

Chronobiology', IJC, Vol. 1 (1973), 17-19, quote at 17.

67. Halberg et al., op. cit. note 28, 10.

68. E. Halberg and F. Halberg, 'Chronobiologia, Quo Vadis? The First

ChronobiologyCourse of the Italian Society for

Chronobiology',IJC, Vol. 7, No.

2 (1980), 117-25, quote at 122.

69. Scheving, op. cit. note 66, 18.

70. F. Halberg and S. Katinas, 'Chronobiologic Glossary of the International

Society for the Study of Biologic Rhythms', IJC, Vol. 1 (1973), 31-63.

71. J. Aschoff et al., 'Circadian Vocabulary', in Aschoff (ed.), Circadian

Clocks: Proceeedings of the Feldafing Summer School, 7-18 September 1964

(Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1965), x-xix.

72. Halberg et al., op. cit. note 28.

73. Ibid., 8-9.

74.Pittendrigh, op.

cit. note 20.

75. E. Bunning, letter to L. Baillaud, cited in BGERB, Vol. 9, No. 1 (1977), 61.

76. See F. Halberg, 'Regular Courses in Chronobiology at the University of

L'Aquila, Italy, and the Universite Rene Descartes, Paris', The Physiologist, Vol.

22, No. 5 (1979), 41-43; Halberg and Halberg, op. cit. note 68; F. Carandente and

F. Dammacco, 'Corso di formazione cronobiologica di base e applicata', La

ricerca in clinica e in laboratorio, Vol. IX, Supplemento No. 1 (1979), 1-45;

Carandente and Dammacco, 'Elementi di cronobiologia di base e applicata', ibid.,

Vol. X, Supplemento No. 1 (1980), 1-58.

77. See A. Reinberg, 'Le temps, une dimension biologique et medicale', in

Reinberget al., L'homme malade du temps (Paris: Pernoud/Stock, 1979), 49.

78. For an explanation of the notion of symbolic capital, central to Bourdieu's

work, see P. Bourdieu, 'Le marche des biens symboliques', L'Annee Sociologique,Vol. 22 (1971), 49-126. The implications of the distinction between symbolic and

economic capital are developed in Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice

(Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977), an enlarged

French edition of which appeared in 1980: Bourdieu, Le sens pratique (Paris:

Editions de Minuit, 1980).79. See the report by L.E. Scheving in Chronobiologia, Vol. 3 (1976), 81-86,

quote at 82.

80. Ibid.; see also F. Halberg, 'President's Letter: Chronobiology in 1977',

Chronobiologia, Vol. 4, No. 3 (1977), 255-63.

81. Reinberg, op. cit. note 1, 67-68.

82. F. Halberg, 'Chronobiology in 1975', Chronobiologia, Vol. 3 (1976), 1-11,

quote at 8.

83. F. Halberg, W. Nelson, G. Cornelissen, E. Haus, L.E. Scheving and R.A.

352




Good, 'Chronochemotherapy: L1210 Leukemia and Beyond', Chronobiologia, Vol.

6,No. 3

(1979), 203-11, quoteat 203.

84. Ibid.

85. F. Halberg, 'From Aniatrotoxicosis and Aniatrosepsis Toward

Chronotherapy. Introductory remarks to the 1974 Capri Symposium on: Timingand Toxicity: The necessity for relating treatment to bodily rhythms', in J. Aschoff,

F. Ceresa and Halberg (eds), Chronobiological Aspects of Endocrinology

(Symposia Medica Hoechst 9) (Stuttgart and New York: F.K. Schattauer Verlag,

1974), 1-33.

86. F. Halberg and F. Delbarre, 'Summary: Quo Vadis Chronobiologia', in A.

Reinberg and Halberg (eds), Chronopharmacology (New York: Pergamon Press,

1979),403-26,

quoteat 422. The

pharmaceuticalfirm most interested in

chronobiology is Hoechst, especially its Italian branch. The journal Chronobiologiais financed by the publishing firm I1Ponte, linked to the Fondation Hoechst Italia.

The chronobiology centre at L'Aquila, site of the headquarters of Hoechst Italia,

has, in part, been financed by the Hoechst Fondation, which also contributes the

annual prizes ('Chronobiology Award') distributed by the ISC.

Unsurprisingly, Hoechst is marketing the first 'chronobiological' drug, the

Psicronizer?.

87. F. Gros, F. Jacob and P. Royer, Sciences de la vie et societe (Paris: La

documentation francaise - Le Seuil, 1979), 83.

88. E. Halberg and F. Halberg, op. cit. note 68, 118.

Alberto Cambrosio and Peter Keating are

both doctoral students at the Institut

d'Histoire et de Sociopolitique des

Sciences of the University of Montreal.

The topics of their theses are respectivelythe unionization of Italianscientific

researchers after World War IIand theinstitutionalizationof psychiatry in Qu6bec

at the turn of the century. Authors'

address: Institut d'Histoire et de

Sociopolitique des Sciences, Universit6 de

Montr6al, CP 6128, Succ. 'A', Montr6al,Quebec H3S 1S3, Canada.

353

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