Moving Questions

This book describes a half century of research on cellular membrane transport and on metabolic energy capture and utilization. During this time-which begins in the late 1930s-the effort and imagination of various scientists overthrew reigning formulations, created novel explanatory models, and unified previously distinct experimental fields. My primary goal is to display the course of that research, showing how new experiments defined novel entities and processes, and how an encompassing field, bioenergetics, then emerged. A secondary goal is to present examples of mainstream biological research that illustrate how experimental results-seen as refutations, confirmations, and elabora- tions-can sway opinion toward a solid consensus. This interpretation differs from the currently fashionable view of some commentators that stresses instead the central roles of power, prestige, gender, class, and ethnicity. In any case, the scien- tific practices exhibited here deserve proper philosophical scrutiny. Although con- straints of space have squeezed any analysis from this draft, brief mention of salient issues does appear in relevant chapters and in the final conclusions. (Oddly, histori- ans and philosophers seem reluctant to deal with this science. Those who do consider biological topics tend to focus on the theory of evolution, even though the bulk of biological research in this century, in terms of papers published and technology influenced, has dealt not with evolution per se but with what may be termed physiology and biochemistry. And these endeavors, which are the aims, efforts, and accomplishments of the vast majority of biologists, have been largely ignored.