Naturalizing as an error-type in Biology

Douglas Allchin *

Abstract: Biologists make mistakes – but they can also find them and remedy
them. I survey a series of cases where idealizations and assumptions about nor-
mality have shaped common erroneous biological concepts: male and female;
developmental abnormalities; competition in evolution; and laws of nature. Such
scientific interpretations of nature can have profound social consequences. Iden-
tifying such recurring errors thematically, however, can guide analysis that im-
proves the reliability of scientific claims. Here, I profile naturalizing as one such
error type and map the prospective solutions.
Keywords: error types; naturalizing; male and female; developmental abnormali-
ties; competition in evolution; laws of nature

Naturalizar como um tipo de erro em Biologia

Resumo: Biólogos cometem erros – mas eles também podem encontrá-los e
consertá-los. Eu relato uma série de casos nos quais idealizações e pressuposi-
ções sobre normalidade conformaram conceitos biológicos comuns errados:
macho e fêmea; anormalidades de desenvolvimento; competição na evolução; e
leis da natureza. Tais interpretações científicas da natureza podem ter conse-
qüências sociais profundas. Identificar tais erros recorrentes tematicamente,
contudo, pode guiar uma análise que melhore a confiabilidade das asserções
científicas. Aqui eu traço um perfil do naturalizar como sendo um desses tipos de
erro e mapeio soluções prospectivas.
Palavras-chave: tipos de erros; naturalizar; macho e fêmea; anomalias de desen-
volvimento; competição na evolução; leis da natureza.

1 INTRODUCTION
What seems more natural than boy and girl, man and woman,
male and female? That, indeed, I think is a problem. And I want
to probe it, along with some other cases, to profile a thematic

* Program in History of Science and Technology, Pillsbury Hall, University of

Minnesota, Minneapolis MN 55455, U.S.A.
Website: www.tc.umn.edu/allch001/papers. E-mail: allch001@umn.edu.

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 95

category of errors found especially in biology. By profiling and
characterizing these errors – or this error-type – I hope to support
more effective regulation of error in science. This contributes to a
larger endeavor – Error Analytics – for improving scientific prac-
tice through more active, philosophically informed analysis of
potential error. Understanding error types can foster greater
awareness, discourse and education about methods for minimiz-
ing, alleviating or compensating for such errors.
My discussion roams broadly, addressing developmental
anomalies, competition in nature and, at a more general level, laws
of nature. I will begin, however, with the case of male and female.

2 MALE AND FEMALE

Conceptualizing sex as male and female seems straightforward
(for all references, see Allchin, 2006a). In the standard version,
females have two X-chromosomes, while males have an X and a
Y. They have different gametes: one sessile, one mobile. Accord-
ingly, it seems, male and female organisms have contrasting go-
nads, contrasting hormones, contrasting physiologies and con-
trasting secondary sex characteristics. Organs begin embryologi-
cally the same, but follow different developmental trajectories.
One often hears about contrasting behaviors in evolutionary lan-
guage: sperm are cheap and males are “promiscuous”; eggs are
major investments and females are protective and cunning. The
apparent alignment of different features through all levels of bio-
logical organization seems to confirm the two categories. An or-
ganism is either male or female. – And that is what textbooks
present as biological “fact.”
Of course, informed biologists know better. For example,
many fish change sex: wrasses, parrot fish and groupers. In the
cleaner wrasse, a community typically has one male and many
females, the male releasing a pheremone that inhibits male devel-
opment. When the male dies, the largest female begins changing
sex in a matter of hours. By contrast, in clown fish, males may
become females. Some gobies change sex multiple times. Sexed
anatomies and physiologies may change. Sex can be fluid. Some
organisms cannot be identified as essentially male or female.

96
 At least such fish are male or female at any one time, one might
contend. Yet the sorting of male and female is not always neat and
simple. Properties are not so consistently aligned as the textbook
dichotomy seems to indicate. Consider the guevedoces of the Do-
minican Republic, investigated in 1974 (Imperato-McGinley,
Guerrero, Gautier & Peterson, 1974). A homozygous genetic
condition leads to an inactive form of 5-alpha reductase. Individu-
als cannot convert testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, and they
develop initially as females. At puberty, however, the role of tes-
tosterone becomes primary. The testes descend and penises, facial
hair and other male characteristics develop. Here, no gonads
change. But sexual morphology does. This is a case of intersex,
not uniformly male or female.
Many types of intersexes exist. Hormonal levels, ineffective
hormone receptors or alternative developmental trajectories lead
to various mosaics of sexual characters. As documented nicely by
Alice Dreger, human bodies may exhibit sexual anatomies in al-
most any combination: external genitalia, gonad position, urinary
plumbing, large breasts, facial hair, hair loss, invaginations and
protuberances, ejaculates and menses, and vocal timbre. These
traits do not correspond uniquely to either chromosomes or gonad
type. In other mammal species, some such “mixed” patterns are
actually typical. In spotted hyenas and bush babies, male and fe-
male both exhibit penises. Male fruit bats in Malaysia have milk-
producing mammary glands (Roughgarden, 2004, pp. 28, 37-38).
Intersexes illustrate that the concept of male and female, con-
strued as an unambiguous dichotomy, is problematic.
Still, male and female may seem concepts fundamental to char-
acterizing sexual reproduction: ultimately, the union of two gam-
etes, sperm and egg, one mobile, the other not. Yet some organ-
isms reproduce sexually without differentiated egg and sperm. The
gametes share the same form. For example: in Chlamydomonas or in
the sea lettuce Ulva. There is indeed sex, but no male, no female.
Accordinly, one may prefer conceiving sex as fundamentally about
recombina-tion and methods for ensuring genetic variation. Here,
male and females may be seen primarily as mating strains. But this
leads to other problems. For example, Charles Darwin noted how
some common garden flowers have different length styles and
stamens. He saw this as a mechanism that promoted outcrossing.

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 97

Recombination is functionally ensured by heterostyly, not male
and female. In one example, he noted three style lengths, akin to a
trio of mating types. Consider also the mating system in two ant
species, genus Pogonomyrmex. Independently of male and female,
the ants have two distinct mating types. A queen that mates with a
male of her own type produces more queens. To produce work-
ers, she must mate with a male of the alternate type. Continuity of
the colony requires both queens and workers, hence both matings.
John Parker has argued that these ants thus have four sexes
(Parker, 2004). Reproduction (assessed at the level of the colony)
depends on three sexes–one female and two male. Polysexes and
mating strains, too, challenge the notion of male-and-female as
biologically needed, even for sexual recombination.
Sex conversions, intersexes, null sexes, mating types, and mul-
tiply morphed sexes: all challenge the concept of male-and-female.
Of course, one may be tempted to dismiss these examples as
merely exceptions. – Or rare, and hence insignificant. One can well
imagine someone dismissing them as “unnatural”. But note the
irony: one might characterize as unnatural something produced by
nature. The very tendency to peripheralize the “exceptional” or
rare is a cognitive bias, based on familiar experience. The concept
of male and female is privileged as primary, even though nature
exhibits diverse patterns. The assessment is further shaped, no
doubt, by cultural conventions that organize society – marriage,
division of labor, toys, military service, clothing, athletics, hygiene,
etc. – according to strict categories of male or female. But biologi-
cally, nature does not universally sort organisms into just male or
female, man or woman, boy or girl.
But this is not the extent of the error. Nor the substantive er-
ror. Biologists address the less common cases when the occasion
arises. Rather, the further – and far more significant – error is that
in broader cultural contexts the concept of male-and-female is
presumed, ironically, to be plainly biological. The male/female
dichotomy is regarded as clear and delineated by nature Adam &
Eve. As noted earlier, male and female categories seem – well,
“natural”. Intersexes, etc., are thus popularly viewed as improprie-
ties, possibly “violations” of the natural order. They do not seem
to raise awareness of nor disturb the assumptions behind the con-
cepts. Male and female, not just gender roles, are deeply en-

98
trenched in culture through “textbook” biology. Male and female
have been naturalized. That is, the concept shaped by bias has been
inscribed in nature. Moreover, any hint of bias is eclipsed. The
case of male and female illustrates nicely the problem of naturaliz-
ing, the error, or error-type, I am profiling here.

3 COMPETITION
Let me turn now to another case of naturalizing, where the bi-
ology has been culturally, if not scientifically, obscured: a view of
nature as fundamentally competitive and selfish (for references,
see Allchin, 2007a, 2007b). The view seems rooted in Darwinian
concepts of evolution and natural selection, as expressed, for ex-
ample, in the popular phrase “survival of the fittest”. Charles
Darwin noted the great potential of organisms to reproduce and
of a population to increase in size. Where resources were limited,
however, there would inevitably be a “struggle for existence”, or
competition. Only some variants – the most fit – would prevail,
changing the heritable traits of the population over time. Natural
selection and adaptation may thus seem to rely on competition as
a selective force.
In this case, we can effectively trace a close relationship be-
tween biological and cultural thinking (Young, 1975; Ghiselin,
1969, pp. 48-49, 59-61; Browne, 1995, pp. 542-543). Victorian
England exhibited widespread poverty and great disparities in
wealth. Envision Charles Dickens’ London: poverty, slums, child
labor and grim working conditions, all while others enjoyed a
comfortable lifestyle. The social inequities were considered justi-
fied (by the franchised, at least) as a “natural” outcome of compe-
tition. Thomas Malthus had expressed that view earlier in his 1801
“Essay on Population”. He portrayed food as inevitably limited
and social competition as unavoidable. When Darwin read that
essay in 1838, it helped him crystallize his unfinished thoughts on
natural selection. The same essay also prompted Alfred Wallace to
discover the same principle. Both Darwin and Wallace trans-
formed Malthus’s notion of a social “struggle for existence” into
an organic context. Darwin, in particular, seemed deeply im-
pressed by the “logic” of competition:

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 99

 One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand
wedges trying [to] force every kind of adapted structure
into the gaps in the economy of nature, or rather forming
gaps by thrusting out weaker ones. (D Notebook, pp. 134e-
135e; echoed in Darwin, 1858, p. 48; Darwin, 1859, pp. 67,
110)
In closing the Origin of species, he rhapsodized:
From the war of nature, from famine and death, endless
forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and
are being, evolved. (Darwin, 1859, p. 490)
Darwin and Wallace drew on and recontextualized the com-
petitive views of their culture.
The conspicuous cultural origins of the role of competition
can guide us in analyzing it critically. Is competition essential to
natural selection, as typically portrayed? No. While competition
may surely lead to selection, not all selection need be based on
competition. Radiation of forms in new adaptive zones, for exam-
ple – so nicely exemplified by the Galápagos finches – results
more from expansion into new niches than from competitive
elimination. Likewise, the first organisms to venture onto land
flourished more by escaping competition than by “winning”
against it. Finding open niches, responding to opportunity and
diversifying is a familiar evolutionary theme. Selection can result
from differential proliferation, not just competition.
Other times, species seem to have adapted merely by surviving
in extreme environments. Some variants were able to tolerate
“stressful” habitats – low in water, nutrients, light or other vital
resources, or at extreme temperatures, pH, etc. In yet other cases,
in frequently disrupted environments, organisms adapt by “being
ahead of the competition”. They reproduce and disperse again
rapidly, rather than compete directly. Life strategies vary widely.
At times, natural selection is surely propelled by competition for
limited resources. Yet selection also occurs widely without it. Such
alternatives, and their meaning for evolutionary processes, may be
eclipsed by assumptions about competition.
The perception of selection as crudely selfish, and hence an-
tagonistic among organisms, is also misleading. Many organisms

100
thrive through cooperation. Mutualisms abound. Pollination and
seed dispersal symbioses are widely known, but perhaps too often
remain in the shadows. Consider sea slugs: soft, slow and vulner-
able, the epitomy of non-competitiveness. Some host algae or
chloroplasts in their digestive glands, surviving for months with-
out food. In these cases, selection has amplified cooperative
strategies. Mutualisms may be intraspecific, as well, exemplified in
reciprocal altruism and other forms of sociality. Morality can
evolve (Ridley, 1996, de Waal, 1996, Boehm, 1999). When one is
open to analyzing the concept of competition in nature critically,
its limited scope is readily apparent.
Once again, the problem is not exclusively among biologists,
but even more in how biological “knowledge” (or what passes as
biological knowledge) circulates among non-biologists. Early sup-
porters of Darwin sometimes inappropriately resituated Darwin’s
concept into a cultural context. Herbert Spencer and the Ameri-
can capitalists who historian Richard Hofstadter misleadingly
called “Social Darwinists,” saw in natural selection a “natural”
justification for social competition. Contemporary culture seems
no different. “Survival of the fittest” rhetoric – or some surrogate
about inherent competition – seems to permeate culture – from
the World Cup to economic rhetoric, to American Idol and other
“reality” television shows. The impression that Darwinism entails
social competition is widespread, among both Darwinians and
their critics, whether or not they endorse it as ideologically accept-
able.
The problem was evident in Darwin’s own time – at least given
certain perspectives. Socialist Frederich Engels commented on it,
virtually defining the naturalizing error, in an 1875 letter:
The whole Darwinist teaching of the struggle for existence
is simply a transference from society to living nature of
Hobbes’s doctrine of bellum omnium contra omnes and of the
bourgeois-economic doctrine of competition together with
Malthus’s theory of population. When this conjurer’s trick
had been performed… the same theories are transferred
back again from organic nature into history and it is now
claimed that their validity as eternal laws of human society
has been proved. The puerility of this procedure is so obvi-

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 101

 ous that not a word need be said about it (Engels, quoted in
Lewontin, Rose & Kamin, 1984, p. 309).
It was not obvious, of course, to those embedded in a culture
of competitive ideologies – and who already regarded competition
as “normal”. The naturalizing error takes hold in cognitive blind-
spots.

4 MONSTERS
Let us turn now to yet another case of naturalizing, where cul-
tural concepts are rooted in biological error: developmental
anomalies (for references, see Allchin, 2008a). Consider Petrus
Gonsalus. Born in 1556 in a remote tribe on Tenerife, he was
raised in the court of Henry II in France. As plainly visible here,
he was exceptionally hairy. Today, we call his condition hyper-
trichosis universalis congenita, Ambras type. To his contemporar-
ies he was simply a “monster,” an unsual body form, like giants,
dwarves or conjoined twins. As his courtly robe indicates, he was
also special. Gonsalus and other monsters at that time evoked a
widely appreciated sense of wonder. Such puzzling cases also
fueled a spirit of investigation and the emergence of modern sci-
ence, as documented by Lorraine Daston and Katherine Park
(Daston & Park, 2001).
For two centuries, monsters remained important cases for un-
derstanding nature’s patterns and for assessing theories of organ-
ismal development. Fontenelle, at the Paris Royal Academy of
Sciences, expressed the view well in 1703:
One commonly regards monsters as jests of nature, but
philosophers are quite persuaded that nature does not play,
that she always inviolably follows the same rules, and that
all her works are, so to speak, equally serious. There may be
extraordinary ones among them, but not irregular ones; and
it is even often the most extraordinary, which give the most
opening to discover the general rules which comprehend all
of them. (Daston & Park, 2001, pp. 204-205)
In the early 1800s, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire continued
the search for those general rules, as exhibited through a proposed
“unity of composition”. “There is monstrosity”, he noted, “but

102
not, by virtue of that, suspension of ordinary laws”. Yet in classi-
fying the various developmental variants, Geoffroy also tended to
privilege an ideal type. “The normal state of humans may be con-
sidered like the abstract being, or generic being”, he wrote, “and
their different pathological deviations, like the species of this ideal
type” (Saint Hilaire, 1822, p. 106, 105, 15). Geoffroy supported
Etienne Serres’ theory that monsters resulted from various forms
of arrested development. “Normal” development had gone awry.
Especially as formalized by Geoffroy’s son, Isidore Geoffroy Saint
Hilaire, the study of monsters, or developmental anomalies, be-
came a science: teratology. At the same time, however, monsters
became pathological. The ironic cost of explaining their unusual
form was to separate the abnormal from the abnormal.
The development of statistics during the same period further
reinforced the concepts of normal and abnormal. Astronomers
and geographers had realized that their remeasurements of the
same stars or landmarks varied. The variation exhibited what we
now commonly recognize as a statistical distribution. But the stars
and land had obviously not moved. Some measurements must be
“wrong”. The desired figure, or ideal, was surely the mean. They
thus labeled the variation – today’s “bell curve” – as “the Law of
Error”. Statists found the Law of Error in all kinds of social phe-
nomena, as well. Those regularities became social laws. In the
1830s mathematician Adolphe Quetelet suggested that rather than
discuss variable groups, one could just refer instead to the mean,
or “average man” (l’homme moyen). Statistics thereby further privi-
leged the average, or common, as expressing a law. Statistics
seemed to justify a distinction between the “normal” and devia-
tions from it.
With teratology and statistics, monsters changed in the 1800s
from wonders, like Gonsalus, to pathological errors, or abnormali-
ties. Consider the case of Joseph Merrick, also known as “the
Elephant Man”. Merrick exhibited the Proteus syndrome, a ge-
netic condition of excessive bone growth. As visible here, bulbous
and pendulous folded tissue on one side was coupled with utterly
familiar body forms on the other side. Merrick’s movements were
uneven. He was a monster, too. But now he evoked disgust rather
than wonder. Eventually, Merrick reached the care of physician
Frederick Treves and was welcomed in London’s elite society. But

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 103

such protection was deliberate. Treves described how, earlier, “he
had been ill-treated and reviled and bespattered with the mud of
Disdain” (Howell & Ford, 1980, p. 189). Even under Treves’ care,
he went hooded and cloaked when traveling in public to avoid
incident. Merrick himself never stopped dreaming of being ordi-
nary. Merrick’s unusual form did not evoke fascination, but alien-
ation. He “violated” the norms of nature.
The transformation in response to monsters reflects a substan-
tive error. Ordinary and extra-ordinary became “normal” and
“abnormal”. Anomalies became “abnormalities”. Analyzing this
shift is challenging because it seems steeped with cultural judg-
ment and values, not facts alone. The term “monstrous” now
implies impropriety, not merely unusualness. But to the extent
that the normal/abnormal distinction is made and used scientifi-
cally, or viewed as objective and validated by science, the error is
scientific. Yet the significant effect is surely cultural, reflected in
how postures changed from Gonsalus to Merrick. It is the secon-
dary cultural judgment, based on a presumed biological distinction
that marks another case of naturalizing.

5 LAWS OF NATURE
The shifting attitudes towards monsters were subtle, but in the
context of understanding naturalizing errors, also telling. The
difference between anomaly and abnormality is basically the dif-
ference between pattern and expectation. Similarly, the error with
male-and-female is primarily expecting intersexes, hermaphrodites
and polysexes to fit the male/female categories because those
categories are, or seem, pre-established. In our competitive cul-
ture, who is positioned to recognize competition as anything but
an expected foundational principle? The errors, then, are ulti-
mately not just about sex or development or natural selection.
They are all about expecting nature to adhere to strict rules. That,
in turn, is based on assuming a fundamental and enduring univer-
sal order. This expectation itself represents, I contend, yet another
naturalizing error: the very concept of laws of nature.
Let me describe just two examples, where laws have been in-
appropriately idealized. Perhaps the most well known laws in bi-
ology are Mendel’s Laws. The first is the Law of Segregation: allele

104
pairs separate equally in gametes. Segregation seems grounded in
the biology of meiosis. However, in the case of meiotic drive,
division is systematically biased, and one chromosome becomes
more highly represented in gametes. In other cases, segregator
distorter alleles alter the ratio of gametes once formed. Contingent
non-disjunction is also well documented. Segregation is not uni-
versal and hence not “law-like” in that sense. The second of Men-
del’s Laws is Independent Assortment: alleles recombine inde-
pendently. However, genes may be linked on the same chromo-
some – an exception noted even in introductory textbooks. Men-
del’s laws have sometimes also included dominance. However,
haplosufficiency is exhibited in less than half of human genes.
Dominance, too, draws on an inappropriate assumption of either-
or competition. Conceptually, dominance is problematic, at best
(Allchin, 2005). Exceptions to Mendel’s “Laws” are well know to
geneticists and other biologists, of course. Yet they continue to be
labeled as laws, when they plainly are not. Construing them as
inherent natural tendencies, always to be expected, is mistaken.
But in textbooks, etc., the lawlike status is preserved and with it,
the view of nature as fundamentally lawlike.
Perhaps the second most celebrated biological principle once
considered universal and inviolable is the Central Dogma. In 1958
Francis Crick proposed it as a theoretical guidepost: “Once in-
formation had passed into protein it cannot get out again.” Crick’s
“central dogma” became expressed in James Watson’s 1965 book,
Molecular biology of the gene, as:
DNA → RNA → protein
The formula gained widespread currency as expressing a family
of truths beyond doubt. First, cellular functions of information
and catalysis (inheritance and metabolism) were differentiated into
distinct molecular types. Second, only DNA could self-replicate.
Third, information flowed irreversibly from DNA through RNA
to protein. All three principles later yielded to exceptions, each
recognized by a Nobel prize, a measure perhaps of the depth of
the errors. Awards honored the discovery of reverse transcriptase
(1975) – where RNA produces DNA; ribozymes (1989) – where
RNA can fold on itself and catalyze certain reactions; and prions

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 105

(1997) – where proteins can “reproduce”, or at least provide the
“information” to transform similar proteins into new, disease
causing agents. The 2006 prize announcement implied that RNA
interference, too, violated the central dogma – by interrupting the
“normal” transfer of information from RNA to protein. All these
discoveries indicate that belief in the “dogma” of the Central
Dogma was misplaced (Allchin, 2008b). There was too much
faith, perhaps, that life at a molecular level would be lawlike and
that familiar patterns could thus be construed as universal.
Recently, historians have profiled the cultural and religious
context that guided the origin of the modern/Western concept of
laws of nature (Steinle, 2002). Here, I want only to draw attention
to how powerful a hold the concept of laws of nature has on our
minds. The very language is highly charged. In human society,
laws specify what we ought to do. They ensure social order. We
tend to interpret laws of nature in the same way, as guaranteeing
the natural order. Laws of nature profile how nature should act.
Once established, descriptive laws take on a prescriptive character.
Pattern becomes expectation. This is how local regularities, or the
familiar, or the “normal,” become naturalized.

6 NATURALIZING AS AN ERROR-TYPE
The ultimate consequences of naturalizing may be discernible
now, after several examples, even without much explicit com-
ment. The errors can bias research, of course. But more impor-
tant, the cognitive prejudices and idealizations subsequently ap-
pear culturally as inherent or privileged phenomena of the natural
world. Further, those interpretations are construed as facts, rati-
fied by science. But there is no justification. Only a cascade of
biased expectations.
The potential cultural consequences are profound. The scien-
tific errors allow mere prejudices to guide ethical and political
judgments. So, for example, intersex conditions are not typically
valued today as extraordinary, as they once were. Rather, people
view them as not fitting nature’s categories. They thus work to-
wards “correcting” them with surgery or hormonal therapy. Yet
the “problem” is not inherently in the condition. Surgery is not a
solution. Rather, the problem is the assessment of abnormality

106
itself – and the assumption that it is established scientifically.
Likewise, the role of competition in society escapes scrutiny be-
cause it is construed as an inevitable law of nature – or “law of the
jungle”, perhaps. Yet social competition has political overtones. It
disempowers those with fewer resources or those who do not
enter society with an already privileged status. Social inequities can
thus be perpetuated in part due to an erroneous biological per-
spective. –Similarly for other cases of naturalizing. Any medical
disorder – whether developmental, physiological or psychological –
idealizes the biology and makes an assumption about “normal”
humans: the unstated “order” behind every “dis-order”. The rare,
the exceptional, or the unfamiliar accordingly reflect unsanctioned
disorganization or chaos. Dis-order implicitly implies abandoning
order. In general, naturalizing tends to support a view that the way
we find things is the way things must be – whether one approves
or not. Naturalizing preserves the status quo and homogeneity –
the familiar, or frequent, on which the error is based. While scien-
tists can manage errors in the long term, the cultural costs of ill-
justified judgments and actions in the short-term are quite real –
as are any lingering misconceptions.
While the naturalizing error is a problem, we need not bemoan
the inadequacy of science, nor to discredit its ability to secure
evidence and interpret it reliably. Rather, if there is a problem, we
need to fix it. We need to analyze the error as a first step in being
able to remedy it. First, we can characterize thematic similarities in
the cases above and then seek appropriate epistemic strategies to
address them. This approach is part of a broader effort to analyze
error in science and, in particular, to identify characteristic error
types. Let me elaborate on this general program.
Researchers frequently talk about “sources of error” in their
apparatus or experimental design. The aim is to root out or reduce
untrustworthy elements, whether they be theoretical assumptions,
malfunctioning instruments, methodological uncertainties, or
confounding environmental variables, etc. The program of Error
Analytics shares this goal, but vastly expands the scope of the
possible sources of error. Errors may also be theoretical or social,
for example.
Error Analytics is not unlike lack-of-function studies in biol-
ogy. It is a classic research strategy (Bechtel & Richardson, 1992).

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 107

So, for example, vitamins were discovered through vitamin defi-
ciency diseases, such as scurvy and beriberi; the role of insulin
became understood through diabetes. Similarly, errors in science,
as deficits and “failures”, reveal indirectly the process of ascertain-
ing fact. Each error, once characterized, indicates a method critical
to effective science. Analyzing error thereby can contribute to a
deeper, more informed philosophy of science.
One can certainly catalog individual errors. But a more power-
ful analysis finds informative patterns across a number of cases.
Deborah Mayo has called these canonical errors (Mayo, 1996, 18, 51
n. 17, 150, 453-54). She includes as examples: mistaking chance
effects or spurious correlations for genuine regularities, missing a
causal factor or using a faulty experimental assumption. In an
earlier work I extended this list, arranging errors on a spectrum
from those relatively local to direct observations to those relatively
derived conceptually and more global in their synthesis of data
(Figure 1)(Allchin 2001). This framework of error types provides a
scheme for situating and thinking about the suite of naturalizing
errors discussed above – which can now be characterized as a
significant error-type.
So: where do naturalizing errors arise? The deep cultural prob-
lems may foster an impression that these errors originate culturally
also. Indeed, philosophers generally tend to attribute naturalizing
errors to faulty applications of science, not to science itself. They
might cite, for example, G.E. Moore’s sharp criticisms of how
Herbert Spencer based his ideology on his view of evolution as
progressive and competitive. Spencer’s claims prompted Moore to
articulate the Naturalistic Fallacy, the unwarranted derivation of
values from nature. This is now a familiar error – in ethics. But
the Naturalizing Error, I contend, is different. It is an error in
science, not ethics or culture. It is not about extracting values
from nature, but rather about inscribing biases into nature where
they masquerade as inviolable facts. Many nowadays – echoing
Thomas Huxley in Darwin’s time – disavow Spencer’s ideology,
while still believing that competition in nature and human society
is inevitable (Brem, Ranney & Schindel, 2003). They escape the
Naturalistic Fallacy, but succumb to the naturalizing error. That
was Spencer’s real error, I claim. When someone believes that
competition is essential to adaptation or organic “progress”, as

108
Spencer did, they are interpreting nature itself, not culture. The
error is fundamentally scientific.
So, too, for other cases of naturalizing. The error is not in add-
ing a layer of value or disvalue or further interpretation to descrip-
tions of sex or development or recurring patterns. Rather, the
error is implicit in how the very categories are framed. They be-
come natural, outside human interpretation and thus beyond the
realm of interpretation or justification (see Latour, 1987).
How, then, do naturalizing errors arise? Quite easily. Naturaliz-
ing reflects a common cognitive bias: the availability error – that
is, giving more significance (or salience) to familiar, or readily
available, experiences (Sunderland, 1992, pp. 15-35). That would
include foremost one’s personal experiences and one’s cultural
exposure. Living in a culture shaped by explicit competition, or
with sharp sexual division of labor, tends to shape ideas conso-
nant with those lived realities.
However, in the cases described here, frequency also matters.
Even when scientists are aware of exceptions, the most common
or most frequent – the “normal” – may be deemed especially
relevant or significant. Frequency may notably contribute to sali-
ence. Further, statistical and probabilistic perspectives seem to
reinforce (if not precipitate) this style of thinking. What is normal
(most common) becomes interpreted as “normal” (sufficiently
characteristic of all cases, representative of the whole). Rare cases,
however well known, are thus discounted or dismissed. One need
not contend conceptually with polysexes, conjoined twins or
“dominant negative” alleles. The path to homogeneity begins.
The conceptual slurring is further promoted, I contend, by the
concept of laws of nature. Laws of nature, as noted earlier, mark
the difference between pattern and expectation, or between ob-
served regularity and fundamental, inviolable order. What is
“normal” (experientially or statistically) becomes “natural,” or
ordained by inherent tendencies of the world. Laws involve ideali-
zation. Idealizations may be fruitful to investigation, of course, so
long as the idealization does not eclipse the concrete realities –
just the case in naturalizing. Shifting from Mendelian models to
“laws,” or framing common development as an ideal paradigm (to
the exclusion of monsters), or male and female as the universal
standard (eclipsing intersexes, etc.) transfers any latent bias from

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 109

the realm of contingent cognitive (human) interpretation to the
fabric of nature, where analysis of justification is no longer a con-
cern.
The availability error, statistical perspectives and lawlike con-
ceptualization all reinforce one another in generating naturalizing
errors. They foster similar conceptual elisions, whether from con-
venient example to generalization, sample to universal conclusion,
or pattern to idealized law. Familiar (but contingent) phenomena
thereby become misleading emblems of essentialized Nature.
Moreover, statistical and lawlike thinking, ironically, seem to natu-
ralize the cognitive bias itself, and thus tend to conceal its role.
Biased naturalized concepts emerge with the imprimatur of sci-
ence.
There is more to naturalizing errors, however. While they
originate with scientists, their importance lies primarily beyond
scientific discourse. Concepts radiate from the well informed, who
may be aware of any exceptions and limitations, to the larger cul-
ture, where scientific “laws” and concepts are rendered absolute.
Here, one needs to attend to the demography of knowledge. The
question is not just what is known, but also who knows it – or
what is known by different persons in different positions (Gold-
man, 1999). The error-type distinctively crosses epistemic zones.
One must thus additionally consider how what counts as biological
knowledge is established in cultural contexts (Toumey, etc.). In this
case, the naturalizing error involves inscribing bias into nature and
legitimzing those scientific views (culturally) as inviolable facts of
nature.
Here, again, the role of laws of nature as a concept seems es-
pecially significant. Scientifically, naturalized laws may merely
blinker investigative opportunities. Culturally, the belief in laws of
nature gives scientific concepts their caché and places them be-
yond the need for analysis. That is deeper than just inherent trust
in science as a reliable enterprise. “You can’t change the laws of
nature” means that those scientific concepts, once established,
reflect invariable, exceptionless features of the world. That is
much stronger than interpretations of models or syndromes. Sci-
entists, of course, often nurture this view. Many believe that sci-
ence should be simplified or truncated for non-scientists to under-
stand it. Laws are presented without their qualifications (their

110
boundary conditions, their ceteris paribus clauses, etc.); concepts,
without their exceptions or complexities. The cost of such simpli-
fication, however, may be the habituated belief that nature itself is
indeed simple. Thus, no one thinks to question such simple con-
cepts as male-and-female, normal development or a single cause
for natural selection.
In summary, naturalizing as an error-type is a conceptual error,
a form of unchecked cognitive bias amplifying the familiar
(whether culturally standard or observationally frequent). But the
error is compounded, as many errors are, by being passed “down-
stream” – again, unchecked – through longer communication
networks into cultural settings (Latour, 1987), nurtured by belief
in natural order and simple laws of nature.

7 EPISTEMIC STRATEGIES
How, then, are naturalizing errors found and fixed? As a cogni-
tive bias, naturalizing is best regulated by alternative or “critical”
perspectives. Ideally, those might arise with imagination and active
self-criticism. A full taxonomy of error-types might well serve as a
template or guide. But cognitive bias is a problem largely because
it tends to escape such checks. We may be reminded that, histori-
cally, sexism and racism receded in scientific discourse only when
women and different ethinic groups became more fully repre-
sented in the scientific community (Fee, 1979; Barkan, 1992).
Epistemically, diversity of participants fosters diversity of perspec-
tive (in particular ways), which optimally leads to fruitful critical
discourse about the evidence or its completeness – social epis-
temic methods nicely articulated by Helen Longino (1990) and
Miriam Solomon (2001), among others. Ultimately, the naturaliz-
ing error is prospectively regulated by diversity in a scientific
community, diverse especially with regards to the concepts being
developed, and where “dissenting” standpoints are also acknowl-
edged and engaged responsibly. For example, discourse on male
and female should include at least some intersex individuals – and
such interchange has occurred recently with clinical health profes-
sionals. Evolutionary biologists should at least heed the contribu-
tions of socialists or anarchists, such as Petr Kropotkin, frequently
dismissed as renegades or crackpots. Medical concepts may profit

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 111

from critique by patients with “disorders”; academic biology may
profit, ironically, from the perspective of non-intellectuals; etc.
The naturalizing error illustrates well to philosophers and sociolo-
gists the importance of thinking through social epistemology more
fully.
To be complete, however, a remedy for naturalizing errors also
needs to address the central and pervasive role of the concept of
laws of nature. Is this a concept to be remedied at all?, some may
surely ask. If it is an error, it is certainly rooted very deeply. Still –
setting aside debates about the frequency or special place of laws
in biology (Beatty, Rosenberg, Dupre, etc.) – we can consider the
concept of laws across all the scientific disciplines as its own, pos-
sibly gendered, cultural bias (Allchin 2006b, 2007c). Indeed, histo-
rians and philosophers of science have already begun to sketch the
alternative. Focusing on experiment and scientific practice, they
emphasize the role of models and experimental paradigms instead
of universal theories, and analogical reasoning rather than hierar-
chical deductive logic (Kuhn, 1970; Giere, 1999; Wimsatt, 2006).
Eventually, we may come to abandon such icons as Boyle’s law,
and discuss instead the behavior of air in Boyle’s J-tube, with its
contingent relevance to other similar apparatus. Mendel’s Laws
may gracefully yield to an equally informative, but more carefully
circumscribed Mendelian model. The Central Dogma can be be-
come an instructive historical artifact, exposing the possible scope
of error from widely adopted assumptions. Overhauling the con-
cept of laws of nature may require a dramatically revised world-
view, as re-envisioned, for example, by Nancy Cartwright (Cart-
wright, 1999). In this context, historians and philosophers of sci-
ence (especially of biology) have an important role in profiling the
methodological norms that foster naturalizing errors.
Having sketched strategies for regulating naturalizing errors as
an error-type, we may return to the more concrete question of
realizing such prospective solutions in practice. Situating naturaliz-
ing errors in the spectrum of error types helps underscore the role
of professional biologists as producers and stewards of public
knowledge. Errors in science flow “downstream” into cultural
contexts, where the errors persist and their consequences unfold,
sometimes quite dramatically. Within biology proper, naturalizing
errors may seem relatively insignificant. Exceptions and qualifica-

112
tions may be well known in the fields where they are relevant. –
And any remaining error seems easily subject to further research
in due time. Yet the problem of naturalizing is hybrid: it is the
downstream cultural effects that matter most. There, the harm
from misinformation cannot afford the luxury of academic for-
bearance. Naturalizing is a scientific error, and scientists are re-
sponsible for addressing it, especially in communicating science to
the public. Of course, biologists can become better informed
about the potential for naturalizing errors by historians, philoso-
phers and sociologists of biology.
Finally, perhaps the most important locus for addressing natu-
ralizing errors is in the science classroom. There, students learn
the view of nature apparently sanctioned by science, with all its
aura of authority. Textbooks are not just tools for understanding
concepts. They become an official “voice” of the nature of sci-
ence. Textbooks writers, often scientists themselves, need to be
especially aware of the cultural dimensions of what they present.
In biology, exceptions ironically need to be the “norm”. Students
need to learn about intersexes, polysexes, developmental variation,
genetic diversity, non-competitive evolution and, throughout, the
nature of scientific models and methods, their virtues and limits.
Fortunately for teachers, perhaps, all the complexities and excep-
tions in biology fascinate and engage students. Ideally, they also
learn about cases of historical error in science, as a cautionary
lesson about how science actually works in practice. Here again,
historians and philosophers of biology have a special role. They
can educate educators. Ideally, history and philosophy of science
and science education are close allies. It is certainly a tribute to
Brazil that its science education standards so prominently include
history and nature of science, and that collaborations between
HPS and education thrives. Brazil may well be leading the way in
the science education of the future.
My ultimate hope, then, is that through education and aware-
ness, boy and girl, man and woman, male and female, and other
culturally biased concepts of nature will seem a little less “natural”.
Through HPS collaborations with biologists and biology educa-
tors alike, we will be more effectively equipped to address, and
thereby minimize, naturalizing as an error-type in biology.

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 113

BIBLIOGRAPHIC REFERENCES
ALLCHIN, Douglas. Error types. Perspectives on Science 9: 38-59,
2001.
–––––. The dilemma of dominance. Biology and Philosophy 20: 427-
451, 2005.
–––––. Male, female and/or –? American Biology Teacher 68: 372-
375, 2006 (a).
–––––. The gender of Boyle’s law. 2006 (b). Available at:
<http://www.tc.umn.edu/~allch001/papers/ boyle.pdf>.
–––––. Social unDarwinism. American Biology Teacher 69: 113-115,
2007 (a).

114
–––––. A more fitting analogy. American Biology Teacher 69: 174-
176, 2007 (b).
–––––. Teaching science lawlessly. Pp. 13-31, in: Proceedings, 6th
International Conference for the History of Science in Science Education:
Constructing Scientific Understanding through Contextual Teaching
(Oldenburg, Germany), 2007 (c). Available at:
<http://www.tc.umn.edu/ ~allch001/papers/lawless.htm>.
–––––. Monsters and the tyranny of normality. American Biology
Teacher 70: 117-119, 2008 (a).
–––––. [Forthcoming]. Nobel ideals and noble errors. American
Biology Teacher 70 (Nov.): 2008 (b). Available at:
<http://www.tc.umn.edu/~allch001/papers/nobelists.pdf>.
BARKAN, Elazar. The retreat of scientific racism. Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 1992.
BECHTEL, William; RICHARDSON, Robert C. Discovering com-
plexity. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992.
BOEHM, Christopher. Hierarchy in the forest: The evolution of egalitar-
ian behavior. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999.
BREM, Sarah K.; RANNEY, Michael; SCHINDEL, Jennifer.
Perceived consequences of evolution: College students per-
ceive negative personal and social impact in evolutionary the-
ory. Science Education 87: 181-206, 2003.
BROWNE, Janet. Charles Darwin: voyaging. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1995.
CARTWRIGHT, Nancy. The dappled world. Cambridge, UK: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1999.
DARWIN, Charles Robert. On the tendency of species to form
varieties; and on the perpetuation of varieties and species by
natural means of selection. Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean
Society of London. Zoology 3: 46-53, 1858.
DARWIN, Charles. On the origin of species. London: John Murray,
1859.
DASTON, Lorraine; PARK, Katherine. Wonders and the order of
nature. New York: Zone Books, 2001.
de WAAL, Frans. Good natured: the origin of right and wrong among
humans and other primates. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1996.
FEE, Elizabeth. Nineteenth-century craniology: the study of the
female skull. Bulletin of the History of Medicine 53: 415-433, 1979.

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 115

GHISELIN, Michael T. The triumph of the Darwinian method. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1969.
GIERE, Ronald N. Science without laws. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1999.
GOLDMAN, Alvin I. Knowledge in a social world. Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1999.
HOWELL, Michael; FORD, Peter. The true history of the elephant
man. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1980.
IMPERATO-McGINLEY, Julianne; GUERRERO, Luis;
GAUTIER, Teofilo; PETERSON, Ralph E. Steroid 5alpha-
reductase deficiency in man: an inherited form of male pseu-
dohermaphroditism. Science 186: 1213-1215, 1974.
KUHN, Thomas S. The structure of scientific revolutions. 2d. ed. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.
LATOUR, Bruno. Science in action. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1987.
LEWONTIN, Richard C; ROSE, Steven P. R.; KAMIN, Leon J.
Not in our genes. New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
LONGINO, Helen. Science as social knowledge. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1990.
MAYO, Deborah. Error and the growth of experimental knowledge. Chi-
cago: University of Chicago Press, 1996.
PARKER, John D. A major evolutionary transition to more than
two sexes? Trends in Ecology and Evolution 19: 83-86, 2004.
RIDLEY, Matt. The origins of virtue. New York: Penguin Books,
1996.
ROUGHGARDEN, Joan. Evolution’s rainbow: diversity, gender, and
sexuality in nature and people. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 2004.
SAINT-HILAIRE, Étienne Geoffroy. Philosophie anatomique. II.
Monstuosités humaines [1822]. Brussels: Culture et Civilisation,
1968.
SOLOMON, Mirian. Social empiricism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2001.
STEINLE, Friedrich. Negotiating experiment, reason and theol-
ogy: The concept of laws of nature in the early Royal Society.
Pp. 197-212, in: Detel, Wolfgang; Zittel, Klaus (eds.). Ideals and
cultures of knowledge in early modern Europe. Berlin: Akademie Ver-
lag, 2002.

116
STEPAN, Nancy Leys. The idea of race in science. London: Macmil-
lan, 1982.
SUNDERLAND, S. Irrationality. New Brunswick: Rutgers Univer-
sity Press, 1992.
WIMSATT, William C. Re-engineering philosophy for limited beings.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006.
YOUNG, Robert M. Darwin’s metaphor: nature’s place in Victorian
culture. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1975.

Filosofia e História da Biologia, v. 3, p. 95-117, 2008. 117