Ariane Tanner

About Molecules, Parasites and Men: Alfred James Lotka and the Mathematization of Life

Lotka’s monograph "Elements of Physical Biology", published in 1925, presents any inorganic and organic natural processes as transfers of matter/energy within a system. Chemical reactions, food chains, competing species, use of resources, population growth, mobility, work… everything appears as a variation of energy, which could thus be mathematized. Eclectic? A failure? Unlike these verdicts of the rare secondary literature my dissertation takes Lotka’s monograph seriously.

It describes a ‚long energetic century‘ from Wilhelm Ostwald’s Energetics around 1900 to the schematic diagrams created by system ecologists from the 1950s onwards. At the same time the thesis draws a psychogram of the non-academic researcher Lotka and presents his emotions and intentions concerning his monograph. In this regard the mathematical multiple discovery (the so called Lotka-Volterra-equations) is especially illuminating: It increased Lotka’s publicity, but decreased his originality.

The thesis contributes to the history of the concept ‚system‘ throughout the 20th century and to the application of mathematics to ecology. It sketches a history of knowledge about an opus and its author combining aspects of the history of ideas with the sociology of knowledge and the history of emotions. In doing so, it re-interprets the traditional biography genre anew.