Schreibman Lecture: David Haig—”Wlliam Roux and the Struggle of Parts”

Wilhelm Roux’s Der Kampf der Theile im Organismus (The Struggle of Parts in the Organism) was published in 1881 but remained untranslated into English until 2024, when a translation by David Haig and Richard Bondi was published. In Haig’s talk, he will place Roux’s book in the context of a turn toward physico-chemical explanations in 19th-century biology especially in Germany. In his work, Roux attempts to explain the internal purposiveness of organisms by selective processes that take place during development. He envisaged a hierarchy of levels of selection from competition among the smallest living units within cells, to competition among cells, among tissues, and among organs. Roux believed that this internal conflict solved some limitations of the Darwinian theory of natural selection.

The Schreibman Lecture in Integrative Biology honors the contributions of Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Biology Martin Schreibman ’56 to teaching, research, and service at Brooklyn College.