William R. Thompson facts for kids
William Robin Thompson (June 29, 1887 – January 30, 1972) was a Canadian scientist who studied insects, also known as an entomologist. He also wrote about the ideas behind science in his book Science and Common Sense: An Aristotelian Excursion. Thompson was an expert in using natural methods to control insects that harm farms and forests. He led a special laboratory that focused on this work, which was part of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control.
His Life and Work
Thompson was born in London, Ontario, Canada. His father was a school teacher and journalist. Growing up, he was friends with people who loved nature, like a bird expert named Edward Saunders and a plant expert named John Dearness. This made him interested in birds, plants, and fungi from a young age. Later, he became very interested in insects.
He studied biology at the University of Toronto and earned his first degree in 1909. After that, he started working for the United States Department of Agriculture. While working there, he continued his studies at Cornell University and got his master's degree in insect science in 1912.
The next year, he left his job to do research at University of Cambridge in England. He then continued his research in Europe and earned a doctorate degree in zoology from the University of Paris in 1921. In 1924, he earned another doctorate, this time in philosophy, from a college in France.
In 1928, Thompson moved to Britain and became an assistant director at the Imperial Institute of Entomology. He held this important role until 1947, when he returned to Canada. In 1949, he became a professor in Canada. He also directed the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control in Ottawa from 1946 to 1958. Because of his important contributions to science, he was named a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1933. This is a very high honor for scientists.
Thompson wrote about 150 articles for different science magazines. From 1947 to 1958, he was the editor of The Canadian Entomologist magazine. He passed away in Ottawa.
His Ideas on Evolution
Thompson was a Catholic and had different ideas about natural selection, which is a key part of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. He was influenced by the old philosophical writings of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.
He wrote a special introduction for a 1956 edition of Darwin's famous book, The Origin of Species. In this introduction, he shared his views that he did not agree with natural selection.
Historian of science Sharon E. Kingsland explained Thompson's thoughts. He believed that all living things had a special "essence" or "form" that could not be changed by random processes. He thought that random changes and natural selection might explain small changes within a species (microevolution). However, he believed they could not explain big changes that create new types of living things (macroevolution). Thompson didn't offer a new theory himself, but he saw evolution as a problem that still needed to be solved.
Thompson also disagreed with the idea of theistic evolution, which tries to combine evolution with religious beliefs. He believed that science alone could not fully explain how much evolution had happened.
Using Math in Biology
Thompson became interested in using mathematics to understand biology after reading a book called On Growth and Form. At first, this idea was not very popular among scientists in North America. In the 1920s, he was inspired by the work of a mathematician named Vito Volterra.
Some people have called Thompson a "pioneer" in using math to create models in ecology, which is the study of how living things interact with their environment. However, he later changed his mind and became a strong critic of using too much math in biology.
In the 1930s, Thompson felt that using math in biology had become a negative thing. This was mainly because of the work on population genetics by scientists like J. B. S. Haldane and Ronald Fisher. He thought their mathematical ideas were too abstract and didn't connect enough to common sense or real-world facts.
Thompson worried that many ideas from mathematical biology were not based on actually observing living things. He believed that scientists should not let mathematical guesses replace careful study and research in nature.
He explained his thoughts on math, philosophy, and science in his 1937 book, Science and Common Sense: An Aristotelian Excursion.
Understanding Species
Thompson also wrote papers about the idea of a "species" and how living things are classified (called systematics). In a paper from 1952, he argued that species might not be a real, separate thing in nature.
He thought that the idea of a "species" was an "abstraction." This means it's a concept we create by looking at features shared by many individual living things. But he believed that a species itself is not a single individual or a group of individuals.
