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From 1930 to 1937 Lancelot Hogben FRS occupied the Chair of Social Biology at the London School of Economics and Political Science. According to standard histories of this appointment, he and R. A. Fisher FRS both applied for the position, but Hogben was selected over Fisher. The episode has received attention in large part because of the later prominence of the two figures involved. The surviving archival records, however, tell a remarkably different story. Neither Fisher nor Hogben was ever an official candidate for the chair. Indeed, Fisher seems not to have applied for the position at all, and Hogben was approached only behind the scenes of the official search. The purpose of this paper is to correct and complete the history of this episode.

Abstract Many, if not all, questions in biology and psychology today were formulated and considered in depth, though typically in a different language, from the 1700's to the early 1900's. However, because of politics or fashion, some topics fell out of favor or failed to recruit new scientists and hence languished. Despite greatly expanded scholarship in the history of the life sciences in the twentieth century, many such topics have had to be rediscovered in recent years, while much of the wisdom already accrued stays in the older literature and not in active minds. This is particularly true today when scientific advances appear at breakneck speed. It would not be an exaggeration to say that many 'breakthroughs' turn out really to be rediscoveries of forgotten observations. Two areas of particular significance to the interdisciplinary study of behavior are the Norms of Reaction (from Biology) and the concept of Plasticity (from Psychology). These and related fields benefit from the perspective of epigenetics so long as rigorous operational definitions are implemented. It is also important to revive Hogben's admonition that the interaction of hereditary and environment cannot be understood outside of the context of development. Five examples of increasing complexity in phenotypic plasticity in brain and behavior are presented to illustrate this perspective.

Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Series Introduction -- Volume Introduction -- Ideology -- The Turning-Point in Philosophy -- The Elimination of Metaphysics through Logical Analysis of Language -- Positivism and Realism -- On the Character of Philosophic Problems -- Physicalism -- Physicalism -- On Protocol Sentences -- Radical Physicalism and the "Real World -- Logic and the Philosophy of Mathematics -- The Logicist Foundations of Mathematics -- Discussion about the Foundations of Mathematics -- The New Logic -- Truth and Confirmation -- On the Logical Positivists' Theory of Truth -- The Logical Character of the Principle of Induction -- Testability and Meaning -- Ethics -- What Is the Aim of Ethics? -- The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms -- Unity of Science -- The Unity of Science Movement and the United States -- Unified Science as Encyclopedic Integration -- Commentaries -- Carnap and the Philosophy of Mathematics -- The Boundless Ocean of Unlimited Possibilities": Logic in Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language -- Acknowledgments.