1. See, for example: James A. Bassham, ‘Mapping the Carbon Reduction Cycle: A Personal Retrospective,’Photosynthesis Research76 (2003): 35–52; Andrew A. Benson: ‘Paving the Path,’Annual Review of Plant Biology53 (2002): 1–25; Andrew A. Benson, ‘Following the Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis: A Personal Story,’Photosynthesis Research73 (2002): 29–49; Melvin Calvin, ‘The Path of Carbon in Photosynthesis,” inNobel Lectures, Chemistry 1942–62(New York: Elsevier, 1964), 618–44; Melvin Calvin, ‘Forty Years of Photosynthesis and Related Activities,’Photosynthesis Research21 (1989): 3–16; Melvin Calvin,Following the Trail of Light. A Scientific Odyssey(Washington D.C.: American Chemical Society, 1992); Marcel Florkin,A History of Biochemistry. Part V (vol. 33A):The Unravelling of Biosynthetic Pathways(New York: Elsevier, 1979), 81–108; Martin D. Kamen, ‘Early Days in CO2Fixation: Some Brief Comments on the Berkeley Experience,’Molecular and Cellular Biochemistry5 (1974): 99–101; Martin D. Kamen,Radiant Science, Dark Politics: A Memoir of the Nuclear Age(Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1985); Martin D. Kamen, ‘Onward in a Fabulous Half Century,’Photosynthesis Research21 (1989): 139–44; Jochen Lehmann, ‘Kohlenstoff-14 und die Assimilation des Kohlendioxids,’Chemie in Unserer Zeit2 (1968): 67–73; and Oliver Morton,Eating the Sun. How Plants Power the Planet(London: Fourth Estate, 2007). The interviews conducted in a large-scale oral history project on the Berkeley group are published online; see Vivian Moses and Sheila Moses,The Calvin Lab: Bio-Organic Chemistry Group at the University of California Berkeley, 1945–63. An Oral History Conducted 1995–97(Regional Oral History Office, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, Cal. (available at: 2. A useful overview of the literature on models in science is provided, for example, by Roman Frigg and Stephan Hartmann, ‘Models in Science,’ inThe Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. N. Zalta (2006), For a survey of how models were treated in the history of the philosophy of science, see Daniela Bailer-Jones,Scientific Models in Philosophy of Science(Pittsburgh, Penn.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009). For an extensive treatment of the development of the biochemical models of photosynthesis, reconstructed from the perspective outlined in this paper, see Kärin Nickelsen, ‘Of Light and Darkness: Modelling Photosynthesis 1840–1960’ (Habilitation Thesis, Faculty of Science, University of Bern, Switzerland, 2009).
3. For the underlying (regularity) theory of causation and causal reasoning, see, for example: Michael May, ‘Kausales Schließen. Eine Untersuchung zur kausalen Erklärung und Theorienbildung’ (Doctoral Thesis, University of Hamburg, Germany, 1999); Gerd Graßhoff and Michael May, ‘Causal Regularities,’ inCurrent Issues in Causation, ed. Wolfgang Spohn, Marion Ledwig and Michael Esfeld (Paderborn: Mentis, 2001), 85–114; and Michael Baumgartner and Gerd Graßhoff,Kausalität und kausales Schliessen: Eine Einführung mit interaktiven Übungen(Bern: Bern Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 2004). The latter also provides an accessible introduction to the representation of causal processes in the form of graphs. The extension of this theory to the analysis of experiments is provided, for example, in Gerd Graßhoff, Robert Casties and Kärin Nickelsen,Zur Theorie des Experiments. Untersuchungen am Beispiel der Entdeckung des Harnstoffzyklus(Bern: Bern Studies for the History and Philosophy of Science, 2000).
4. The philosophical debate on the role of ‘mechanisms’ in science has grown enormously; see, for example: William Bechtel and Robert C. Richardson,Discovering Complexity: Decomposition and Localization as Strategies in Scientific Research(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993); Peter Machamer, Lindley Darden and Carl Craver, ‘Thinking about Mechanisms,’Philosophy of Science67 (2000): 1–25; Stuart Glennan, ‘Modeling Mechanisms,’Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences36 (2005): 443–64; and James Bogen, ‘Causally Productive Activities,’Studies in History and Philosophy of Science39 (2008): 112–23.
5. Walter Stiles, Photosynthesis: The Assimilation of Carbon by Green Plants (London: Longmans/Green, 1925), 193.