Format:
1 Online-Ressource (630 Seiten)
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Illustrationen
ISBN:
9780226822716
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0226822710
Content:
"In 1899, almost no one had heard of Gregor Mendel. Yet within ten years, he had entered the scientific pantheon as the father of a powerful new science of heredity-genetics. How did that happen? As Greg Radick explains, that change of fortune was the outcome of one of the most ferocious debates in the whole of the history of science. On one side were the Mendelians, led by the Cambridge biologist William Bateson and his allies, and on the other were their critics, led by Bateson's former friend and teacher, the Oxford biologist W. F. R. Weldon. Weldon's untimely death in 1906, before he could finish a book setting out his alternative vision, is what Radick argues sealed the Mendelian victory. For ever since, Mendelian ideas have served as the standard point of entry for students learning about genetics. We can see this today--in the age of genomics and epigenetics--when biology textbooks privilege Mendel's experiments with pea plants as laying the foundation for all that followed. The message is plain: the twenty-first century owes an enlightened understanding of how biological inheritance really works to the persistence of an intellectual inheritance that took shape in Mendel's garden in the mid-nineteenth century. Disputed Inheritance turns that message on its head. Through a detailed re-examination of the Bateson-Weldon debate, based on a more comprehensive study of unpublished correspondence and manuscripts than previously attempted, Radick reveals how the triumph of Mendelism, with its relentless emphasis on transmitted factors (or "genes," as they came to be called) as the determiners of bodies and minds, in many ways represented a surprising and even backwards step for biology in the early twentieth century"--
Content:
"A root-and-branch rethinking of how history has shaped the science of genetics. In 1900, almost no one had heard of Gregor Mendel. Ten years later, he was famous as the father of a new science of heredity-genetics. Even today, Mendelian ideas serve as a standard point of entry for learning about genes. The message students receive is plain: the twenty-first century owes an enlightened understanding of how biological inheritance really works to the persistence of an intellectual inheritance that traces back to Mendel's garden. Disputed Inheritance turns that message on its head. As Gregory Radick shows, Mendelian ideas became foundational not because they match reality-little in nature behaves like Mendel's peas-but because, in England in the early years of the twentieth century, a ferocious debate ended as it did. On one side was the Cambridge biologist William Bateson, who, in Mendel's name, wanted biology and society reorganized around the recognition that heredity is destiny. On the other side was the Oxford biologist W. F. R. Weldon, who, admiring Mendel's discoveries in a limited way, thought Bateson's "Mendelism" represented a backward step, since it pushed growing knowledge of the modifying role of environments, internal and external, to the margins. Weldon's untimely death in 1906, before he could finish a book setting out his alternative vision, is, Radick suggests, what sealed the Mendelian victory. Bringing together extensive archival research with searching analyses of the nature of science and history, Disputed Inheritance challenges the way we think about genetics and its possibilities, past, present, and future"--
Note:
Includes bibliographical references and index
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Introduction -- Part I. Before. Who needs a science of heredity?; The meaning of the quincunx; Biology for the steam age; Royal entrances (and exits) -- Part 2. Battle. Between Boers and basset hounds; Two plates of peas; Mendel all the way; Damn all controversies!; An unfinished manuscript -- Part 3. Beyond. The success of a new science; What might have been; Mendelian legacies; Weldonian legacies -- Conclusion -- Postscript 1: On "genetic determinism" and "interaction" -- Postscript 2: A simple Mendelian cross Weldonized; -- Postscript 3: From a counterfactual edition of the Dictionary of scientific biography.
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe ISBN 9780226822709
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0226822702
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780226822723
Additional Edition:
ISBN 0226822729
Language:
English
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