About the Book
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.
Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations
Introduction
Part 1: Before
1 Who Needs a Science of Heredity?
2 The Meaning of the Quincunx
3 Biology for the Steam Age
4 Royal Entrances (and Exits)
Part 2: Battle
5 Between Boers and Basset Hounds
6 Two Plates of Peas
7 Mendel All the Way
8 Damn All Controversies!
9 An Unfinished Manuscript
Part 3: Beyond
10 The Success of a New Science
11 What Might Have Been
12 Mendelian Legacies
13 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
Acknowledgments
Notes
References
Index
About the Author :
Gregory Radick is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coauthor, most recently, of Darwin’s Argument by Analogy.
Review :
“The archives for this episode in the history of biology are almost too rich: sheaves of correspondence among the protagonists, minutes of meetings, committee reports, Weldon’s unpublished manuscripts. Radick recounts every twist and turn of the debate, and his account of the Bateson-Weldon stand-off is surely definitive . . . allow[ing] the reader to experience the uncertainty and messiness of real science in the making. . . . Everyone now knows that Bateson and the Mendelians won in the end. Radick wants us to imagine that it could have and should have turned out differently, had all the evidence and arguments been weighed and had Weldon not died prematurely in 1906, aged 46.”
“An ambitious work . . . In paying attention to today's sophisticated ideas about genetics, Radick poses a deceptively simple question: why, he asks, knowing what we do now, do we still bother with Mendel? . . . This isn’t the first attempt to lay history’s ghosts to rest and reset our ideas about genetics. That said, I can’t think of one that is better argued, more fair-minded, or more enjoyable.”
“Radick provides a scholarly, detailed and perceptive analysis of why Mendelian genetics has long dominated our approach to understanding inheritance, despite valiant attempts to propose alternatives. . . . By describing how the debates of scientists shaped the field of genetics, Disputed Inheritance provides a basis for understanding the work that has led, over the past century, to a richer understanding of heredity than Mendelian genetics could ever have provided.”
“‘You name it,’ writes Radick in his brilliant, provocative new book, Disputed Inheritance, ‘and there is, we are told, a gene for it, invisibly pulling the strings, determining how our bodies grow and our lives go.’ . . . Radick argues that, had genetics taken a Weldonian turn in the early twentieth century, we need have sacrificed nothing in our understanding of biology and would have reduced the hereditarianism that remains so prevalent today. . . . Radick has an extraordinarily rich research program in front of him that has the potential for significant impact on both science and society.”
“Radick is raising the stakes here with an inventive approach . . . Disputed Inheritance gives centrality to contingency, and in so doing presents convincingly a ‘what could have been’ argument. The book culminates in a reiteration of the desire to elevate the study (and presentation) of counterfactuals to be part and parcel of standard methodology. It is a difficult argument to dismiss, and this book is the reason why: Radick’s meticulous research and balanced presentation can help redefine the essential struggle against historical amnesia—arguably the main culprit for reductive thinking and facile generalizations.”
“Marks a new milestone in the historiography of this famous episode. . . . The extreme fluidity of the writing, the richness of the historical information, as well as the boldness of the theses put forward make for an irresistible invitation to discussion.”
“In letters, both antagonists kept friends and allies continually up to date on their thoughts and feelings at every stage of the debate, enabling Radick to provide a vivid new narrative and analysis. . . . Present-day misconceptions about genetic determinism or genes for traits stand in need of correction, and Radick deserves kudos for trying to do so by reforming science education.”
“A major contribution to the history of genetics—comprehensive, beautifully written and rich in detail. It is unlikely that any scholar will ever need to revisit this debate (or the archives on which Radick has built his case)—it is hard to imagine that a more definitive account could be offered.”
“Masterful . . . Here, on full display, is the utility of studying the history of biology: illuminating science in its contemporary complexity via the detailed consideration of recessive currents in its past.”
“If your job involves teaching genetics (or if you’re just interested) you should take the time to read and digest this book. It presents a reasoned alternative to the standard narrative. It illuminates a lot of history that was much more complex than I had realized. It introduces the sympathetic figure of Weldon. . . . And it makes a case that, as Radick succinctly puts it, Mendel was not a Mendelian.”
"This work examines a foundational belief in biology: 'heredity is destiny.' . . . [and] should provoke considerable debate among historians and philosophers of biology. . . . Highly recommended."
“This is a magnificent book. It is really a tour de force, elegantly written and diligently documented. There is so much that I learned while reading it that has made me now better understand this story. I think it will be fascinating reading for everyone interested in the early history of genetics. Disputed Inheritance deserves to be widely read, and Radick deserves praise for an intellectual achievement that will change not only our understanding of history but also our approach to its study.”
“Radick’s magisterial study scrutinizes common understandings—the ‘folk wisdom’—of the history of genetics. Informed by unusual historical depth and philosophical sophistication, Radick offers a compelling rival view, one that reinterprets both the history and the science itself. In a world often affected by loose talk about ‘genes for’ interesting traits, this book supplies a welcome antidote to simplistic thinking. It is as important as it is fascinating.”
“There are few ideas in biology as powerful—and dangerous—as the notion that genes determine who we are and what we can become. In this deeply researched and beautifully written history, Radick reveals the contingent pathways through which genetic determinism took hold among biologists and beyond. Disputed Inheritance rewrites the story of genetics with care and verve, in the hopes that future students will learn to see both history and biology differently.”
“Radick underscores some of the most vital but neglected facts of genetics—that genes don’t work in simple ways, and that variation and context matter. This is a beautifully researched, important book. It may be a work of history, but the lessons are also relevant for us today.”
