Kurzbeschreibung

John Waller presents a history of one of the most important concepts in western thought: heredity. Tracing the development of our understanding of inheritance from the ancient Greeks to the advance of modern genetics, he presents the story of a remarkable set of scientific achievements.

Beschreibung

Breeding charts more than two thousand years of ideas about the nature of sex and heredity. From the speculations of the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds to the birth of genetics in the modern age, John Waller examines how we came to solve one of the greatest of enigmas: why offspring tend to look like their parents.
But this book goes further than telling a story of scientific advance. It also explores the social and political realities which often determined how people used the concept of heredity. It reveals how, from Plato's Republic to the modern IQ and race debate, the notion that some qualities of body and mind are inborn has been used to justify the supremacy of social elites and the racist ideologies of those who have profited from slavery and colonial expansion. This is a history of
scientific developments, ideological inventions, and how the two have changed one another.

Inhaltsangabe

From the contents:

Part 1: Mary Toft's Rabbits and Noah's Sons: early modern ideas of heredity;
1: Bred in the bone;
2: The ideology of blood;
3: Thinking about race: Moors, slaves and native Americans;
Part 2: Progress and Predispositions;
4: Polydactyly, preformation and racial science;
5: The invention of progress;
6: The patrician's malady and other afflictions;
7: Bakewell's sheep: the vogue for animal breeding;
Part 3: Good and bad blood in the Nineteenth Century;
8: Progress and decay;
9: Breeding in and out;
10: Monads, men and mockingbirds;
11: Degeneration and dire predictions;
12: 'Galaxies of geniuses';
Part 4: Eugenics, Genetics and UNESCO Man;
13: The gospel spreads;
14: From heredity to genetics;
15: Edging towards disaster;
16: 'Lives not worth living';
17: The Double Helix and beyond;
18: The demise of post-war consensus;
Conclusion: a distant mirror?

Klappentext

Presents a historical backdrop to current debates about heredity, sex and race.