Gregory Radick - Disputed Inheritance

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The Center for Science and Society

The New York History of Science Lecture investigates how the Mendelian narrative that heredity is destiny took hold.

New York University Gallatin School of Individualized Study (Room 432)

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In 1900, few had heard of Gregor Mendel. Ten years later, he was famous as the father of genetics. Even today, Mendelian ideas serve as a standard entry point 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.Gregory Radick will discuss his latest book, <a href="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo183632870.html" title="https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/D/bo183632870.html" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Disputed Inheritance</a>, which turns the inherited narrative on its head. Radick attributes Mendelism not to Mendel’s own work, but to the outcome of a ferocious debate between two English biologists in the early 20th century. On one side was William Bateson, who, in Mendel’s name, wanted biology and society reorganized around the recognition that heredity is destiny. On the other was W. F. R. Weldon, who thought Bateson’s “Mendelism” pushed knowledge of the modifying role of environments to the margins.Weldon died before he could finish a book detailing his alternative vision. Had Weldon lived, Radick argues, we might still talk of “genes,” but without the deterministic notion that the presence of a particular DNA variant is sufficient to determine if someone is born to be aggressive, alcoholic, blue-eyed, doomed to breast cancer, or crave caffeine. Instead, our gene talk would be routinely hedged with talk of internal and external contexts, because a gene would be seen as something with variable effects depending on the mix of other causes in play. <h3>Event Speaker</h3><a href="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/114/professor-gregory-radick" title="https://ahc.leeds.ac.uk/philosophy/staff/114/professor-gregory-radick" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">Gregory Radick</a>, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds <h3>Event Information</h3>Contact historyofscience@nyu.edu with any questions about in-person attendance and scienceandsociety@columbia.edu with any other questions.This event is part of the <a href="https://scienceandsociety.columbia.edu/node/32" title="https://scienceandsociety.columbia.edu/node/32" target="_blank" data-msys-clicktrack="0" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">New York History of Science Lecture Series</a>.Sponsoring Organizations:<ul><li>Columbia University in the City of New York</li><li>NYU Gallatin School of Individualized Study</li><li>The Graduate Center, City University of New York</li><li>The New York Academy of Medicine</li><li>The New York Academy of Sciences</li></ul>

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Gregory Radick - Disputed Inheritance

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Gregory Radick - Disputed Inheritance

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