Breeding

The Human History of Heredity, Race, and Sex
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-0-19-923921-4
Verlag: Oxford University Press

Buch, Englisch, 368 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 5 g

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.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Waller, John

Fachgebiete

• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften: Allgemeines Populärwissenschaftliche Werke
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Humanbiologie
• Naturwissenschaften Biowissenschaften Biowissenschaften Genetik und Genomik (nichtmedizinisch)
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wissenschafts- und Universitätsgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

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?

Über Autor(innen)

John Waller was educated at the universities of Oxford and London, and is now associate professor of the history of medicine at Michigan State University. He is the author of a number of books and articles on the history of science, medicine, and child warfare, including Fabulous Science (OUP, 2002), The Discovery of the Germ (Columbia University Press, 2005), and The Real Oliver Twist (Icon Books, 2006).