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Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology
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 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.
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 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.
642 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 18, 2023
8 people are currently reading
203 people want to read
About the author
Gregory Radick
10 books1 followerGregory Radick is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds. His books include The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language (2007) and, as co-editor with Jonathan Hodge, The Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge, 2009).
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 15, 2024
Brilliant book. Addresses an important matter in such an eloquent way. Radick presents the history of heredity from the very beginning, highlighting the many factors that have led to an understanding that is dominated by a misinterpretation of Mendel’s original results. As a science teacher at a secondary school I have found it particularly thought-provoking by raising questions about the development of other theories that are presented in textbooks as scientific ‘facts’. I have also found Radick’s suggestions for incorporating a more Weldonian perspective really useful for teaching genetics in the classroom. Highly recommend!
July 27, 2024
I cannot sing higher praises for this magnificent text.
Gregory Radick, whom I consider to be the current greatest living historian of science, has constructed the most detailed and well-researched account of the dawn of genetics at the start of the 20th century.
The included archival material is wonderfully chosen and always supplements the narrative in a careful and deliberate way. His inclusion of excerpts from letters (particularly from Weldon) gives us direct insight into the mind of a scientist who is now almost entirely forgotten. These letters reveal the intense hostility and derision between two scientists (Weldon and Bateson) who were once friends. Reading them, one cannot help but feel grief as we look at the way in which Weldon's ideas were either lampooned or ignored by a group of Cambridge scientists who set back research on genetics by (almost certainly) multiple decades. Worse, it was they who clearly cemented and set the stage for the tragic connection between eugenics and the science of heredity that would later lead to the horrific treatment of people with disabilities and those who came from unprivileged backgrounds.
Yet, the book is a triumph, because at every step of the way we can see (in retrospect) how Weldon came to see what was so *wrong* about the kind of genetic determinism that stood at the foundation of Bateson's ideas. There is an intense irony that it is Galton (and his quincunx) who is now most associated with the advent of eugenics and not Bateson, even as Galton came to repeatedly emphasize the crucial role that environment plaid on the development of phenotypes. The reader is forced, knowing the horrors that eugenics would bring, to root for Weldon as he, in the last years of his life, struggled to emphasize that your genetic inheritance is *not* the determinant of your mental aptitude. Radick's discussion of Weldon's insights and arguments (primarily taken from his letters to his biometrician in arms, Karl Pearson) strike us as immediately correct, and constantly one is convinced that no one could possibly ignore them.
And yet, scientists did. We must read Weldon's research with the full knowledge that, had Bateson and his comrades taken the science more seriously, perhaps many of the atrocities of the last century would have turned out quite differently.
The book is brimming with careful rebuttals to some of science's most long-lived and persistent myths. To take a great example (and one that Radick begins his text with) we are all told the story of Mendel and the peas. It was supposedly Mendel who discovered the process of genetic inheritance -- who discovered the role that dominant and recessive genes play in nearly *all* organisms. But it's not true. Mendel was concerned not with the science of inheritance at such a grand scale -- he was just interested in plant hybridization. Radick tells us the story of how Bateson and friends took the monk of Brunn and stripped him of the context in which he lived. How they used him to further a hypothesis about the role of genotypes in organisms that Weldon clearly saw was deeply flawed.
This is an academic text. It is only 600 pages, but it feels like 1000. Often, this would be a detriment; instead, in the hands of Radick, it's a blessing. I could have read 1000 more pages, each chock full of the kind of careful, innovative history that defines his writings. Yet, I can't recommend it enough, even to the layperson. Radick is careful to balance the technical detail of the research with the clearly outlined implications that resulted from them. If you read this book, you will leave with a completely changed outlook on how the modern science of genetics came to be. Thank you Radick, and I can only hope there is more to come.
Gregory Radick, whom I consider to be the current greatest living historian of science, has constructed the most detailed and well-researched account of the dawn of genetics at the start of the 20th century.
The included archival material is wonderfully chosen and always supplements the narrative in a careful and deliberate way. His inclusion of excerpts from letters (particularly from Weldon) gives us direct insight into the mind of a scientist who is now almost entirely forgotten. These letters reveal the intense hostility and derision between two scientists (Weldon and Bateson) who were once friends. Reading them, one cannot help but feel grief as we look at the way in which Weldon's ideas were either lampooned or ignored by a group of Cambridge scientists who set back research on genetics by (almost certainly) multiple decades. Worse, it was they who clearly cemented and set the stage for the tragic connection between eugenics and the science of heredity that would later lead to the horrific treatment of people with disabilities and those who came from unprivileged backgrounds.
Yet, the book is a triumph, because at every step of the way we can see (in retrospect) how Weldon came to see what was so *wrong* about the kind of genetic determinism that stood at the foundation of Bateson's ideas. There is an intense irony that it is Galton (and his quincunx) who is now most associated with the advent of eugenics and not Bateson, even as Galton came to repeatedly emphasize the crucial role that environment plaid on the development of phenotypes. The reader is forced, knowing the horrors that eugenics would bring, to root for Weldon as he, in the last years of his life, struggled to emphasize that your genetic inheritance is *not* the determinant of your mental aptitude. Radick's discussion of Weldon's insights and arguments (primarily taken from his letters to his biometrician in arms, Karl Pearson) strike us as immediately correct, and constantly one is convinced that no one could possibly ignore them.
And yet, scientists did. We must read Weldon's research with the full knowledge that, had Bateson and his comrades taken the science more seriously, perhaps many of the atrocities of the last century would have turned out quite differently.
The book is brimming with careful rebuttals to some of science's most long-lived and persistent myths. To take a great example (and one that Radick begins his text with) we are all told the story of Mendel and the peas. It was supposedly Mendel who discovered the process of genetic inheritance -- who discovered the role that dominant and recessive genes play in nearly *all* organisms. But it's not true. Mendel was concerned not with the science of inheritance at such a grand scale -- he was just interested in plant hybridization. Radick tells us the story of how Bateson and friends took the monk of Brunn and stripped him of the context in which he lived. How they used him to further a hypothesis about the role of genotypes in organisms that Weldon clearly saw was deeply flawed.
This is an academic text. It is only 600 pages, but it feels like 1000. Often, this would be a detriment; instead, in the hands of Radick, it's a blessing. I could have read 1000 more pages, each chock full of the kind of careful, innovative history that defines his writings. Yet, I can't recommend it enough, even to the layperson. Radick is careful to balance the technical detail of the research with the clearly outlined implications that resulted from them. If you read this book, you will leave with a completely changed outlook on how the modern science of genetics came to be. Thank you Radick, and I can only hope there is more to come.
November 13, 2024
This is an important book. It comes at a time when false and dangerous eugenic thinking is enjoying something of a resurgence on social media. That thinking stems from the belief that our genes determine far more of our identity than they really do. This in turn goes right back to a misinterpretation of the work of Gregor Mendel and his pea plants in that monastery garden. Radick documents in detail how this came about and why it is wrong. As he pithily puts it, Mendel was not actually a mendelian. This historical argument is important because we are still living with the popular idea that there is a ‘gene for’ every human characteristic, and that these genes are inherited in the same way as Mendel’s pea plant characters. Yet every geneticist knows that’s wrong. Unfortunately, because that story is simple and clear it all too easily infiltrates elementary teaching of genetics, making fertile ground for misunderstanding. It’s so much harder to put over the complexity of real life than a nice simple (and readily examinable) story.
Radick’s book is a timely and important attempt to correct this populist thinking. As a leading historian of science he shows how ‘mendelism’ based on a false foundational myth of genetics fuelled concepts of genetic determinism. At 600 closely argued and densely referenced pages it is not a quick and easy read, not because the writing is obscure – it isn’t, it’s admirably clear – but because the reality was so much more complex (and fascinating) than the simple myth. But it’s a really worthwhile read, including as it does many insights into how such a false understanding came to dominate the thinking of so many people. There are real-world stakes in debunking genetic determinism and the eugenic thinking it leads to. Radick has provided the detailed documentation for doing this – and in the process tells a fascinating story.
Radick’s book is a timely and important attempt to correct this populist thinking. As a leading historian of science he shows how ‘mendelism’ based on a false foundational myth of genetics fuelled concepts of genetic determinism. At 600 closely argued and densely referenced pages it is not a quick and easy read, not because the writing is obscure – it isn’t, it’s admirably clear – but because the reality was so much more complex (and fascinating) than the simple myth. But it’s a really worthwhile read, including as it does many insights into how such a false understanding came to dominate the thinking of so many people. There are real-world stakes in debunking genetic determinism and the eugenic thinking it leads to. Radick has provided the detailed documentation for doing this – and in the process tells a fascinating story.
February 7, 2024
Bilim tarihçisi öznesine karşı koruması gereken mesafeyi koruyamamış. Kitabın büyük bir kısmı Weldonian genetik anlayışı hakim olsaydı günümüzün çok daha az genetik determinist/ırkçı/cinsiyetçi olacağını anlatıyor =counter factual history. Yazar kimle tartıştığını belli etmiyor. HBD ile ilgilenenler burada yazarın kendilerinden bahsettiğini anlar fakat özne hatırladığım kadarıyla kitapta açıkça belirtilmemiş. Hayali bir düşman yaratılmış. Kayda değer yayın yapan kimsenin tek bir gen üzerinden argüman kurduğunu görmedim. Kitabın yazarı genlerin anlamlı ölçüdeki belirleyiciliğinden rahatsız. Kalıtımcılığın daha az savunulduğu bir genetik anlayışının bilimsel olarak neden daha faydalı olduğuna dair ikna edici argüman yok. Hayalindeki dünyada bizler çevremizdekilerin çeşitli kusurularına daha fazla zaman ve para ayırabilirmişiz. Yazar boylamsal olarak ölçülmüş, milyonlar hatta milyarlar yatırılan 'gelişim' vadeden projelerin dişe dokunur bir fayda yaratmadığını bilmiyor. Doğrusu, pekala biliyor fakat işine gelmediği için akan musluğun durmasını kabul edemiyor. Eğer kitabı okurken/okuduktan sonra yazarın hereditarian hipotezine dair dediklerinde doğruluk payı bulursanız Noah Carl'in The Fallacy of Equating the Hereditarian Hypothesis with Racism+Is there "zero evidence" for hereditarianism? yazılarını okumanızı öneririm.
January 15, 2025
An important work on the philosophy and history of science that sheds light on Weldon's magnificent thesis and its epistemic-historical conflictuality.
Gregory Radick proposes a diachronic historical epistemology and manages to derive synthetic statements on the way in which minority narratives take place in biology.
An innovative philosophical methodology that will enlighten doctoral students and researchers alike, and which does not hesitate to draw on both historical sociology and the history of science.
Gregory Radick proposes a diachronic historical epistemology and manages to derive synthetic statements on the way in which minority narratives take place in biology.
An innovative philosophical methodology that will enlighten doctoral students and researchers alike, and which does not hesitate to draw on both historical sociology and the history of science.
March 18, 2024
This book changed my understanding of not only genetics, but life itself. Before reading it, I didn't recognize how much old mythologies about our genes, ones that were long ago transcended by practicing biologists and geneticists, have managed to impact our popular consciousness. I now have a much greater appreciation for the complexity of inheritance, and the costs of our simple lay understanding of genetics.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews