The Professor and the Pea: Lives and Afterlives of William Bateson's Campaign for the Utility of Mendelism (2013)
Radick, Gregory (Author)
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
Volume: 44, no. 2
Issue: 2
Pages: 280-291
As a defender of the fundamental importance of Mendel's experiments for understanding heredity, the English biologist William Bateson (1861-1926) did much to publicize the usefulness of Mendelian science for practical breeders. In the course of his campaigning, he not only secured a reputation among breeders as a scientific expert worth listening to but articulated a vision of the ideal relations between pure and applied science in the modern state. Yet historical writing about Bateson has tended to underplay these utilitarian elements of his program, to the extent of portraying him, notably in still-influential work from the 1960s and 1970s, as a type specimen of the scientist who could not care less about application. This paper offers a corrective view of Bateson himself -- including the first detailed account of his role as an expert witness in a courtroom dispute over the identity of a commercial pea variety -- and an inquiry into the historiographic fate of his efforts in support of Mendelism's productivity. For all that a Marxian perspective classically brings applied science to the fore, in Bateson's case, and for a range of reasons, it did the opposite during the Cold War. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Yafeng Shan;
(2021)
Beyond Mendelism and Biometry
(/isis/citation/CBB308136354/)
Article
Radick, Gregory;
(2011)
Physics in the Galtonian Sciences of Heredity
(/isis/citation/CBB001023997/)
Book
Simunek, Michal;
(2011)
The Letters on G. J. Mendel: Correspondence of William Bateson, Hugo Iltis, and Erich Von Tschermak-Seysenegg with Alois and Ferdinand Schindler, 1902--1935
(/isis/citation/CBB001221423/)
Article
Richmond, Marsha L.;
(2001)
Women in the Early History of Genetics: William Bateson and the Newnham College Mendelians, 1900--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB000671231/)
Article
Müller-Wille, Staffan;
(2005)
Early Mendelism and the Subversion of Taxonomy: Epistemological Obstacles as Institutions
(/isis/citation/CBB000770699/)
Article
García-Sancho, Miguel;
(2015)
Animal Breeding in the Age of Biotechnology: The Investigative Pathway behind the Cloning of Dolly the Sheep
(/isis/citation/CBB001510361/)
Article
Nicholas W. Gillham;
(2015)
The Battle Between the Biometricians and the Mendelians: How Sir Francis Galton’s Work Caused his Disciples to Reach Conflicting Conclusions About the Hereditary Mechanism
(/isis/citation/CBB738872407/)
Article
Pereira Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr;
(2012)
Um representante do estilo de pensamento científico “compreensivo,” William Bateson (1861--1926): ciência, política e arte
(/isis/citation/CBB001212025/)
Chapter
Gissis, Snait B.;
Jablonka, Eva;
(2011)
The Exclusion of Soft (“Lamarckian”) Inheritance from the Modern Synthesis
(/isis/citation/CBB001500089/)
Article
Bernardino Fantini;
(2017)
“Treasure your exceptions!” (William Bateson, 1908): leggi e variazioni nella genetica mendeliana
(/isis/citation/CBB238032821/)
Book
Rushton, Alan R.;
(2009)
Genetics in Medicine in Great Britain 1600 to 1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001020882/)
Article
Theunissen, Bert;
(2014)
Practical Animal Breeding as the Key to an Integrated View of Genetics, Eugenics and Evolutionary Theory: Arend L. Hagedoorn (1885--1953)
(/isis/citation/CBB001420120/)
Article
Rushton, A. R.;
(2000)
Nettleship, Pearson and Bateson: The biometric-Mendelian debate in a medical context
(/isis/citation/CBB000110375/)
Article
Richmond, Marsha L.;
(2006)
The “Domestication” of Heredity: The Familial Organization of Geneticists at Cambridge University, 1895--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB000671267/)
Article
Charnley, Berris;
Radick, Gregory;
(2013)
Intellectual Property, Plant Breeding and the Making of Mendelian Genetics
(/isis/citation/CBB001211900/)
Article
Roger J. Wood;
(2015)
Darbishire expands his vision of heredity from Mendelian genetics to inherited memory
(/isis/citation/CBB211130319/)
Article
Berry, Dominic;
(2014)
The Plant Breeding Industry after Pure Line Theory: Lessons from the National Institute of Agricultural Botany
(/isis/citation/CBB001420118/)
Article
Wolfe, Audra J.;
(2010)
What Does It Mean to Go Public? The American Response to Lysenkoism, Reconsidered
(/isis/citation/CBB001022644/)
Book
Cock, Alan G.;
Forsdyke, Donald R.;
(2008)
Treasure Your Exceptions: The Science and Life of William Bateson
(/isis/citation/CBB000951876/)
Chapter
Newman, Stuart A.;
(2007)
William Bateson's Physicalist Ideas
(/isis/citation/CBB000774372/)
Be the first to comment!