Genes as a Historical Archive: On the Applicability of Genetic Research to Sociohistorical Questions: The Debate on the Origins of Ashkenazi Jewry Revisited (2014)
Kohler, Noa Sophie (Author)
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine
Volume: 57, no. 1
Issue: 1
Pages: 105-117
The origin of the Ashkenazi Jews has fascinated a growing number of geneticists in recent decades. Using genetic markers to answer questions of history is an approach that is at once tempting and precarious. Both genetics and history are highly specialized fields, and with an interdisciplinary approach, difficulties abound. This article briefly discusses this complex issue based on two studies, written by geneticists, which aimed at contributing to the research on the history of Ashkenazi Jewry. To date, geneticists who have tried to tackle historical questions by means of genetics and statistics have had difficulties with the dialectic methods of historiography, while historians have often misinterpreted the validity of the research results of the so-called “exact sciences.” Only when both sides study and understand the other side's methodology can cooperation lead to usable and meaningful results.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Hollinger, David A.;
(2002)
Why Are Jews Preeminent in Science and Scholarship? The Veblen Thesis Reconsidered
(/isis/citation/CBB000202136/)
Article
Rhodri Leng;
Gil Viry;
Miguel García-Sancho;
James Lowe;
Mark Wong;
Niki Vermeulen;
(2022)
The Sequences and the Sequencers: What Can a Mixed-Methods Approach Reveal about the History of Genomics?
(/isis/citation/CBB457018901/)
Article
Soraya de Chadarevian;
(2016)
The future historian: Reflections on the archives of contemporary sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB898245006/)
Article
Drees, Willem B.;
(2013)
Rich Religion and Science: Asian Religions, Ian Barbour, and Much Else
(/isis/citation/CBB001201403/)
Article
Hudson, Wayne;
(2014)
Philosophy, Theology, and the Humanities
(/isis/citation/CBB001201206/)
Thesis
Thiess, Derek J.;
(2008)
Miller's Milieu, or the Cultural Moments of Late Humanism: Science and Religion in the Golden Age of Science Fiction
(/isis/citation/CBB001560715/)
Book
McIntyre, Kenneth B.;
(2011)
Herbert Butterfield: History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics
(/isis/citation/CBB001500284/)
Article
Lipphardt, Veronika;
(2010)
The Jewish Community of Rome: An Isolated Population? Sampling Procedures and Bio-Historical Narratives in Genetic Analysis in the 1950s
(/isis/citation/CBB001036121/)
Article
Birgit Braun;
(2020)
Person and ethics of a psychiatrist during National Socialism: Friedrich Meggendorfer (1880–1953)
(/isis/citation/CBB172692386/)
Article
Jason Lustig;
(2019)
‘Mere Chips from His Workshop’: Gotthard Deutsch’s Monumental Card Index of Jewish History
(/isis/citation/CBB923387079/)
Article
Bregoli, Francesca;
(2007)
Jewish Scholarship, Science, and the Republic of Letters: Joseph Attias in Eighteenth-Century Livorno
(/isis/citation/CBB000773081/)
Article
Reséndez, Andrés;
Kemp, Brian M.;
(2005)
Genetics and the History of Latin America
(/isis/citation/CBB000660398/)
Article
Müller-Wille, Staffan;
(2014)
Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View
(/isis/citation/CBB001421206/)
Article
Widmer, Alexandra;
(2014)
Making Blood “Melanesian”: Fieldwork and Isolating Techniques in Genetic Epidemiology (1963--1976)
(/isis/citation/CBB001421071/)
Chapter
Dupré, John;
(2010)
Postgenomic Darwinism
(/isis/citation/CBB001023137/)
Book
Cantor, Geoffrey;
(2005)
Quakers, Jews, and Science: Religious Responses to Modernity and the Sciences in Britain, 1650--1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000610236/)
Article
Feiner, Shmuel;
(2002)
Seductive Science and the Emergence of the Secular Jewish Intellectual
(/isis/citation/CBB000202836/)
Book
Gimbel, Steven;
(2012)
Einstein's Jewish Science: Physics at the Intersection of Politics and Religion
(/isis/citation/CBB001210082/)
Chapter
Dirks, Christian;
(2005)
Meine armen ostjüdischen Brüder Albert Einstein und die Ostjudenfrage
(/isis/citation/CBB001024560/)
Book
Sloan, Philip R.;
(2000)
Controlling Our Destinies: Historical, Philosophical, Ethical, and Theological Perspectives on the Human Genome Project
(/isis/citation/CBB000110575/)
Be the first to comment!