The Mendel Inheritance

When Gregor Mendel published the results of his experiments on pea plants in 1866 he initiated a fierce debate about the nature of heredity and genetic determinism that continues today. The battle lines were drawn in England in the late 19th century by William Bateson, who believed in fixed genetic inheritance, and W.F.R. Weldon, who argued that Mendel’s experiments revealed far more variation than Bateson and his supporters acknowledged. In this episode Lorraine Daston joins Tom to chart the development of these arguments, described in a new book by Gregory Radick, through scientific and cultural discourse over the past 150 years, and consider why the history of science has a tendency to track such controversies in antagonistic terms, often to the detriment of the science itself. Read Lorraine's piece: https://lrb.me/dastonpod Sponsored links: Use the code ’LRB’ to get £100 off Serious Readers lights here: https://www.seriousreaders.com/lrb Close Readings Sing up to the LRB's Close Readings podcast: Directly in Apple Podcasts: https://apple.co/3pJoFPq In other podcast apps: https://lrb.me/crpod Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.