A.N. Kolmogorov's defence of Mendelism

In 1939 N.I. Ermolaeva published the results of an experiment which repeated parts of Mendel's classical experiments. On the basis of her experiment she concluded that Mendel's principle that self-pollination of hybrid plants gave rise to segregation proportions 3:1 was false. The great probability theorist A.N. Kolmogorov reviewed Ermolaeva's data using a test, now referred to as Kolmogorov's, or Kolmogorov-Smirnov, test, which he had proposed in 1933. He found, contrary to Ermolaeva, that her results clearly confirmed Mendel's principle. This paper shows that there were methodological flaws in Kolmogorov's statistical analysis and presents a substantially adjusted approach, which confirms his conclusions. Some historical commentary on the Lysenko-era background is given, to illuminate the relationship of the disciplines of genetics and statistics in the struggle against the prevailing politically-correct pseudoscience in the Soviet Union. There is a Brazilian connection through the person of Th. Dobzhansky.     

William Bateson and the promise of Mendelism

Journal of the History of Biology -     

Maternal Inheritance and Mendelism

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Mach's phenomenalism and the British reception of Mendelism

The assimilation of Mendel's paper into Britain took place in an Edwardian social context. This paper concentrates on the interplay of empirical and philosophical issues in this reception. A feature of the British reception of mendelism, not duplicated elsewhere, was the role of phenomenalist philosophies of science as developed by the physicist-mathematician and scientific methodologist Karl Pearson from the philosophical positions of Austrian physicist Ernst Mach and British mathematician William Clifford. Pearson's philosophy of science forms the background to his subsequent collaboration with the zoologist W.F.R. Weldon. In this collaborative work, Pearson developed powerful statistical techniques for analyzing Weldon's empirical data on organic variation. Pearson's statistical analysis of causation and his rejection of hidden entities and causes in the explanation of evolutionary change formed the philosophical component of this program. The arguments of Pearson and Weldon were first brought to bear against the pre-Mendel 'discontinuist' analyses of variation of William Bateson. The introduction of Mendel's paper into these empirical and methodological debates consequently resulted in mathematically sophisticated attacks on Mendel's claims by Pearson and Weldon. This paper summarizes this history and argues for the creative importance of this biometrical resistance to Mendelism.     

Beyondism: Raymond B. Cattell and the new eugenics

A significant confusion has arisen out of the mass of work done on the history of eugenics in the last two decades. Early scholars of the subject treated eugenics as a marginalized or obsolete movement of the radical right. Subsequent research has shown that eugenic ideas were adopted in diverse national settings by very different groups, including – among others – liberals, communists and Catholics, as well as radical rightists. This complexity is sometimes taken to mean that eugenics has no special ideological associations, that it is historically and potentially a beast of a thousand heads. It is not. Although people of varied ideological commitments have been attracted to eugenics, ideologues of the radical right, and above all interwar fascists, have been uniquely and centrally involved in its development. Fascism and the radical right are also complex entities, but for all the heterogeneity of both eugenics and fascism, the special historical relationship between the two cannot be ignored. This relationship is exemplified in the work of the influential psychologist, Raymond B. Cattell. Cattell was an early supporter of German national socialism and his work should be understood in the context of interwar fascism. The new religious movement that he founded, ‘Beyondism’, is a neo-fascist contrivance. Cattell now promulgates ideas that he formulated within a demimonde of radical eugenists and neo-fascists that includes such associates as Revilo Oliver, Roger Pearson, Wilmot Robertson and Robert K. Graham. These ideas and Cattell's role in the history of eugenics deserve deeper analysis than they have hitherto received. Far from being of merely antiquarian interest, his work currently encourages the propagation of radical eugenist ideology. It is unconscionable for scholars to permit these ideas to go unchallenged, and indeed honored and emulated by a new generation of ideologues and academicians whose work helps to dignify the most destructive political ideas of the twentieth century. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Theory and practice: the impact of Mendelism on agriculture

The purpose of this paper is a reexamination of the success story of how Mendelian genetics gave birth to a revolution in plant and animal breeding which produced the spectacular 20th century agricultural progress and made it possible to feed the exploding population of the Earth. Critics have pointed to the problematic social effect of the agricultural revolution, and they have doubted the importance of the new genetics, especially during the first three or four decades of the 20th century. This paper argues that the criticism has tended to take a narrow instrumental view of science underestimating the guiding role of theory in practical matters. Plant and animal breeding continued to depend mainly on the old 19th century techniques, hybridization, mass selection and individual selection. But they were combined and used in much more efficient ways than before. New theoretical knowledge, general theories as well as particular knowledge about species, strains and individuals, radically improved the planning and execution of breeding work.     

Marvelling at the Marvel: The Supposed Conversion of A.D. Darbishire to Mendelism

The so-called “biometric-Mendelian controversy” has received much attention from science studies scholars. This paper focuses on one scientist involved in this debate, Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire, who performed a series of hybridization experiments with mice beginning in 1901. Previous historical work on Darbishire’s experiments and his later attempt to reconcile Mendelian and biometric views describe Darbishire as eventually being “converted”' to Mendelism. I provide a new analysis of this episode in the context of Darbishire’s experimental results, his underlying epistemology, and his influence on the broader debate surrounding the rediscovery and acceptance of Mendelism. Iinvestigate various historiographical issues raised by this episode in order to reflect on the idea of “conversion” to a scientific theory. Darbishire was an influential figure who resisted strong forces compelling him to convert prematurely due to his requirements that the new theory account for particularly important anomalous facts and answer the most pressing questions in the field. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Simulation of Mendelism revisited: the recessive gene for attending medical school.

Much of the recent confusion concerning studies of complex phenotypes such as neuropsychiatric disorders may derive from the inappropriate assumption of simple Mendelian transmission. This has sometimes led to unrealistic expectations regarding the potential benefits of linkage studies. To investigate how Mendelism may be simulated, we collected data on a common familial behavioral trait, attendance at medical school, among the relatives of 249 preclinical medical students. The "risk" of first-degree relatives going to medical school was approximately 61 times that of the general population. Complex segregation analysis carried out under a unified model provided strong evidence of vertical transmission. The results were compatible with transmission of a major effect, and a recessive model provided as satisfactory a fit as a general single-locus model. Moreover, a commonly applied test, allowing the transmission probability parameter (tau 2) to deviate from its Mendelian value, did not give a significant improvement of fit. Only a more general model where all three transmission probabilities (tau 1, tau 2, and tau 3) were unrestricted resulted in a significantly better fit than did the recessive model.     

Rolfe, A pratical aspect of Mendelism

Ohne Zusammenfassung

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Rolfe, A pratical aspect of Mendelism

     

Social imaginaries: the literature of eugenics

This paper starts from a premise relating to the act of fictional writing about eugenics and the way it may be understood as the embodiment and enactment of social imaginaries. It proposes that literature (in the sense of fiction) frequently, if not habitually, expresses the underside of what is expressed in public discourse. That is, far from being the implement of state policy or intervention, it acts in counterpoint to the state, constituting a type of social fantasy in that it explores through the realm of the imagination what might happen. It becomes the arena for contestation, exploration, and nuancing as it essays how ideas from public, 'real' life, might transform when acted out. The paper considers two sorts of literary case. First it looks at that of 'na?ve' literature, harnessed unashamedly to a specific sociological discourse of eugenics. Then, using primarily Ibsen, it considers a subset, the case of literature that does not set out to be explicitly in the service of the cause of eugenics, but is appropriated and disseminated from a platform of eugenics. Lastly, taking the example of Unamuno's Amor y pedagogía (1902) the paper considers literature that exists in a quite different sphere of public awareness. It shows awareness of the arguments and precepts of eugenics and related beliefs and practices, but acts as a transitional space (in the terms of Winnicott) to enable such ideas to be entertained and thought about, without a requirement of acceptance or belief.