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This book is a volume in the Penn Press Anniversary Collection. To mark its 125th anniversary in 2015, the University of Pennsylvania Press rereleased more than 1,100 titles from Penn Press's distinguished backlist from 1899-1999 that had fallen out of print. Spanning an entire century, the Anniversary Collection offers peer-reviewed scholarship in a wide range of subject areas.
Stalinist Genetics focuses on the rhetoric of T. D. Lysenko, the founder of an agrobiological doctrine (Lysenkoism) in the Stalinist Soviet Union. Using not only scientific but also political and ideological arguments, Lysenko achieved an official ban on Soviet Mendelian genetics. Though the ban was brief and Lysenkoism, as a leading biological doctrine, was eventually deposed in favor of Mendelism, Lysenkoism remains a paradigmatic example of pernicious political interference in science. In this study, the critical orientation for reading Lysenko's major speeches is constitutional rhetoric. It combines Kenneth Burke's dialectic of constitutions and rhetoric of the subject. Painting a nuanced picture of intellectual, economic, ideological, and political life in the Soviet Union of the 1930s and 1940s, the book demonstrates how the rhetorics of Lysenkoism and Mendelism interacted with Stalinist culture in the fight for dominating Soviet science. The reader will learn how Lysenko's constitutional rhetoric created a space where scientific terms transformed into political and ideological ones, and vice versa. The book also shows how, in a dialectical flip, the Lysenkoist rhetoric eventually turned from tool to master. Contrary to Lysenko's intentions, his language gave his opponents, Soviet Mendelians, grounds on which to defend their science and criticize Lysenkoism. Stanchevici forcefully reasserts the blurriness of the boundaries between science and politics, and argues that scientific language reveals more plasticity and adaptability to the political situation than has hitherto been assumed. Intended Audience: Scholars in rhetoric, history, and philosophy of science; graduate or upper-division undergraduate course in the rhetoric of science or technical communication.
From its very beginnings Western scholarly writing on Soviet science has been largely contextual in orientation, with particular attention given to the institutional and political setting of science in Russian and Soviet history. This book moves that tradition in a new direction by focusing more closely on the social conditions of the research proc
The exciting field of epigenetics offers novel and unanticipated science-based insights into human origins and development. This book presents one of the first detailed examinations of the political implications of epigenetics. Epigenetics—the study of internal and environmental factors that affect how genes are turned on or off and how cells read those genes—is a rapidly emerging science akin to genetics that introduces a number of novel and unexpected biological explanations of human origins and development. It also poses fundamental challenges to many of the assumptions of the prevailing science of genetics. When science changes, how does public policy respond? This book comprehensively considers the political implications of the emerging science of epigenetics in specific policy domains, addressing the intersections of epigenetics with cancer, obesity, the environment, and the law. Author Shea K. Robison carefully navigates the messy history of genetics and epigenetics in order to explore what changes in public policy might come in the age of a new scientific frontier. Readers will understand how new findings in epigenetic research and increased acceptance of epigenetic science may lead to paradigm shifts in cancer prevention and treatment, significantly different policy solutions for combating obesity, and revised statutes of limitations and laws regarding civil and corporate liability and wrongful life.
The mystery of inheritance has captivated thinkers since antiquity, and the unlocking of this mystery—the development of classical genetics—is one of humanity’s greatest achievements. This great scientific and human drama is the story told fully and for the first time in this book. Acclaimed science writer James Schwartz presents the history of genetics through the eyes of a dozen or so central players, beginning with Charles Darwin and ending with Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller. In tracing the emerging idea of the gene, Schwartz deconstructs many often-told stories that were meant to reflect glory on the participants and finds that the “official” version of discovery often hides a far more complex and illuminating narrative. The discovery of the structure of DNA and the more recent advances in genome science represent the culmination of one hundred years of concentrated inquiry into the nature of the gene. Schwartz’s multifaceted training as a mathematician, geneticist, and writer enables him to provide a remarkably lucid account of the development of the central ideas about heredity, and at the same time bring to life the brilliant and often eccentric individuals who shaped these ideas. In the spirit of the late Stephen Jay Gould, this book offers a thoroughly engaging story about one of the oldest and most controversial fields of scientific inquiry. It offers readers the background they need to understand the latest findings in genetics and those still to come in the search for the genetic basis of complex diseases and traits.
This book is the first to investigate the gap between the plans and the reality of the Soviet Union’s mid-twentieth-century project to industrialize and modernize its agricultural system. Historians agree that the project failed badly: agriculture was inefficient, unpredictable, and environmentally devastating for the entire Soviet period. Yet assigning the blame exclusively to Soviet planners would be off the mark. The real story is much more complicated and interesting, Jenny Leigh Smith reveals in this deeply researched book. Using case studies from five Soviet regions, she acknowledges hubris and shortsightedness where it occurred but also gives fair consideration to the difficulties encountered and the successes—however modest—that were achieved.
During the Soviet years, Russian science was touted as one of the greatest successes of the regime. Russian science was considered to be equal, if not superior, to that of the wealthy western nations. The Perversion of Knowledge, a history of Soviet science that focuses on its control by the KGB and the Communist Party, reveals the dark side of this glittering achievement. Based on the author's firsthand experience as a Soviet scientist, and drawing on extensive Russian language sources not easily available to the Western reader, the book includes shocking new information on biomedical experimentation on humans as well as an examination of the pernicious effects of Trofim Lysenko's pseudo-biology. Also included are many poignant case histories of those who collaborated and those who managed to resist, focusing on the moral choices and consequences. The text is accompanied by the author's own translations of key archival materials, making this work an essential resource for all those with a serious interest in Russian history.