Breeding The Human History of Heredity, Race, and Sex

by Waller, John

• ISBN13: 9780199239214
• ISBN10: 0199239215
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2025-07-01
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Breeding , John Waller offers an intriguing look at human heredity and the often troubling conclusions different societies have drawn about it. The questions heredity provokes are legion. If characteristics are passed from parent to child, does this mean that some families are superior to others? That some races are less than fully human? That individuals can shrug off responsibility for what they do? To answer these questions, the book explores a dizzying array of topics--the Greek and Roman view of sub-human "barbarians"; the suppression of peasants in medieval Europe, and of slaves in the American plantations; ideas of class, criminality, "moral weakness," and IQ; pedigree; "bloodlines" in royalty; and much more. At the same time, it is a story of remarkable scientific achievement, as figures from Linnaeus to Mendel, Darwin, Galton, Crick and Watson have unravelled the way life works. From the speculations of the ancient, medieval and early modern worlds to the birth of genetics in the last century, Waller offers a fascinating account of one of the most important ideas in Western thought.

Author Biography

John Waller is Associate Professor of the History of Medicine at Michigan State University.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Mary Toft's Rabbits and Noah's Sons: early modern ideas of heredity
1. Bred in the bone
2. The ideology of blood
3. Thinking about race: Moors, slaves and native Americans
Part 2: Progress and Predispositions
4. Polydactyly, preformation and racial science
5. The invention of progress
6. The patrician's malady and other afflictions
7. Bakewell's sheep: the vogue for animal breeding
Part 3: Good and bad blood in the Nineteenth Century
8. Progress and decay
9. Breeding in and out
10. Monads, men and mockingbirds
11. Degeneration and dire predictions
12. 'Galaxies of geniuses'
Part 4: Eugenics, Genetics and UNESCO Man
13. The gospel spreads
14. From heredity to genetics
15. Edging towards disaster
16. 'Lives not worth living'
17. The Double Helix and beyond
18. The demise of post-war consensus
Conclusion: a distant mirror?