Hostname: page-component-6d856f89d9-mhpxw Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-16T06:55:42.239Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Should “Heredity” and “Inheritance” Be Biological Terms? William Bateson's Change of Mind as a Historical and Philosophical Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Gregory Radick
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In 1894, William Bateson objected to the terms “heredity” and “inheritance” in biology, on grounds of contamination with misleading notions from the everyday world. Yet after the rediscovery of Mendel's work in the spring of 1900, Bateson promoted that work as disclosing the “principles of heredity.” For historians of science, Bateson's change of mind provides a new angle on these terms at a crucial moment in their history. For philosophers of science, the case can serve as a reminder of the potential of Putnam's hypothesis of a division of linguistic labor for analyzing the semantic lives of scientific kind terms.

Type
Everyday Concepts and Scientific Concepts
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 714 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

†

Many thanks to Jordan Bartol, Dominic Berry, Mike Buttolph, Jon Hodge, Staffan Müller-Wille, and the referees for invaluable help of various kinds and to my fellow symposiasts and the participants at sessions in Leeds, Montreal (PSA 2010), and Salt Lake City (ISHPSSB 2011) for stimulating discussion along the way.

References

Bateson, B., ed. 1928. William Bateson, F.R.S. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bateson, W. 1894. Materials for the Study of Variation. London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Bateson, W.. 1899/1928. “Hybridisation and Cross-Breeding as a Method of Scientific Investigation.” In Bateson 1928, 161–70.Google Scholar
Bateson, W.. 1919/1928. “Science and Nationality.” In Bateson 1928, 356–70.Google Scholar
Charnley, B., and Radick, G.. Forthcoming. “Intellectual Property, Plant Breeding, and the Making of Mendelian Genetics.” In “Owning and Disowning Invention,” ed. C. MacLeod and G. Radick, special issue, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Cock, A., and Forsydke, D. R.. 2008. Treasure Your Exceptions: The Science and Life of William Bateson. New York: Springer.10.1007/978-0-387-75688-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Darwin, C. 1859. On the Origin of Species. London: Murray.Google Scholar
Dupré, J. 1981. “Natural Kinds and Biological Taxa.” Philosophical Review 90:66–90.10.2307/2184373CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fleck, L. 1979. Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. German original published in 1935.Google Scholar
Gayon, J. 2009. “From Darwin to Today in Evolutionary Biology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Darwin, ed. Hodge, J. and Radick, G., 2nd ed., chap. 11. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, I. 1983. Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hacking, I.. 2007. “Putnam's Theory of Natural Kinds and Their Names Is Not the Same as Kripke's.” Principia 11:1–24.Google Scholar
Johannsen, W. 1911. “The Genotype Conception of Heredity.” American Naturalist 45:129–59.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keller, E. F. 2002. Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors and Machines. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lindee, Susan, and Nelkin, Dorothy. 1995. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. New York: Freeman.Google Scholar
López-Beltrán, Carlos. 1994. “Forging Heredity: From Metaphor to Cause; A Reification Story.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 25:211–35.10.1016/0039-3681(94)90028-0CrossRefGoogle Scholar
López-Beltrán, Carlos. 2004. “In the Cradle of Heredity: French Physicians and L’Hérédité Naturelle in the Early 19th Century.” Journal of the History of Biology 37:39–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Müller-Wille, S., and Rheinberger, H.-J.. 2007. “Heredity: The Formation of an Epistemic Space.” In Heredity Produced: At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500–1870, ed. Müller-Wille, S. and Rheinberger, H.-J., 3–34. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Müller-Wille, S., and Rheinberger, H.-J.. 2012. A Cultural History of Heredity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Putnam, H. 1975. “The Meaning of ‘Meaning.’” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science 7:131–93.Google Scholar
Radick, G. 2011. “Physics in the Galtonian Sciences of Heredity.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 42:129–38.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Radick, G.. Forthcoming. “The Professor and the Pea: Lives and Afterlives of William Bateson's Campaign for the Utility of Mendelism.” In “Owning and Disowning Invention,” ed. C. MacLeod and G. Radick, special issue, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Sapp, J. 2003. Genesis: The Evolution of Biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thomson, J. A. 1908. Heredity. London: Murray.Google Scholar
Zemach, E. 1976/1996. “Putnam's Theory on the Reference of Substance Terms.” Repr. in The Twin Earth Chronicles, ed. Pessin, A. and Goldberg, S., 60–68. Armonk, NY: Sharpe.Google Scholar