Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology. Mendel 200 seminar, University of Bristol, hybrid talk (10 March 2023)

The celebrations of Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) and his legacies in this bicentennial year have reaffirmed his place in the biological pantheon.  But there is room for disagreement about how uniformly positive those legacies have been, and about whether Mendelian patterns and concepts were bound to become as central as they in fact became.  In this talk I want to explore the case for thinking that, had an early twentieth-century debate over incipient “Mendelism” gone differently, scientific knowledge of heredity today would be just as powerful, and yet the central, organizing, starting-point idea of that science would be expressed not in a Punnett square (in which characters are categorical and depend on nothing but gene variants) but in a GxE diagram (in which the conditioning role of context on variable gene expression is unmissable).  Drawing on recent archival research as well as on classroom experimentation, I will suggest that awareness of this alternative or “counterfactual” possibility for genetics past, with its greater emphases on phenotypic variability and multifactorial causation, can valuably help us think afresh about present-day options, especially in the teaching of genetics.

The Gregor Johann of History and the Mendel of Faith: Reflections for a Bicentennial. KLI Mendel Symposium: Mendel’s Legacy in Science and Society, Konrad Lorenz Institute, hybrid talk (13-14 October 2022)

This talk makes the case for the actual, historical Mendel (the “Gregor Johann of History”) as the figure whose bicentennial deserved celebration in 2022.  But it also acknowledges, and reflects on, how challenging that case can be, given the standing of the ahistorical, textbook-derived Mendel (“the Mendel of Faith”) in our science and in our culture.  In keeping with the religion-invoking title, the talk ends with a sermon, taken from my 2016 Nature article: “If we want to honour Mendel, then let us read him seriously, which is to say historically, without back-projecting the doctrinaire Mendelism that came later. Study Mendel, but let him be part of his time.  Likewise, let our biology students be part of their time, by giving them a genetics curriculum fit for the twenty-first century. If we teach them about Mendel, we should do so not to fill them with slack-jawed wonder at his foundational achievement, but to help them to appreciate how even the most imaginative and rigorous science — and Mendel’s was first rate on both counts — bears the stamp of the historical circumstances of its making. To learn that lesson about past science is to bring a welcome level of self-awareness and critical self-reflection to the present”

Introduction to the “Living with the Eugenic Past” conference, Royal Society of London (5 October 2022)

Here I kicked off a conference that I organized on behalf of the Adelphi Genetics Forum in the year marking the birth not just of Gregor Mendel but of Sir Francis Galton. In recognition of the Forum’s descent from the Galton Institute and, ultimately, the Eugenics Education Society – and in keeping with a longstanding tradition of support for public and scholarly discussion and reflection on eugenics – the conference was devoted to the problem of how best to live with the eugenic past.  What are the demands of justice when it comes to the victims of eugenics? How should universities and other institutions involved in eugenics deal responsibly with that involvement? Can present-day biology education and research be improved to help safeguard the future from the mistakes of the past?
These were among the questions taken up with guidance from our international group of distinguished speakers,

Napp, Mendel and the Problem of Heredity. Mendel Days 2021, Mendel Museum, Brno, online talk (3 November 2021)

Here I present some reflections on how, and how not, to think about what the lively Abbott Cyrill Napp did for Gregor Mendel, arguing against the common idea that Napp set Mendel the task of figuring out how heredity works.  Someone who was there in person in Brno listening to the talk was the genomicist and educator Gábor Mészáros, who got in touch afterwards to ask if he could make the video available on his Youtube “Genomics Boot Camp” channel.  The video now begins with his generous introduction, to me and to the talk but also to this website – cheers, Gábor!

Why Plausibility Matters for Alternative-Science Counterfactuals. Should We Choose One Unique Scientific Theory? workshop, Université de Lorraine, Nancy (22 October 2021)

Should we care whether alternative-science counterfactuals are historically plausible?  A concern with ‘minimal rewrite’ plausibility – expressed, for example, by sticking to consideration of alternatives that were actually contemplated at some juncture point in the scientific past – has been criticized as overly restrictive, needlessly constraining historians from realizing the most radical potentialities of a counterfactual approach.  While recognizing the value for certain purposes of a maximalist approach to history-of-science counterfactuals, this talk defends the minimalist constraint.

Genetics for the Real World.  Research Seminar, Biological Sciences Curriculum Study, online talk (29 September 2021)

The traditional, start-with-Mendel introductory curriculum in genetics is, at its best, outstanding in helping students to learn to “think like a geneticist.” But is that an appropriate goal for genetics education in the 21st century? In this talk, I want to make the case for a genetics curriculum which aims less at creating geneticists than at improving students’ ability to cope well with the genetic information which increasingly surrounds them. I dwell in particular on one attempt to “de-Mendelize” the genetics curriculum, putting much greater emphasis than is traditional on phenotypic variability and on the complex gene-gene and gene-environment causal interactions which bring about that variability. I will also discuss a BSCS Science Learning-Cornell project now underway to assess the impact on students of these alternative emphases.

Challenges to Data Linkage in Plants: Two Parables from the Pea. Towards Responsible Data Linkage online workshop, University of Exeter (12 March 2021)

This talk draws upon the history of scientific studies of inheritance in Mendel’s best remembered model organism, the garden pea, as a source of two parables – one pessimistic, the other optimistic – on the challenges of data linkage in plants. The moral of the pessimistic parable, from the era of the biometrician-Mendelian controversy, is that the problem of theory-ladenness in data sets can be a major stumbling block to making new uses of old data. The moral of the optimistic parable, from the long-run history of studies at the John Innes Centre of aberrant or “rogue” pea varieties, is that an excellent guarantor of the continued value of old data sets is the preservation of the relevant physical materials – in the first instance, the plant seeds.

The Jewish Disease? Tay-Sachs in Science, History and Pedagogy. Jewish Historical Society of England, Leeds branch, online talk (7 December 2020)

A video of this talk is available on Youtube.

Here I set out some preliminary reflections on a textbook Mendelian disease now commonly thought of as a distinctively Jewish problem.  It turns out that, like pretty much all Mendelian (i.e. “single-gene”) conditions, Tay-Sachs can be highly variable in its expression.  Nor is it an exclusively Jewish problem.  Taking those complications seriously in turn raises questions about a familiar Darwinian explanation of the spread of Tay-Sachs: that, in the tubercular conditions of the European ghettos where many Jews lived for centuries, individuals who were heterozygous for the condition (that is, who inherited one normal allele and one mutant allele) were favoured.  At the same time, recent classroom studies suggest that, when we teach students that Tay-Sachs, sickle-cell anaemia etc. are racially distinctive Mendelian conditions, we lose more than we win.

The Case for Overhauling Farmer Education. Sustainable Indigenous Seeds Innovation Conference 2.0, Art of Living campus, Bangalore (30 July 2019)

I used the occasion of presenting Prong 2 of the Position Paper on Indian agriculture (see below) to improve the version of the case there for making changes to the scientific education of farmers.  Here my three-fold answer to my question “What might predispose a Weldonian student towards sustainable agriculture?” stresses (1) the absence of a presumption against indigenous seeds as intrinsically and inevitably inferior, (2) the greater scope for appreciating the positive effects of environmental variation (where I refer to my colleague Natalie Kopytko’s wonderful report on the work of Jitul Saikia), and (3) the lessened scope for regarding genetic heterogeneity as a deal-breaking problem.

Introduction to the Conference Themes. Sustainable Indigenous Seeds Innovation Conference 2.0, Art of Living campus, Bangalore (30 July 2019)

This conference launched a Position Paper outlining a three-pronged approach to promoting a more sustainable future for Indian agriculture, stressing the revival of Traditional Ecological Knowledge systems (Prong 1), the updating of agricultural education to promote sustainability (Prong 2), and the use of new smart technologies to incentivize and monetize farmer-level innovation with indigenous seeds in an ecologically and socially sustainable manner (Prong 3).  Much of the conference as a whole can be viewed here.

The Barr-Stroud Rangefinder, or, The Magic and Mayhem of Optics. With Juha Saatsi and Kiara White, HPS in 20 Objects, University of Leeds (23 May 2017)

Archibald Barr and William Stroud met while teaching at the Yorkshire College of Science, the University of Leeds’ predecessor. In 1888, a War Office competition advertised in Engineering magazine led them to start work on building an optical rangefinder, a device used to accurately determine distances for military purposes. Barr & Stroud’s design was adopted by the Royal Navy in 1892, and later by the Army. It remained in use until it was replaced by radar technology in World War Two.

Join us to discover the struggles Barr and Stroud faced to make their instrument a success, and to explore the philosophical and historical questions raised by optical science in the Victorian era. How does optical theory pose a problem for understanding the relationship between science and reality? What is the difference between pure and applied science? What can we learn from Barr & Stroud about the nature of intellectual ownership in science?

For more information

• The Barr-Stroud Rangefinder

The Newlyn-Phillips Machine, or, How Money (with Help from Models and Maths) Makes the World Go Around. With Steven French and Mike Finn, HPS in 20 Objects, University of Leeds (13 December 2016)

Developed by Bill Phillips, a student at the London School of Economics, and his friend Walter Newlyn, a lecturer at the University of Leeds, the Newlyn-Phillip Machine or, Mark I model of the Monetary National Income Automatic Computer (MONIAC) is a hydraulic computer which uses water to represent the flow of money through an economy.

We live in world where computer-based models of economic life seem increasingly not just to represent that life but to run it. How did this come to pass? And what general lessons can be drawn about the role of models in the sciences, natural and social?

With the Leeds Newlyn-Phillips machine — the world’s first economics computer — as a pivot, this lecture will explore some of the curious ties binding money, maths and models in the ‘dismal science’ and beyond.

For more information

• The Newlyn-Phillips Machine

Mendel’s Significance. Mendel University, Brno (18 May 2017)

Speech delivered in Czech to mark the unveiling of a new statue of Mendel. The English version can be found here and the Czech version here. 

‘At his death in 1884, Gregor Mendel was little known outside this city. Today, of course, he is famous all over the world. He is “the father of genetics,” regularly ranked with Newton, Darwin and Einstein. Even today, students at every level who are beginning their studies in genetics start with Mendel. What they learn about his ideas derives from a single scientific paper. Entitled “Experiments on Plant Hybrids,” it summed up work with hybrid pea and bean plants that Mendel had completed over the course of ten years in the garden of the Abbey of St Thomas, where he lived. He first delivered this paper as two lectures to the Brünn Natural Sciences Society in 1865, then prepared it for publication the next year in the Society’s annual proceedings. Admirers of Mendel need to come to Brno – and they should! – in order to see the grounds where Mendel did his experiments. …‘

Introduction. HPS in 20 Objects, University of Leeds (January 2016)

What is the history and philosophy of science? What can it tell us about the way we see ourselves and the world around us? How can objects help us to understand what science is, and has been in the past?

From January 2016, HPS at Leeds addressed these questions and more in the history and philosophy of science through a series of 20 monthly lectures. Using objects from the scientific collections of the University of Leeds, we considered ideas and practices in science, technology and medicine from the ancient world to the present day.

Organised by the Museum of the History of Science, Technology & Medicine, the lectures were for a public audience, and assumed no prior knowledge of the objects or subjects being discussed. This video is the introduction to the series.

For more information

• Introduction

 History and STS: A Second Look at MacKenzie & Barnes on “Biometricians Versus Mendelians.” Conference on “The Past, Present and Future of Science, Technology and Innovation Studies,” University of Edinburgh, (29 November 2016)

By way of marking the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Science Studies Unit in Edinburgh, I was asked to speak about the relationship between history of science and Science and Technology Studies (STS).  I said a little about the latter at the start, and then gave an admiring-but-critical appreciation of my favourite “Edinburgh School” paper, drawing on an analysis that I set out in more detail in my 2013 paper “The Professor and the Pea: Lives and Afterlives of William Bateson’s Campaign for the Utility of Mendelism.“

How and Why Darwin Got Emotional about Race. Annual Thomas S. Hall Lecture in History and Philosophy of Science, Washington University in St. Louis (7 November 2016)

Nearly everyone is familiar with Darwin’s famous theory of natural selection detailed in his 1859 masterpiece, On the Origin of Species. Perhaps not so commonly known is his theory on the universality of race, presented in the 1872 publication of The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals.

In Expression, notes Darwinian scholar Greg Radick, the author showed that humans of every race, throughout the globe, express their emotions identically. For instance, we all cry when we’re sad and smile when we’re happy. Darwin claimed that this identity amounted to a “new argument” for all the races descending from a single, common ancestral stock.

In this talk Radick tracks the origins of Darwin’s research that led to this conclusion and offer a better understanding of how and why he first began to collect evidence on emotional expression across the human races. It can also help us see how, exactly, Darwin’s scientific work reflected his lifelong hatred of slavery.

For more information 

• Thomas S. Hall Lecture

What Happens in Mendel’s Paper. Mendel Symposium. Villanova University (7 December 2015)

The inaugural Mendel Symposium will further the conversation around Mendel as an innovator whose work remains relevant and enlightening in today’s world. The Symposium will bring to Villanova leading minds from some of the world’s most prominent universities, including Harvard, Yale, Johns Hopkins, Wake Forest, University of Wisconsin, University of Leeds in England and Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic. Together, this collection of experts will discuss the enduring impact of Mendel’s work.

For more information

• Mendel Symposium 

Experimenting with the Past. Presidential Address, BSHS Conference, Swansea (4 July 2015)

When it comes to knowing about the scientific pasts that might have been – the so-called ‘counterfactual’ history of science – historians can either debate its possibility or get on with the job. The latter course offers opportunities for engaging with some of the most general questions about the nature of science, history and knowledge. It can also yield fresh insights into why particular episodes in the history of science unfolded as they did and not otherwise. Drawing on recent research into the controversy over Mendelism in the early twentieth century, this address reports and reflects on a novel teaching experiment conducted in order to find out what biology and its students might be like now had the controversy gone differently. The results suggest a number of new options: for the collection of evidence about the counterfactual scientific past; for the development of collaborations between historians of science and scientific educators; for the cultivation of more productive relationships between scientists and their forebears; and for a new seriousness and self-awareness about the curiously counterfactual business of being historical.

For more information

• Official Transcript / Author’s copy

Mendel’s Legacy. Seminar with Prof. Steve Jones and Dr Jenny Lewis, Royal Society Lecture, London (2 June 2015)

Introduction. Cultivating Innovation, John Innes Centre, Norwich (14 April 2015)

Organised by Prof Greg Radick and Dr Dominic Berry, University of Leeds.

Generously supported by: The Arts and Humanities Research Council, The Organic Research Centre, John Innes Centre, Plant Bioscience Ltd., and the British Society for the History of Science.

Music by longzijin https://longzijun.wordpress.com/music/

Thanks to Tom Horn for his technical expertise, and provision of recording equipment at no cost to the project.

For more information

• Cultivating Information

Human Rights & the Expanding Circle: From Darwin to Today. Human Rights and the Humanities Conference, National Humanities Center (20 March 2014)

The National Humanities Center is a private, nonprofit organization, and the only independent institute dedicated exclusively to advanced study in all areas of the humanities.

For more information

• The National Humanities Centre

Human Rights & the Expanding Circle: From Darwin to Today – Discussion. Human Rights and the Humanities Conference, National Humanities Center (20 March 2014)

Jesus, Darwin and Ashley Montagu. Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, University of Cambridge (11 June 2013)

Although never especially well known in Britain, the London-born Ashley Montagu (1905-1999) became one of the most publicly visible anthropologists in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, thanks to a succession of popular books and frequent television appearances.  In this talk I want to concentrate on his life and work in the early 1950s, near the start of his public career, when he held an academic position (his last) at Rutgers University in New Jersey, and published an extraordinarily leftwing book on Darwin, entitled Darwin: Competition and Cooperation (1952).  I’ll aim to recover the largely forgotten research programmes that converged in the making of this book, and more generally led Montagu in this period – the era of McCarthyism in American politics, and the Modern Synthesis in evolutionary biology – to contrast what he saw as an increasingly outmoded Darwinian message of hate and competition with an ever-more scientifically respectable Christian message of love and cooperation.

The termly public lecture in Cambridge is given on some aspect of science and religion by an internationally recognised speaker. Whilst academically rigorous, the lectures are accessible to a multidisciplinary audience.

For more information

• Faraday Institute for Science and Religion 

The Role of the Royal Society in the Battle Over Mendelism. Public lecture, Royal Society of London (5 October 2012)

The early years of the twentieth century saw one of the most ferocious controversies in the whole history of biology, over Gregor Mendel’s experiments in pea hybridization and their significance for the scientific study of inheritance. On one side, the “Mendelians” were led by William Bateson FRS. On the other side, the opposed “biometricians” were led by W. F. R. Weldon FRS. Both men took inspiration from the work of Francis Galton FRS. In this talk I want to take seriously the ‘FRSness’ of these three famous scientists in order to throw light on the Mendelian-biometrician debate but also on the functioning of the Royal Society as a scientific institution at the turn of the century. I shall emphasize three organizational and ordering roles for the Society in particular, in relation to communications, committees and commendations.

For more information

• The Royal Society, London

Scientific Inheritance: How History Matters for the Sciences. Inaugural Lecture, University of Leeds (16 May 2012)

“Radick’s lecture explores the state of the discipline through the question of why Gregor Mendel has become the founding hero of textbook histories of genetics, at the expense of good history, of those who made more essential contributions and, he suggests, of good pedagogy for future biologists and geneticists. As he says, “the gap between what’s widely taken for granted as true scientifically and what’s actually the case is a theme of perennial fascination for historians and philosophers of science.”

This is where Kuhn enters….” Read more from “Beyond our Kuhnian Inheritance: A recent lecture by Prof Greg Radick questions our scientific inheritance, through textbook histories of genetics and Thomas Kuhn’s legacy.”  By Rebekah Higgitt. The Guardian. 28 August 2012.

Lessons of the Galápagos. Debating Darwin, University of Chicago (11 November 2011)

Greg Radick (University of Leeds) will reflect on Darwin’s reasoning on the plant and animal life he found on the Galápagos Islands. This will then be followed by a critical examination of two vastly divergent positions of those who find fault with the “supernatural-expunging” form of the argument – these hark from the Intelligent Design (Paul Nelson) and Evolutionary Biology (Elliott Sober) perspectives. Radick then considers Charles Lyell’s incredible influence on Darwin, and how this lead Darwin to produce a very Lyell-specific argument with respect to the Galápagos denizens.

The Debating Darwin workshops are a series of lectures given by the most acclaimed historians and philosophers of science. These workshops, headed by Robert J. Richards of the University of Chicago and Michael Ruse of Florida State University are co-sponsored by the Fishbein Center for History of Science, the Office of the President, and the Templeton Foundation.

For more information

• Debating Darwin

The Astbury DNA Camera. Leeds HSTM Museum, University of Leeds (Summer 2011)

This is one of a series of short films which the then-fledgling Museum of the History of Science, Technology and Medicine at Leeds put together highlighting some of the treasures of the collection.  For more on the Astbury camera, see the brilliant lecture that Kersten Hall and Helen Piel gave as part of the HPS in 20 Objects series, as well as the website about it created by Kersten, and of course his authoritative book The Man in the Monkeynut Coat: William Astbury and the Forgotten Road to the Double Helix (Oxford, 2014).

Animal Minds. The Forum for European Philosophy, LSE (21 February 2011)

Speaker(s): Professor Nicola Clayton, Professor Erica Fudge, Professor Greg Radick

This panel discussion provided historical and contemporary perspectives on animal cognition and considered the challenges facing the study of animal minds. Nicola Clayton is professor of comparative cognition at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of the Royal Society. Erica Fudge is professor of English studies in the School of Humanities at the University of Strathclyde. Gregory Radick is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds.

For more information

• Forum for European Philosophy

Introduction. Intellectual Property and the Biosciences, Symposium and Summer School, University of Leeds (7-8 July, 2010)

Combining a day-long symposium and a half-day summer school, the meeting marked the culmination of the White Rose IPBio Project. The project members were, from Leeds, Professors Greg Radick (History and Philosophy of Science) and Graham Dutfield (Law); from Sheffield, Professors Aurora Plomer and Margaret Llewellyn, both in the Sheffield Institute for Biotechnological Law and Ethics; and from York, Professors Tom Baldwin (Philosophy) and Andrew Webster (Sociology). Invited talks at the symposium were given by Professor Robert Cook-Deegan (Institute for Genome Sciences and Policy, Duke), Professor Daniel Kevles (History, Yale), Dr Bronwyn Parry (Geography, Queen Mary, London), Dr Jane Calvert (Innogen, Edinburgh), Professor Plomer, Mr Antony Taubman (Head of the IP Division, World Trade Organization, Geneva), Lady Lisa Markham (Harrison Goddard Foote, patent attorneys, Leeds) and Professor Rebecca Eisenberg (Law, Michigan).

For more information

• IPBio Network website.