In this article, I am concerned with the public engagements of Julian Huxley, Lancelot Hogben, and J. B. S. Haldane. I analyze how they used the new insights into the genetics of heredity to argue against any biological foundations for antidemocratic ideologies, be it Nazism, Stalinism, or the British laissez-faire and class system. The most striking fact—considering the abuse of biological knowledge they contested—is that these biologists presented genetics itself as inherently democratic. Arguing from genetics, they developed an understanding of (...) diversity that cuts across divisions of race, class, or gender. Human diversity rightly understood was advantageous for societal progress. Huxley, Hogben, and Haldane did not hold identical political ideals, but they all argued for democratic reforms and increased planning geared toward greater social equality, and they did so under the label of scientific humanism. Huxley took issue with the notion that evolutionary history does not carry any moral lessons for human societies. Rather than being its antithesis, evolution was the basis of human sociality. In fact, the entire future progress of individuals and communities toward a democratic world order needed to be founded on the cosmic principles of evolution—a process that had to be guided by the biological expert with a strong sense of social responsibility. (shrink)

Much of what has been written about the history of medical genetics in North America has focused on physician involvement in eugenics and the transition from heredity counseling to genetic counseling in the United States. What are typically missing in these accounts are details concerning the formation of a new medical specialty, i.e., medical genetics, and Canada’s involvement in specialty formation. Accordingly, this paper begins to fill in gaps by investigating, on the one hand, the history of American and Canadian (...) geneticists working together to support the creation of examining and teaching positions in human genetics in North American medical schools and, on the other, working independently of one another to monitor the rate and direction of workloads and patient access to local genetic counseling and laboratory services and, subsequently, achieve recognition for medical genetics as a medical specialty at the national level. (shrink)

This essay examines the origin of genotype-environment interaction, or G×E. "Origin" and not "the origin" because the thesis is that there were actually two distinct concepts of G×E at this beginning: a biometric concept, or \[G \times E_B\], and a developmental concept, or \[G \times E_D \]. R. A. Fisher, one of the founders of population genetics and the creator of the statistical analysis of variance, introduced the biometric concept as he attempted to resolve one of the main problems in (...) the biometric tradition of biology - partitioning the relative contributions of nature and nurture responsible for variation in a population. Lancelot Hogben, an experimental embryologist and also a statistician, introduced the developmental concept as he attempted to resolve one of the main problems in the developmental tradition of biology - determining the role that developmental relationships between genotype and environment played in the generation of variation. To argue for this thesis, I outline Fisher and Hogben's separate routes to their respective concepts of G × E; then these separate interpretations of G × E are drawn on to explicate a debate between Fisher and Hogben over the importance of G × E, the first installment of a persistent controversy. Finally, Fisher's \[G \times E_B\] and Hogben's \[G \times E_D \] are traced beyond their own work into mid-2Oth century population and developmental genetics, and then into the infamous IQ Controversy of the 1970s. (shrink)

Much has been written about the relationship between biology and social science during the early twentieth century. However, discussion is often drawn toward a particular conception of eugenics, which tends to obscure our understanding of not only the wide range of intersections between biology and social science during the period but also their impact on subsequent developments. This paper draws attention to one of those intersections: the British economist and social reformer William Beveridge’s controversial efforts to establish a Department of (...) Social Biology at London School of Economics during the 1920s and 1930s. Featuring a fully equipped laboratory headed by a leading geneticist, the Department of Social Biology was Beveridge’s attempt to “cross-fertilise” biology and social science and, in so doing, take the ideological heat out of social scientific, in particular economic, methods of investigation. Exploring why Beveridge’s project failed and throwing light on its long-term legacies, this paper considers what we can learn from the short-lived Department of Social Biology. (shrink)