(P/B) BIOLOGY UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Παρουσίαση

How do we understand the world? While some look to the heavens for intelligent design, others argue that it is determined by information encoded in DNA. Science serves as an important activity for uncovering the processes and operations of nature, but it is also immersed in a social context where ideology influences the questions we ask and how we approach the material world. Biology Under the Influence breaks from the confines of determinism, offering a dialectical analysis for comprehending a dynamic social and natural world.
In Biology Under the Influence, Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins provide a devastating critique of genetic determinism and reductionism within science while exploring a broad range of issues including the nature of science, biology, evolution, the environment, public health, and dialectics. They dismantle the ideology that attempts to naturalize social inequalities, unveil the alienation of science and nature, and illustrate how a dialectical position serves as a basis for grappling with historical developments and a world characterized by change. Biology Under the Influence brings together the illuminating essays of two prominent scientists who work to demystify and empower the public's understanding of science and nature. (From the publisher)

Περιεχόμενα

Dedication
Introduction
Part One:
1. The End of Natural History?
2. The Return of Old Deseases and the Appearance of New Ones
3. False Dichotomies
4. Chance and Necessity
5. Organism and Environment
6. The Biological and the Social
7. How Different Are Natural and Social Science?
8. Does Anything New Ever Happen?
9. Life on Other Worlds
10. Are we Programmed?
11. Evolutionary Psychology
12. Let the Number Speak
13. The Politics of Averages
14. Schmalhausen's Law
15. A Program for Biology
Part Two:
16. Ten Propositions on Science and Antiscience
17. Dialectics and Systems Theory
18. Aspects of Whole and Parts in Population Biology
19. Strategies of Abstraction
20. The Butterfly ex Machina
21. Educating the Intuition to Cope with Complexity
22. Preparing for Uncertainty
Part Three:
23. Greypeace
24. Genes, Environment, and Organisms
25. The Dream kf the Human Genome
26. Does Culture Evolve?
27.Is Capitalism a Disease?: The Crisis in U.S. Public Health
28. Science and Progress: Seven Developmentalist Myths in Agriculture
29. The Maturing of Capitalist Agriculture: Farmer as Proletarian
30. How Cuba Is Going Ecological
31. Living the 11th Thesis
Notes
Index