Abstract
This chapter explores the question of whether we can still “learn lessons” from Lysenkoism . Contemporary allusions are often narrowly polemical, usually making the claim that scientific work is being marginalised for non-scientific reasons. However, one of the lessons of Lysenkoism is that there can be no straightforward separation of science from ideology, politics and economics. Also, recent developments in developmental biology have suggested that Lamarckism may have been prematurely dismissed as erroneous science as a consequence of Lysenkoism . The chapter argues that the emerging paradigm of plasticity ironically revives in a contemporary neoliberal iteration Lysenkoism ’s promise of abundance delivered by the capacity to manipulate and engineer life.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Bibliography
Althusser, Louis, “A Critical Viewpoint on Rectification of Errors: Lysenko: Unfinished History,” trans. Grahame Lock, Marxism Today (February 1977), pp. 53–57.
Carlson, Robert H., Biology Is Technology: The Promise, Peril, and New Business of Engineering Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010).
Ceci, Stephen, and Wendy M. Williams, “Should Scientists Study Race and IQ?,” Nature, Vol. 457 (February 12, 2009), pp. 786–789.
Cooper, Melinda, Life and Surplus: Biotechnology and Capitalism in the Neoliberal Era (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2008).
Davis, Bernard D., “Neo-Lysenkoism, IQ, and the Press,” The Public Interest (Fall 1983), pp. 41–59.
Foucault, Michel, Ethics: Subjectivity and Truth: Essential Works of Michel Foucault 1954–1984, trans. Robert Hurley and others (London: Penguin, 2000).
Gilbert, Scott F., and David Epel, Ecological Developmental Biology: Integrating Epigenetics, Medicine and Evolution (Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates, Inc., 2009).
Gilbert, Scott F., and Sarkar Sahotra, “Embracing Complexity: Organicism for the 21st Century,” Developmental Dynamics, Vol. 219, issue 1 (2000), pp. 1–9.
Graham, Loren R., “Science and Values: The Eugenics Movement in Germany and Russia in the 1920s,” The American Historical Review, Vol. 82, no. 5 (December 1977), pp. 1133–1164.
Graham, Loren R., What Have We Learned About Science and Technology from the Russian Experience? (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998).
Haig, David, “Lamarck Ascending!,” Philosophy and Theory in Biology, Vol. 3 (2011), http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ptb.6959004.0003.004 (Accessed March 4, 2014).
Haraway, Donna, Simians, Cyborgs and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (New York: Routledge, 1991).
Jablonka, Eva, “Cellular Epigentic Inheritance in the Twenty-First Century,” in Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology, eds. Snait B. Gissis and Eva Jablonka (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 215–226.
deJong-Lambert, William, and Nikolai Krementsov, “On Labels and Issues: The Lysenko Controversy and the Cold War,” Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 45, issue 3 (2012), pp. 373–388.
Joravsky, David, The Lysenko Affair (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970).
Kolb, Bryan, and Ian Q. Wishaw, “Brain Plastcity and Behavior,” Annual Review of Psychology, Vol. 49 (1998), pp. 43–64.
Landecker, Hannah, Culturing Life: How Cells Became Technologies (Harvard University Press, 2007).
Lewontin, Richard, and Richard Levins, “The Problem of Lysenkoism,” in The Radicalisation of Science, eds. Hilary Rose and Steven Rose (London: Macmillan, 1976), pp. 32–64.
Malabou, Catherine, What Should We Do With Our Brain?, trans. Sebastian Rand (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008).
Miller, Henry I., “USA Biotechnology Policy: The Ghost of Lysenko?,” Current Opinion in Biotechnology, Vol. 6 (1995), pp. 255–260.
Miller, Henry I., “When Politics Drives Science: Lysenko, Gore and U.S. Biotechnology Policy,” Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 13, issue 2 (1996), pp. 96–112.
Ollier, C. “Lysenkoism and ‘Global Warming’,” Energy and Environment, Vol. 20, nos. 1&2 (2009), pp. 197–200.
Pitts-Taylor, Victoria, “The Plastic Brain: Neoliberalism and the Neuronal Self,” Health, Vol. 14, no. 6 (2010), pp. 635–652.
Radick, Gregory, “Other Histories, Other Biologies,” in Philosophy, Biology and Life, ed. Anthony O’Hear (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 21–47.
Rajan, Kaushik Sunder, Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2006).
Roll-Hansen, N., The Lysenko Effect: The Politics of Science (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2004).
Roll-Hansen, N., “Lamarckism and Lysenkoism Revisited,” in Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology, eds. Snait B. Gissis and Eva Jablonka (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 77–88.
Rose, Hilary, and Steven Rose, “Darwin and After,” New Left Review, no. 63 (May/June 2010), pp. 91–113.
Rose, Hilary, and Steven Rose, Genes, Cells and Brains: The Promethean Promises of the New Biology (London: Verso, 2013).
Schweber, Sylvan S., “The Wider British Context in Darwin’s Theorizing,” in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1985), pp. 35–69.
Selya, Rena, “Defending Scientific Freedom and Democracy: The Genetics Society of America’s Response to Lysenko,” Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 45, issue 3 (2012), pp. 415–442.
Stanchevici, Dmitri, Stalinist Genetics: The Constitutional Rhetoric of T.D. Lysenko (Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company, 2012).
Sultan, Sonia E., “Evolutionary Implications of Individual Plasticity,” in Transformations of Lmarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology, eds. Snait B. Gissis and Eva Jablonka (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), pp. 193–204.
West-Eberhard, Mary Jane, Developmental Plasticity and Evolution (Oxford University Press, 2003).
Wolfe, Audra J., “The Cold War Context of the Golden Jubilee, Or, Why We Think of Mendel as the Father of Genetics,” Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 45, issue 3 (2012), pp. 389–414.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Marks, J. (2017). Lessons from Lysenko. In: deJong-Lambert, W., Krementsov, N. (eds) The Lysenko Controversy as a Global Phenomenon, Volume 2. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39179-3_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39179-3_7
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-39178-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-39179-3
eBook Packages: HistoryHistory (R0)