Aristotle, Buddhist scripture and embryology in ancient Mexico: building inclusion by re-thinking what counts as the history of developmental biology

ABSTRACTIt has not gone unnoticed in recent times that historical writing about science is heavily Eurocentric. A striking example can be found in the history of developmental biology: textbooks and popular science writing frequently trace an intellectual thread from the Greek philosopher Aristotle through 19th century embryology to 20th century genetics. Few in our field are aware of the depth and breadth of early embryological thinking outside of Europe. Here, I provide a series of vignettes highlighting the rich history of embryological thinking in Asia and Latin America. My goal is to provide an entertaining, even provocative, synopsis of this important but under-studied topic. It is my hope that this work will spur others to carry out more thorough investigations, with the ultimate goal of building a more inclusive discipline.

The ancient mythology of modern science : a mythologist looks (seriously) at popular science writing, por Gregory Schrempp.

Anthropology has a complex relationship with science modern. On the one hand, this discipline registers its investigative work within a scientific bet that monitors and builds criteria of validity, rigor and generality to objectively understand the social reality. On the other hand, anthropology not only studies scientific the multiple possibilities of existence of human beings, but in turn critically assesses disputes, legacies, and limits by means of which modern science thinks, represents and interrogate the world.

Nation as Laboratory

This chapter offers a new reading of popular science publications from the period of the República Restaurada (1868–76) in Mexico, namely José Joaquín Arriaga’s La Ciencia Recreativa (1871–74), a set of science primers for children and articles from Santiago Sierra’s popular-science magazine, El Mundo Científico (1877–78). Situating these publications within this period of political, cultural, and social stabilization, Blanco explores the uses of popular science writing as modes for perceiving the Mexican landscape in the throes of modernization. Employing Bruno Latour and Steve Woolgar’s concept of the laboratory as a space of and for inscription, Blanco argues that these Mexican science writers in effect conceived the nation’s landscape as a kind of open laboratory in which natural phenomena were continuously recorded and measured. These inscriptions, in turn, were a way of integrating the Mexican nation into the practices of global science in the late nineteenth century.

‘A Scientific Age’

This chapter focuses on the volumes on science. An introductory discussion of popular science writing leads to more detailed analyses of Haldane’s and Bernal’s key volumes. Their projection of biotechnological and bionic interventions in the human are examined as pioneers of trans-humanism. Their imaginative audacity is contrasted with the bland norms of contemporary futurology. They are seen as representative of the series in several ways: for their radical intellectual approach; their placing of science in relation to the arts and humanities; their commitment to public debate and education; their concerns with language and communication; and with psychology. The section concludes by establishing an essentially scientific paradigm (derived from Haldane and Bernal) for the whole series, arguing that this paradigm represents a transformation by science and technology of every aspect of life, from our experience of change, to a sense of agency, our politics, modes of thinking and feeling, and our ways of thinking about and expressing our imaginations of the future.

SEX IN UTOPIA: THE EVOLUTIONARY HEDONISM OF GRANT ALLEN AND OSCAR WILDE

In his provocative polemic“The New Hedonism,” Grant Allen mounts a passionate defense offin-de-siècleaestheticism by proposing a modern ethic – the titular “new hedonism,” which he borrows from Oscar Wilde's novelThe Picture of Dorian Gray(1890, rev. 1891) – that fully synthesizes aestheticism's insights with up-to-date scientific knowledge. At first glance, Allen seems an unexpected ally for Wilde, in part because few literary historians have explored the link between the two contemporaries. Many modern-day scholars of Allen's work (including Peter Morton, Bernard Lightman, William Greenslade, and Terence Rodgers) have tended to focus on his popular science writing, his elaborations on Herbert Spencer's evolutionary theories, and his controversial “New Woman” novelsThe Woman Who Did(1895) andThe Type-Writer Girl(1897). Those who do connect Allen and Wilde, such as Nick Freeman, often draw the relationship into focus through the two writers’ shared interest in libertarian socialism rather than their overlapping philosophical and aesthetic concerns (111–28). Yet, as we can begin to see in the epigraphs, the association that Allen made between evolutionary progress and the “beautifying of life” echoes one of the most significant claims of Wilde's earlier, dialogic essay, “The Critic as Artist.” “Aesthetics,” Wilde's speaker, Gilbert, enthuses, “like sexual selection, make life lovely and wonderful, fill it with new forms, and give it progress, and variety and change” (“The Critic as Artist” 204). Allen's survey of human evolutionary history reminds him, too, that our cultural and artistic achievements are all that lift us “above the beasts that perish” (382). For both writers, then, aestheticism's commitment to beauty, “self-development,” and the emancipated pursuit of pleasure entails potentially sweeping consequences for the future evolution of humankind. Allen's vocal support for Wilde – which Allen expressed privately in letters as well as publicly in his 1891 article “The Celt in English Art” – was not simply a convenient political alliance, but an integral part of Allen's complete program for sociocultural improvement.

The story of The Selfish Gene

The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins, published in 1976, famously became a bestseller and is still selling more than 40 years later. This behind-the-scenes account of its publication recounts the story as seen through the eyes of the book’s commissioning editor, from the initial experience of reading early draft chapters to publication eight months later. Elements of the story include the different views and lively debates on the right title for the book; choosing the Desmond Morris painting for the jacket; deciding whether or not to include illustrations; and the role television played when the book was launched. An American dimension places the book in the context of the fiercely fought sociobiology controversy at that time. The characteristics of the best popular science writing and publishing are discussed. Finally, The Selfish Gene is seen in relation to the books Dawkins went on to publish over the following 30 years.