The Emergence of Genetic Rationality

The Emergence of Genetic Rationality
Author :
Publisher : University of Washington Press
Total Pages : 396
Release :
ISBN-10 : 9780295990347
ISBN-13 : 0295990341
Rating : 4/5 (47 Downloads)

Book Synopsis The Emergence of Genetic Rationality by : Phillip Thurtle

Download or read book The Emergence of Genetic Rationality written by Phillip Thurtle and published by University of Washington Press. This book was released on 2011-06-01 with total page 396 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The emergence of genetic science has profoundly shaped how we think about biology. Indeed, it is difficult now to consider nearly any facet of human experience without first considering the gene. But this mode of understanding life is not, of course, transhistorical. Phillip Thurtle takes us back to the moment just before the emergence of genetic rationality at the turn of the twentieth century to explicate the technological, economic, cultural, and even narrative transformations necessary to make genetic thinking possible. The rise of managerial capitalism brought with it an array of homologous practices, all of which transformed the social fabric. With transformations in political economy and new technologies came new conceptions of biology, and it is in the relationships of social class to breeding practices, of middle managers to biological information processing, and of transportation to experiences of space and time, that we can begin to locate the conditions that made genetic thinking possible, desirable, and seemingly natural. In describing this historical moment, The Emergence of Genetic Rationality is panoramic in scope, addressing primary texts that range from horse breeding manuals to eugenics treatises, natural history tables to railway surveys, and novels to personal diaries. It draws on the work of figures as diverse as Thorstein Veblen, Jack London, Edith Wharton, William James, and Luther Burbank. The central figure, David Starr Jordan - naturalist, poet, eugenicist, educator - provides the book with a touchstone for deciphering the mode of rationality that genetics superseded. Building on continental philosophy, media studies, systems theory, and theories of narrative, The Emergence of Genetic Rationality provides an inter-disciplinary contribution to intellectual and scientific history, science studies, and cultural studies. It offers a truly encyclopedic cultural history that challenges our own ways of organizing knowledge even as it explicates those of an earlier era. In a time in which genetic rationality has become our own common sense, this discussion of its emergence reminds us of the interdependence of the tools we use to process information and the conceptions of life they animate.


The Emergence of Genetic Rationality Related Books

The Emergence of Genetic Rationality
Language: en
Pages: 396
Authors: Phillip Thurtle
Categories: Science
Type: BOOK - Published: 2011-06-01 - Publisher: University of Washington Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

The emergence of genetic science has profoundly shaped how we think about biology. Indeed, it is difficult now to consider nearly any facet of human experience
Rationality and the Genetic Challenge
Language: en
Pages:
Authors: Matti Häyry
Categories: Law
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-02-11 - Publisher: Cambridge University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Should we make people healthier, smarter, and longer-lived if genetic and medical advances enable us to do so? Matti Häyry asks this question in the context of
Rationality for Mortals
Language: en
Pages: 257
Authors: Gerd Gigerenzer
Categories: Philosophy
Type: BOOK - Published: 2010-04-16 - Publisher: Oxford University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Gerd Gigerenzer's influential work examines the rationality of individuals not from the perspective of logic or probability, but from the point of view of adapt
Making Genes, Making Waves
Language: en
Pages: 251
Authors: Jon Beckwith
Categories: Biography & Autobiography
Type: BOOK - Published: 2009-07-01 - Publisher: Harvard University Press

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In 1969, Jon Beckwith and his colleagues succeeded in isolating a gene from the chromosome of a living organism. Announcing this startling achievement at a pres
Data Made Flesh
Language: en
Pages: 306
Authors: Robert Mitchell
Categories: Computers
Type: BOOK - Published: 2013-02-01 - Publisher: Routledge

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

In an age of cloning, cyborgs, and biotechnology, the line between bodies and bytes seems to be disappearing. DataMade Flesh is the first collection to address