Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley].
- Julian Huxley
- Date:
- 1949
Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)
Credit: Soviet genetics and world science : Lysenko and the meaning of heredity / [Julian Huxley]. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![POSTCRIPT I When this book was already in proof, two important articles on the genetics controversy by two distinguished British scientists sympathetic to communism were published in the Modern Quarterly (Vol. 4, No. 3)— In Defence of Genetics by the geneticist Professor J. B. S. Haldane, F.R.S., and The Biological Controversy in the Soviet Union and its Implications by the crystallographer and physicist Professor J. D. Bernal, F.R.S. Professor Haldane does not deal with what I consider the main issue, namely the official banning of Mendelian genetics on the basis of a scientific party line. He is only concerned with an appraisal of the views of Lysenko and his followers (which, he points out, has been made much more difficult by ill-informed criticism of [Mendelian] genetics by supporters of Lysenko in this country [Britain]. He says that Lysenko's speech made him realize for the first time the idealistic character of Mendel's formulation of his results, because Mendel had spoken of the transmission in heredity of differentiating characters (as opposed to genetic units). However, whether on this point Mendel was or was not under the influence of Thomist philosophy, as Haldane suggests, is irrelevant to the situation today (as Haldane himself later implies). Geneticists quite early realized the illegitimacy of speaking of the inheritance of characters (except as an occasional form of convenient short-hand) and began talking in terms of the inheritance of hereditary factors —which were later styled genes.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b18022777_0242.JP2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
