Author: Adam Rutherford
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324035617
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
How did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years? Control is a book about eugenics, what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America, where it was embraced by presidents, funded by Gilded Age monopolists, and enshrined into racist American laws that became the ideological cornerstone of the Third Reich. Despite this horrific legacy, eugenics looms large today as the advances in genetics in the last thirty years—from the sequencing of the human genome to modern gene editing techniques—have brought the idea of population purification back into the mainstream. Eugenics has “a short history, but a long past,” Rutherford writes. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment in the twentieth century. The second part of the book explores how eugenics operates today, as part of our language and culture, as part of current political and racial discussions, and as an eternal temptation to powerful people who wish to improve society through reproductive control. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions—did eugenics work in Nazi Germany? And could it work today?—revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.
Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics
Author: Adam Rutherford
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324035617
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
How did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years? Control is a book about eugenics, what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America, where it was embraced by presidents, funded by Gilded Age monopolists, and enshrined into racist American laws that became the ideological cornerstone of the Third Reich. Despite this horrific legacy, eugenics looms large today as the advances in genetics in the last thirty years—from the sequencing of the human genome to modern gene editing techniques—have brought the idea of population purification back into the mainstream. Eugenics has “a short history, but a long past,” Rutherford writes. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment in the twentieth century. The second part of the book explores how eugenics operates today, as part of our language and culture, as part of current political and racial discussions, and as an eternal temptation to powerful people who wish to improve society through reproductive control. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions—did eugenics work in Nazi Germany? And could it work today?—revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324035617
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 171
Book Description
How did an obscure academic idea pave the way to the Holocaust within just fifty years? Control is a book about eugenics, what geneticist Adam Rutherford calls “a defining idea of the twentieth century.” Inspired by Darwin’s ideas about evolution, eugenics arose in Victorian England as a theory for improving the British population, and quickly spread to America, where it was embraced by presidents, funded by Gilded Age monopolists, and enshrined into racist American laws that became the ideological cornerstone of the Third Reich. Despite this horrific legacy, eugenics looms large today as the advances in genetics in the last thirty years—from the sequencing of the human genome to modern gene editing techniques—have brought the idea of population purification back into the mainstream. Eugenics has “a short history, but a long past,” Rutherford writes. The first half of Control is the history of an idea, from its roots in key philosophical texts of the classical world all the way into their genocidal enactment in the twentieth century. The second part of the book explores how eugenics operates today, as part of our language and culture, as part of current political and racial discussions, and as an eternal temptation to powerful people who wish to improve society through reproductive control. With disarming wit and scientific precision, Rutherford explains why eugenics still figures prominently in the twenty-first century, despite its genocidal past. And he confronts insidious recurring questions—did eugenics work in Nazi Germany? And could it work today?—revealing the intellectual bankruptcy of the idea, and the scientific impossibility of its realization.
Experiments on a Coloring Material Present in Low Temperature Tar Oil
Author: Leonard William Hartkemeier
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coal-tar colors
Languages : en
Pages : 68
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Coal-tar colors
Languages : en
Pages : 68
Book Description
Surgery, Gynecology & Obstetrics
Author: Franklin Henry Martin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Gynecology
Languages : en
Pages : 846
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Gynecology
Languages : en
Pages : 846
Book Description
Proceedings of the Society for Horticultural Science
Author: Society for Horticultural Science (U.S.).
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Horticulture
Languages : en
Pages : 664
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Horticulture
Languages : en
Pages : 664
Book Description
Bulletin of the Chicago Academy of Sciences
Author: Chicago Academy of Sciences
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 134
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 134
Book Description
Commercial Organic Analysis
Author: Alfred Henry Allen
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Analytical chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 474
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Analytical chemistry
Languages : en
Pages : 474
Book Description
Color changes and structure of the skin of Anolis carolinensis
Author: Charles E. Geldern (von.)
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 66
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 66
Book Description