Scientific Inheritance: How History Matters for the Sciences

Radick's lecture explores the state of the discipline through the question of why Gregor Mendel has become the founding hero of textbook histories of genetics, at the expense of good history, of those who made more essential contributions and, he suggests, of good pedagogy for future biologists and geneticists. As he says, "the gap between what's widely taken for granted as true scientifically and what's actually the case is a theme of perennial fascination for historians and philosophers of science.