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SUMMARY:A backwards book? Authorship\, eugenics\, and the evolution of R.A
 . Fisher's The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection - Alex Aylward (Unive
 rsity of Oxford)
DTSTART:20240129T130000Z
DTEND:20240129T140000Z
UID:TALK210691@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Tom Banbury
DESCRIPTION:R.A. Fisher's _The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection_\, fi
 rst published by Oxford's Clarendon Press in 1930\, has a mixed legacy. It
 s opening chapters\, analysing various evolutionary scenarios from a combi
 ned Darwinian-Mendelian perspective\, are widely celebrated today for thei
 r role in laying the theoretical foundations of the so-called 'modern synt
 hesis'. Its closing chapters\, meanwhile\, are notorious. Across more than
  one hundred pages\, Fisher provides an extended meditation on eugenics\, 
 in which he attempts to explain the collapse of 'great' civilisations\, pa
 st and present\, in terms of the overzealous breeding of the 'undesirable'
  lower classes. In this talk I will examine how such a book of 'two halves
 ' came to be. Drawing upon previously unstudied archival evidence\, I will
  reconstruct the authorship of this now classic scientific text\, overturn
 ing long-held ideas about the timing and order of the book's composition. 
 Doing so not only reveals new insights about the writing and reading of ev
 olutionary science between the Wars\; it also recasts a decades-long schol
 arly dispute regarding the relationship between Fisher's eugenical commitm
 ents and his scientific contributions\, at a moment when his legacies are 
 being actively debated once more.
LOCATION:Seminar Room 2\, Department of History and Philosophy of Science
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