History Within : The Science, Culture, and Politics of Bones, Organisms, and Molecules / Marianne Sommer.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Sommer, Marianne, Author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Natural history--History.

Natural history.

Evolution (Biology)--History.

Evolution (Biology).

Evolutionary genetics--History.

Evolutionary genetics.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (553 p.)

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [2016]

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Personal genomics services such as 23andMe and Ancestry.com now offer what once was science fiction: the ability to sequence and analyze an individual's entire genetic code-promising, in some cases, facts about that individual's ancestry that may have remained otherwise lost. Such services draw on and contribute to the science of human population genetics that attempts to reconstruct the history of humankind, including the origin and movement of specific populations. Is it true, though, that who we are and where we come from is written into the sequence of our genomes? Are genes better documents for determining our histories and identities than fossils or other historical sources? Our interpretation of gene sequences, like our interpretation of other historical evidence, inevitably tells a story laden with political and moral values. Focusing on the work of Henry Fairfield Osborn, Julian Sorell Huxley, and Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza in paleoanthropology, evolutionary biology, and human population genetics, History Within asks how the sciences of human origins, whether through the museum, the zoo, or the genetics lab, have shaped our idea of what it means to be human. How have these biologically based histories influenced our ideas about nature, society, and culture? As Marianne Sommer shows, the stories we tell about bones, organisms, and molecules often change the world.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Chapter One. From Visual Memory to "Racial Soul"

Chapter Two. Paper Ancestors? or "A Word- Painting of the Scene and of the Man or Woman"

Chapter Three. The Hall of the Age of Man: The Politics of Building a Site of Phylogenetic Remembrance

Chapter Four. Creative Evolution, or Man's Struggle up Mount Parnassus

Chapter Five. History Within between Science and Fiction

Chapter Six. If I Were Dictator: The Modern Synthesis, Evolutionary Humanism, and a Superhuman Memory

Chapter Seven. Evolution in Action: The Zoo as a Site of Phylogenetic Remembrance

Chapter Eight. Scientific Humanism in the Extended Zoo: History Within as the Basis of Democratic Reform

Chapter Nine. Evolutionary Humanism: Planned Ecology and World Heritage Management through the Colonial Offi ce, UNESCO, IUCN, and WWF

Chapter Ten. The Ascent of Man Defended

Chapter Eleven. Human History as Brownian Motion, or How Genetic Trees and Gene Maps Draw Things Together

Chapter Twelve. Cultural Transmission and Progress

Chapter Thirteen. The Geography of "Our Heritage": From the Human Genome Diversity Project to the Genographic Project

Chapter Fourteen. The Genographic Network: Science, Markets, and Genetic Narratives

Chapter Fifteen. The Genographics of Unity in Diversity

Postscript

Notes

References

Index

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2020)

ISBN:

9780226349879

022634987X

OCLC:

949759292