It sounds quite interesting I'll have to see if I can get the book. No doubt given
my local universities' library I'll be calling on interlibrary loan.
It is a long time I have read about Lysenko but what is said in the review
sounds partly right. He was not a fraud but a good practical biologist.
Nevertheless the rejection of Mendel's work was surely wrong and some of the
propoganda e.g. citing against him that he was a monk are ludicrous.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
Louis Proyect wrote:
> > Dialectical materialists speak of thought mirroring, being a
> reflection of,
> >etc. matter in consciousness. This relationship has never been clear to
> me. Lenin
> >writes about perception and adopts the same mirroring imagery. This aspect of
> >traditional Marxism, at least dialectical materialism, is not discussed
> by Levins
> >at all.
>
> The Dialectical Biologist
>
> Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin
>
> Harvard University Press 1985
>
> A book review by Danny Yee ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), Copyright © 1993
>
> http://www.anatomy.usyd.edu.au/danny/book-reviews/
>
> The Dialectical Biologist is a collection of essays on various aspects of
> biology. Richard Lewontin is a population geneticist and Richard Levins is
> an ecologist, and they are both world-famous within their fields. Here they
> are writing as Marxists (and dialectical materialists), and it is this that
> gives this book its unique perspective. It was by reading this book that I
> first came to an understanding of the dialectical method and attained some
> grasp of Marx and Engel's broader philosophy. Perhaps this is because my
> understanding of biology is better than my understanding of economics and
> political theory, or perhaps it is simply because Marx's writings are
> difficult to come to grips with and the commentary on them is so contentious.
>
> The essays are divided into three sections. The first is about evolution,
> and the three essays it contains are all attacks on the adaptionist,
> neo-Darwinian view of the subject. The essays are lucid and well argued (as
> one would expect from the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary
> Change) but there is a bit of repetition between them (two of them were
> originally encyclopaedia articles on "Evolution" and "Adaption"). The
> second section, entitled "On Anlysis", contains a warning of the potential
> for misuse of the analysis of variance in genetics, the brilliantly funny
> parody "Isadore Nabi on the Tendencies of Motion" and an essay on the
> relationship between dialectics and reductionism which makes particular
> reference to community ecology. The third section, entitled "Science as a
> Social Product and the Social Product of Science", contains an eclectic
> collection of essays on the use of science and the effects of social
> factors on science. The essay titles are "Lysenkoism", "The Commoditization
> of Science", "Biology in the Third World", "Political Economy of
> Agricultural Research", "The Pesticide System", "Research Needs for Latin
> Community Health" and "What is Human Nature?". The essay on Lysenkoism was
> the one I found the most interesting; while not denying the scientific
> errors involved, it is concerned to explain the full complexities of the
> "affair", which are all too often ignored by those using it as a stick to
> beat Marxism with. The common feature of all the essays is respect for the
> complexities of social processes, scientific practice and the interaction
> between them.
>
> The conclusion is a short (around twenty page) general discussion on the
> philosophical foundations of science entitled "Dialectics". It is one of
> the best things I have ever read on the philosophy of science, and a worthy
> conclusion to a great book. The Dialectical Biologist is heartily
> recommended to anyone with an interest in biology or the philosophy of
> science.
>
> Louis Proyect
>
> (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
