Evolution Made to Order
Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America
9780226790862
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Evolution Made to Order
Plant Breeding and Technological Innovation in Twentieth-Century America
Plant breeders have long sought technologies to extend human control over nature. Early in the twentieth century, this led some to experiment with startlingly strange tools like x-ray machines, chromosome-altering chemicals, and radioactive elements. Contemporary reports celebrated these mutation-inducing methods as ways of generating variation in plants on demand. Speeding up evolution, they imagined, would allow breeders to genetically engineer crops and flowers to order. Creating a new food crop or garden flower would soon be as straightforward as innovating any other modern industrial product.
In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.
In Evolution Made to Order, Helen Anne Curry traces the history of America’s pursuit of tools that could intervene in evolution. An immersive journey through the scientific and social worlds of midcentury genetics and plant breeding and a compelling exploration of American cultures of innovation, Evolution Made to Order provides vital historical context for current worldwide ethical and policy debates over genetic engineering.
320 pages | 29 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2016
Biological Sciences: Evolutionary Biology
History: American History, Environmental History, History of Technology
Reviews
Table of Contents
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
Part 1 Evolution by X-ray: The Industrialization of Biological Innovation
1 Mutation Theories
2 An Unsolved Problem
3 Speeding Up Evolution
4 X-rays in the Lab and Field
5 Industrial Evolution
Part 2 Tinkering with Chromosomes: Colchicine in the Lab and Garden
6 Artificial Tetraploidy
7 Evolution to Order
8 Better Evolution through Chemistry
9 Tinkering Technologists
10 The Flower Manufacturers
Part 3 Atoms for Agriculture: Evolution in a Large Technological System
11 Radiation Revisited
12 Mutation Politics
13 An Atomic-Age Experiment Station
14 Atomic Gardens
15 The Peaceful Atom in Global Agriculture
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Part 1 Evolution by X-ray: The Industrialization of Biological Innovation
1 Mutation Theories
2 An Unsolved Problem
3 Speeding Up Evolution
4 X-rays in the Lab and Field
5 Industrial Evolution
Part 2 Tinkering with Chromosomes: Colchicine in the Lab and Garden
6 Artificial Tetraploidy
7 Evolution to Order
8 Better Evolution through Chemistry
9 Tinkering Technologists
10 The Flower Manufacturers
Part 3 Atoms for Agriculture: Evolution in a Large Technological System
11 Radiation Revisited
12 Mutation Politics
13 An Atomic-Age Experiment Station
14 Atomic Gardens
15 The Peaceful Atom in Global Agriculture
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index
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