Gregory Radick is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coauthor, most recently, of Darwin’s Argument by Analogy.

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionPart 1: Before1 Who Needs a Science of Heredity?2 The Meaning of the Quincunx3 Biology for the Steam Age4 Royal Entrances (and Exits)Part 2: Battle5 Between Boers and Basset Hounds6 Two Plates of Peas7 Mendel All the Way8 Damn All Controversies!9 An Unfinished ManuscriptPart 3: Beyond10 The Success of a New Science11 What Might Have Been12 Mendelian Legacies13 Weldonian LegaciesConclusionPostscript 1: On “Genetic Determinism” and “Interaction”Postscript 2: A Simple Mendelian Cross WeldonizedPostscript 3: From a Counterfactual Edition of the Dictionary of Scientific BiographyAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

“Radick recounts every twist and turn of the debate, and his account of the Bateson-Weldon stand-off is surely definitive . . . allow[ing] the reader to experience the uncertainty and messiness of real science in the making. . . . Everyone now knows that Bateson and the Mendelians won in the end. Radick wants us to imagine that it could have and should have turned out differently, had all the evidence and arguments been weighed and had Weldon not died prematurely in 1906, aged 46.”

Gregory Radick is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coauthor, most recently, of Darwin’s Argument by Analogy.

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionPart 1: Before1 Who Needs a Science of Heredity?2 The Meaning of the Quincunx3 Biology for the Steam Age4 Royal Entrances (and Exits)Part 2: Battle5 Between Boers and Basset Hounds6 Two Plates of Peas7 Mendel All the Way8 Damn All Controversies!9 An Unfinished ManuscriptPart 3: Beyond10 The Success of a New Science11 What Might Have Been12 Mendelian Legacies13 Weldonian LegaciesConclusionPostscript 1: On “Genetic Determinism” and “Interaction”Postscript 2: A Simple Mendelian Cross WeldonizedPostscript 3: From a Counterfactual Edition of the Dictionary of Scientific BiographyAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

“Radick recounts every twist and turn of the debate, and his account of the Bateson-Weldon stand-off is surely definitive . . . allow[ing] the reader to experience the uncertainty and messiness of real science in the making. . . . Everyone now knows that Bateson and the Mendelians won in the end. Radick wants us to imagine that it could have and should have turned out differently, had all the evidence and arguments been weighed and had Weldon not died prematurely in 1906, aged 46.”

Gregory Radick is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Leeds. He is the author of The Simian Tongue: The Long Debate about Animal Language, also published by the University of Chicago Press, and coauthor, most recently, of Darwin’s Argument by Analogy.

• List of IllustrationsIntroductionPart 1: Before1 Who Needs a Science of Heredity?2 The Meaning of the Quincunx3 Biology for the Steam Age4 Royal Entrances (and Exits)Part 2: Battle5 Between Boers and Basset Hounds6 Two Plates of Peas7 Mendel All the Way8 Damn All Controversies!9 An Unfinished ManuscriptPart 3: Beyond10 The Success of a New Science11 What Might Have Been12 Mendelian Legacies13 Weldonian LegaciesConclusionPostscript 1: On “Genetic Determinism” and “Interaction”Postscript 2: A Simple Mendelian Cross WeldonizedPostscript 3: From a Counterfactual Edition of the Dictionary of Scientific BiographyAcknowledgmentsNotesReferencesIndex

“Radick recounts every twist and turn of the debate, and his account of the Bateson-Weldon stand-off is surely definitive . . . allow[ing] the reader to experience the uncertainty and messiness of real science in the making. . . . Everyone now knows that Bateson and the Mendelians won in the end. Radick wants us to imagine that it could have and should have turned out differently, had all the evidence and arguments been weighed and had Weldon not died prematurely in 1906, aged 46.”