Biology and Revolution in Twentieth-Century China (Asia/Pacific/Perspectives) - Tapa dura

Biology and Revolution is both an erudite labor of love and an absorbing examination of the struggle for control of scientific endeavor, and deserves a wide readership. * The China Journal * Excellent. * American Historical Review * This book contains a rare but detailed analysis of how institutional, social, and political factors influenced not only Chinese professional lives, but also their institutions, universities, and laboratories. A concluding chapter offers a thoughtful, critical survey of events. Carefully researched writing; chapter bibliographical notes; glossary of Chinese names; list of 24 scientists interviewed by Schneider; bibliography in English and Chinese. Highly recommended. * CHOICE * The intellectual content of this book is intriguing. * Journal Of The History Of Biology * In this comprehensive history of biological science in modern China, Laurence Schneider undertakes to explain the origins, developments, deviations, and triumphs-including China's role in sequencing the human genome-of Chinese genetics and evolutionary theory across the twentieth century. Tracing this history from the 1920s through the 1990s, Professor Schneider's volume adds to the small but growing number of monographs that cross the 1949 divide as well as to the handful of studies about twentieth-century Chinese science. * Journal of Asian Studies * The four central chapters on Lysenkoism...provid[e] invaluable information and detailed analyses of the role of biology in a period of revolutionary upheaval. * China Quarterly * A most welcome contribution by a pioneer scholar....The first English-language history of a natural scientific discipline across the twentieth century in China, [this book] will be a standard text in the field for many years to come....Schneider convincingly and elegantly brings the material together under the overarching theme of control....As a pioneering effort in a growing field in the history of science, this book will help inspire much future research........[A] tremendous contribution to our understanding of science in twentieth-century China. * Isis * Biology and Revolution is a remarkable achievement that serves as both an excellent introduction to the history of science in twentieth-century China and an in-depth historical study of Chinese genetics and society. It's clearly written and well-organized. * East Asian Science, Technology, and Medicine *

Using the field of genetics as a case study, this book follows the troubled development of modern natural science in China from the 1920s, through Mao's China, to the present post-socialist era. Through detailed portraits of key scientists and institutions, basic dilemmas are explored: how to control nature with science, how to gain independence from foreign-controlled science, how to get scientists out from under control of ideology and the state. Using the field of genetics as a case study, this book follows the troubled development of modern natural science in China from the 1920s, through Mao's China, to the present post-socialist era. Through detailed portraits of key scientists and institutions, basic dilemmas are explored: how to control nature with science, how to gain independence from foreign-controlled science, how to get scientists out from under control of ideology and the state.