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Should “Heredity” and “Inheritance” Be Biological Terms? William Bateson's Change of Mind as a Historical and Philosophical Problem

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Gregory Radick
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Abstract

In 1894, William Bateson objected to the terms “heredity” and “inheritance” in biology, on grounds of contamination with misleading notions from the everyday world. Yet after the rediscovery of Mendel's work in the spring of 1900, Bateson promoted that work as disclosing the “principles of heredity.” For historians of science, Bateson's change of mind provides a new angle on these terms at a crucial moment in their history. For philosophers of science, the case can serve as a reminder of the potential of Putnam's hypothesis of a division of linguistic labor for analyzing the semantic lives of scientific kind terms.

Type
Everyday Concepts and Scientific Concepts
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 714 - 724
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

Many thanks to Jordan Bartol, Dominic Berry, Mike Buttolph, Jon Hodge, Staffan Müller-Wille, and the referees for invaluable help of various kinds and to my fellow symposiasts and the participants at sessions in Leeds, Montreal (PSA 2010), and Salt Lake City (ISHPSSB 2011) for stimulating discussion along the way.

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