From: Rakesh Bhandari (bhandari@BERKELEY.EDU)
Date: Thu Dec 16 2004 - 11:56:30 EST
Argument draws from Dominique Lecourt's analysis of damaging effects of Bogdanov's and Bukharin's proletkult and instrumentalist philosophy of science. Less sympathetic to dialectics than, say, Levins and Lewontin. The Lysenko Effect The Politics of Science .... Nils Roll-Hansen .... Control of Nature Series Editors: Morton L. Schagrin, SUNY College at Fredonia Michael Ruse, Florida State University Robert Hollinger, Iowa State University "Roll-Hansen provides an intense re-examination of the Lysenko controversy introducing materials from previously inaccessible archives and from the public press and popular scientific journals not utilized in earlier accounts. ... he adds an important new interpretation of this devastating phase of Soviet science. His bold conclusions and their links to recent science - society debates are sure to create discussion and controversy among students of the social role and social structure of science...". Everett Mendelsohn Professor of the History of Science Harvard University Ukrainian agronomist T. D. Lysenko (1898-1976) was the leader of an influential Soviet agrobiological school that rejected standard genetics and instead promoted a brand of pseudoscience that held sway among Soviet biologists for over twenty-five years. The dominance of Lysenko's pseudoscientific ideas has been characterized as the biggest scandal of 20th-century science. That it happened under a regime that took particular pride in building its policy on science makes the affair particularly interesting, even for Western observers free from totalitarian governments. The Soviet Union was the first country with a government policy and large-scale public support for science. Agricultural science was a main showcase for this unprecedented investment in science. In this in-depth study of Lysenkoism, historian of science Nils Roll-Hansen seeks to understand how Soviet biology went so wrong. Unlike other scholars who have studied Lysenko's influence, Roll-Hansen argues that the corruption of Soviet biology should not be explained primarily as the result of Stalin's despotism and the willful intervention of party hacks into the objective methods of science. Because of ideological and economic pressures to produce tangible benefits to society, says Roll-Hansen, Soviet biology, under Lysenko's leadership, succumbed to a wishful-thinking syndrome, which paved the way for Lysenko. By such thinking scientific objectivity was compromised in favor of ideas that accorded with progressive political ideals and economic goals as determined by the ruling politburo. Roll-Hansen draws provocative parallels between Lysenko's bad science in mid-20th-century Russia and attempts by Western theorists today to construe science in social constructivist terms or to exercise political control over scientific research. Based on archival materials not previously accessible, The Lysenko Effect is both a valuable contribution to the history of science and an instructive case study in the ways in which ideals of social progress can skew the results of objective science in any society. Nils Roll-Hansen (Oslo, Norway) is professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Oslo, the author of The Freedom and Necessity of Science: Pasteur's Theories in Growth and Decline and the editor (with Gunnar Broberg) of Eugenics and the Welfare State. .... .... PAGES: 335 pp COMMENTS: Notes, References, Index ISBN: 1-59102-262-2 BINDING: Paperback PRICE: $25 SIZE: 6 x 9 CATEGORY: Humanity Books
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