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As Oren Solomon Harman shows in "The Man Who Invented the Chromosome", Darlington's controversial cytological research clarified many basic biological issues and provided essential evidence for the evolutionary synthesis of the 1940s. He 'invented' the chromosome by describing its behaviour in a way that made genetic and evolutionary sense...A strong commitment to an evolutionary perspective led Darlington to some unpopular conclusions, which he published in books and articles aimed at a wide audience. Convinced that biological principles, especially genetics, dictate human values, he espoused strong eugenic programmes...He felt that the time had come for science to determine morality: religion and politics should be replaced by evolutionary logic for individuals, countries and humanity...Harman provides a cautionary tale for those who seek to tie our humanity too closely to what is found in our chromosomes. -- Rena Selya "Nature" (09/30/2004)
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Born by mistake, or connivance, to struggling parents in a small Lancashire cotton town in 1903, an uninspired Darlington inadvertently escaped the obscurity of farming life and rose instead, against all odds, to become within a few short years the world's greatest expert on chromosomes, and one of the most penetrating biological thinkers of the twentieth century. Harman follows Darlington's path from bleak prospects to world fame, showing how, within the most minuscule of worlds, he sought answers to the biggest questions - how species originate, how variation occurs, how Nature, both blind and foreboding, random and insightful, makes her way from deep past to unknown future. But Darlington did not stop there: Chromosomes held within their tiny confines untold, dark truths about man and his culture. This passionate conviction led the once famed Darlington down a path of rebuke, isolation, and finally obscurity. As The Man Who Invented the Chromosome unfolds Darlington's forgotten tale - the Nazi atrocities, the Cold War, the crackpot Lysenko, the molecular revolution, eugenics, civil rights, the welfare state, the changing views of man's place in nature, biological determinism - all were interconnected. Just as Darlington's work provoked him to ask questions about the link between biology and culture, his life raises fundamental questions about the link between science and society.
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