Mutant Utopias: Evening Primroses and Imagined Futures in Early Twentieth-Century America

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. Mutant Utopias Evening Primroses and Imagined Futures in Early Twentieth-Century AmericaBy Jim Endersby* ABSTRACTHugo de Vries's mutation theory is now little more than a footnote to the history of biology, a failed theory that briefly led a few biologists astray. However, for the first quarter of the twentieth century it attracted considerable attention from both professional biologists and laypeople. De Vries's theory-together with the plant, Oenothera lamarckiana, that had supplied most of his evidence-became the focus of a surprising variety of imaginative hopes. Scientists and their various publics were fascinated by the utopian possibilities that the primrose seemed to offer, and their discussions shaped a public culture around biology that would help define the twentieth century as the "century of the gene." From a conventional history of science perspective (which, in the case of twentiethcentury biology, often remains focused on the content of scientific theories and the professional communities that shaped them), the mutation theory seems unimportant. However, while De Vries's new theory of evolution ultimately failed to persuade the scientific community, it was much more important than is now realized, particularly because it helped make biology part of a wide variety of public debates. Understanding the mutation theory's story more fully suggests that we may need to rethink much of the rest of the century of the gene's history, to think less in terms of what happened in the lab and more about how biology came to function as public culture. insofar as he is remembered at all, it is for something he considered relatively unimportant, at least by comparison with his own work. He would doubtless have preferred to be immortalized as the author of Die Mutationstheorie (1901, 1903), in which he announced a radical new conception of evolution that he was convinced marked the completion of Charles Darwin's work. At the beginning of the twentieth century many biologists, including some Darwinists, were losing confidence in Darwin's version of evolution.2 Darwin had argued that the small, everyday variations in plants and animals were sifted by natural selection over millions of years. Variations that were harmful to the organism were eliminated, while those that were beneficial gradually accumulated until eventually new species emerged. Some critics pointed out that late nineteenth-century physics implied that the Earth could Society, 1973, 117:105-111; Robert Olby, "Mendel No Mendelian?" History of Science, 1979, 17:53-72 All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions not be old enough for Darwin's stately dance of the species to have produced the variety of life we see arou...

1927–1939: American science writers shape public approaches toward genetic modification in response to Hermann J. Muller’s fruit fly experiments

“…The American press had at first engaged with the scientific control of heredity at the dawn of the twentieth century when the American followers of Hugo de Vries’s immensely popular mutation theory promised the production of new plant varieties “at will” or “to order” (Curry, 2016; Endersby, 2013; Rouyan, in press). Two decades later, the public fascination and revulsion with mutations intermingled as Muller’s research offered the possibility of manipulating evolution and, in a dialog with Millikan’s divine cosmic rays, revealed the potential results of artificial mutagenesis as monstrous and unnatural.…”

The Natural History of Hereditary Colorectal Cancer Syndromes: From Phenotype to Genotype? Where Do We Stand and What Does the Future Hold?

“…It took another 60 years for the connection to be made that genes are part of DNA. 7 At that time a series of discoveries established the era of molecular biology: the role of mutations in causing pathway abnormalities, 8 the relationship between a gene and a specific protein, and the molecular structure of DNA itself. 9,10 In 1961, the genetic code was cracked, in 1972 the first gene was sequenced, and in 1977 Sanger developed a clinically practical method for sequencing DNA.…”

Organisms in Experimental Research

“…A growing trend particularly in the 2010s has been attention to other areas of human activities in which organisms are actively co-opted but which have relevance for experimental science. Aside from the abundant work on Darwin and his pigeons (e.g., Secord 2011), documentation of the intersections between animal fancying and experimental scientific research remains relatively limited, exceptions being Christian Reiss's (2012) work on axolotls where he investigates the relation between the popularity of aquaria and 19 th century zoology in Europe, and Endersby's (2013) contribution on the public appeal of primroses, Hugo DeVries's organism of choice, in relation to the establishment of early 20 th century mutation theory. Sheep breeding and its contributions to knowledge of heredity are examined in Roger Wood and Vítezslav Orel (2001), with particular focus on the activities of non-scientist sheep breeders.…”