Alan C. Love

Christopher R. Donohue

Interdisciplinary voices reflect on some of the most complex and consequential scientific undertakings of our time Perspectives on the Human Genome Project and Genomics is a groundbreaking volume that examines the pivotal roles of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) in the Human Genome Project (HGP) and the development of other major genomics projects. Drawing on newly uncovered archival materials and oral histories from NHGRI, this volume offers a multifaceted narrative of transformative scientific achievements of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Coeditors Christopher R. Donohue and Alan C. Love bring together a range of perspectives on the HGP’s progress and legacy, as well as other major genomics projects, to explore not only their scientific achievements but also their social and political dimensions. Presenting reflections from historians, philosophers, and sociologists alongside those of key NHGRI scientists like Eric Green, Mark Guyer, and Elise Feingold; experts like Nature editor-in-chief Magdalena Skipper and geneticist Eric Vilain; and scholars of the ethical, legal, and social implications of genomics like Jean McEwan and Joy Boyer, Perspectives on the Human Genome Project and Genomics highlights the international, interdisciplinary collaborations and collective long view that underpinned these genomics initiatives aimed at a better understanding of our basic biology and genetic diseases. From genomic variation and sequencing technologies to the integration of big data and the influence of ancestry and gender, this book is an essential resource for deepening the discussion of the scientific, historical, and ethical impacts of genomics and a fascinating collection of insights into coordinated science in the making. Contributors: Rina Bliss, Joy Boyer, Lisa D. Brooks, Michel Dubois, Elise A. Feingold, Adam Felsenfeld, Miguel García-Sancho, Eric D. Green, Catherine Guaspare, Chris Gunter, Stephan Guttinger, Mark Guyer, Elke Jordan, Jonathan E. LoTempio Jr., Jean McEwen, Jane Peterson, Anya Plutynski, Ramya M. Rajagopalan, Emanuele Ratti, Sahotra Sarkar, Jeffery A. Schloss, Magdalena Skipper, Alexandra Soulier, Thomas Stoeger, Eric Vilain, Kris A. Wetterstrand. Retail e-book files for this title are screen-reader friendly with images accompanied by short alt text and/or extended descriptions.

Perspectives on the Human Genome Project and Genomics

William Wimsatt

Interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution that reject meme theory in favor of a complex understanding of dynamic change over time How do cultures change? In recent decades, the concept of the meme, posited as a basic unit of culture analogous to the gene, has been central to debates about cultural transformation. Despite the appeal of meme theory, its simplification of complex interactions and other inadequacies as an explanatory framework raise more questions about cultural evolution than it answers. In Beyond the Meme, William C. Wimsatt and Alan C. Love assemble interdisciplinary perspectives on cultural evolution, providing a nuanced understanding of it as a process in which dynamic structures interact on different scales of size and time. By focusing on the full range of evolutionary processes across distinct contexts, from rice farming to scientific reasoning, this volume demonstrates how a thick understanding of change in culture emerges from multiple disciplinary vantage points, each of which is required to understand cultural evolution in all its complexity. The editors provide an extensive introductory essay to contextualize the volume, and Wimsatt contributes a separate chapter that systematically organizes the conceptual geography of cultural processes and phenomena. Any adequate account of the transmission, elaboration, and evolution of culture must, this volume argues, recognize the central roles that cognitive and social development play in cultural change and the complex interplay of technological, organizational, and institutional structures needed to enable and coordinate these processes. Contributors: Marshall Abrams, U of Alabama at Birmingham; Claes Andersson, Chalmers U of Technology; Mark A. Bedau, Reed College; James A. Evans, U of Chicago; Jacob G. Foster, U of California, Los Angeles; Michel Janssen, U of Minnesota; Sabina Leonelli, U of Exeter; Massimo Maiocchi, U of Chicago; Joseph D. Martin, U of Cambridge; Salikoko S. Mufwene, U of Chicago; Nancy J. Nersessian, Georgia Institute of Technology and Harvard U; Paul E. Smaldino, U of California, Merced; Anton Törnberg, U of Gothenburg; Petter Törnberg, U of Amsterdam; Gilbert B. Tostevin, U of Minnesota.

Alan C. Love

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