Mara Fridell

A seminal read on the ravages to valid biological knowledge wrought by the Cold War Atlantic ruling class containment of science to mechanism. This is important to read today for an understanding of the ongoing detour, diminishment, and degradation of scientific knowledge (Including capacity to avert and reduce climate and other environmental crises, health crises, and species extinctions.) imposed by imperial capitalist geopolitics and Atlantic ruling class fear of the working class. As well, we need this historical perspective as we face politically- and commercially-driven, shaming efforts to maintain mechanistic reduction through the epigenetic turn. Peterson's Anglocentric account glides over Lewontin, Levin & Gould's influential late 20th c. reassertion of full science in American developmental biology. The international early 20th c. foundation of full science, organicism, is discussed further in M. Esposito's (2013) work on E.S. Russell, and see also Nicholson & Gawne (2015). Next puzzle piece to look for: A historical account of the inegalitarian fear of expanded technocrat social mobility--not just the savage anticommunism-- behind tethering science down to the mechanistic reduction.