何代も続く身体的特徴、性格、知能、能力に至るまで遺伝のなせるわざと考えられており、遺伝は私たちが自己や他者を見つめる時に欠かせない視点です。一方、奴隷制度や植民地支配、虐殺、女性への不公平な扱い、富の偏った分配など、あらゆる事象で正当化に利用されてきた一面もあります。遺伝を巡る西洋における2000年の思想の変遷、近年解明したこと、今後より多くが明らかになることで人類が直面するであろうジレンマにも言及します。
 

• Provides an overview of over two thousand years of human thought on the subject of heredity, and considers how scientific progress came about
• Considers the ways in which understandings of heredity of the past were used to shape social hierarchies and oppress elements of society due to their gender or race
• Highlights the implications of our modern understanding of genetics and the important ethical challenges that we will need to confront in the immediate future
• Part of the Very Short Introductions series - over eight million copies sold worldwide

  
The concept of heredity is fundamental to how we see ourselves and others. It goes far beyond the obvious continuity of physical traits across generations. We routinely ascribe similarities in personality, intellect, outlook, and aptitude between family members to what's passed down in sperm and eggs. The simple idea that children take after their ancestors has long been central to science and medicine and to the breeding of plants and animals. It has also been used for ideological purposes to impute innate differences in character and rationality between males and females and among different ethnicities and social classes. Slavery, colonialism, and genocide, the unequal treatment of women, and the concentration of power and wealth in the hands of the few have been consistently rationalized in the language of heredity and 'natural' hierarchy.

In this Very Short Introduction John Waller traces the diverse ideas about biological inheritance expressed by Europeans and their colonial descendants during two millennia of human history. He charts the changing ways in which scholars and laypersons have believed heredity to work, the development of spurious and self-serving beliefs about heredity by dominant groups, the recent revolution in our ability to understand the mechanics of heredity, and the difficult dilemmas our species is likely to face as we gain increasing mastery over the contents of our own genomes.