Aristotle to Zoos Philosophical Dictionary of Biology

by Peter Medawar, J.S. Medawar

Hardcover with unclipped dust jacket. Handwritten note from author, J.S.Medawar, to Bernard Dixon laid-in. Jacket is edgeworn with a few small tears at spine ends. Board spine ends lightly bumped. No other notable flaws. AD

Genres: Biology, Science, Reference, Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

Reviews

[Lauren · Rating 3 out of 5]

Overall, an engaging read on a topic that can be difficult to hold the attention of non-practitioners on. I learned a lot from reading it. Two issues I had, relatively minor. The authors, while attempting to be relatively humorous during the course of the book, occasionally verged into a tone that came off as somewhat hubristic toward those they had disagreements with. One of them was a Nobel Prize winner, so I guess a certain amount of hubris is to be expected or even justified, but every once in a while, it could be a little off-putting.

Another complaint I have is just how jarring I found their language on the subject of disability. I probably should have been braced for that a little more, but particularly on the subject of eugenics, I couldn't help but find some of the things they said about people with disabilities to be rather callous in a way I don't think would fly today (though the callousness still exists, just in a more hidden form). When arguing about why certain soft eugenics wouldn't violate anyone's rights, they focused on the rights of everyone except for the right of people with disabilities to exist. I do think this was a product of a combination of the time of the writing of the book and the field of the authors. This book was written in the 1980s, before the Disability Discrimination Act in the UK was passed. The neurodiversity movement did not exist yet, and even the disability rights movement was still developing. And generally, I've heard and found that two of the fields that it takes the most work for disability rights to penetrate are medicine and the biological sciences. Since they're so focused on curing disability, I think there can be a bit of an oversight when it comes to how to successfully live and thrive with one.

I would have loved to hear the authors wrestle with the ideas of the disability rights and neurodiversity movements. However, I think such wrestling probably never happened, at least not in preserved form. One of the authors died only a few years after the writing of this book and probably never saw either movement in full flower. Though the other lived through 2005, unfortunately, she appears to have been the less well published of the two, and in a best-case scenario I'd probably only get to find her thoughts on disability rights. Neurodiversity didn't get much mainstream attention until a few years later.

[Marko]

I have the german edition.