On February 2, the Department of History celebrated the publication of Dr. Erik Peterson’s The Life Organic: The Theoretical Biology Club and the Roots of Epigenetics. Dr. Peterson’s book tells the story of scientists in the late nineteenth nd early twentieth century who pursued a middle road of investigation between mechanists, those who argued that living beings were simply complex machines, and vitalists, who believed that animals and humans possessed a “vital spark,” an ineffable essence that separated living and […]

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