Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

Staffan Müller-Wille

Visiting Scholar

Dr. phil., Senior Lecturer, University of Exeter

Residence: March 1 – 31 and August 1 – 31, 2013


Profile

One of my long term interests has been in the history of racial anthropology. It has recently been argued, that thinking in terms of race did not simply give way to a purely genetic understanding of human diversity in the twentieth century. Nor were earlier concepts of race in the eighteenth and twentieth century static and typological. The following questions guide my research in this project:

   What constituted the descriptive and explanatory power of the race concept prior to genetics?
   What were the conceptual and experimental strategies by which genetics subverted the race concept?
   What were the epistemic values (e.g. universality, analyticity) invoked to justify these subversive strategies?
   What political implications did these values possess?

For more on Staffan's research interests click here.

Selected publications

Müller-Wille, Staffan. Botanik und weltweiter Handel : zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707-1778). Berlin: VWB, Verlag für Wissenschaft und Bildung, 1999.

Müller-Wille, Staffan; Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg (Editor/s). Heredity produced : at the crossroads of biology, politics, and culture, 1500-1870. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007.

Staffan Müller-Wille . "Collection and Collation: theory and practice of Linnaean botany. " Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (3 2007)

Carl Linnaeus. Musa Cliffortiana. With an introduction by S. Müller-Wille. Translated by S. Freer. Königstein: International Association for Plant Taxonomy, 2007.

Staffan Müller-Wille and Vitezslav Orel. "From Linnaean Species to Mendelian Factors: Elements of Hybridism, 1751-1870. " Annals of Science 64 (2 2007)

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Talks and presentations

April 2012
The Concept of Race – Workshop "Concepts in Use: Genes, Races and Human Nature", Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies, Bielefeld
Feb 2012
From Harmony to Struggle - The Economy of Nature from Linnaeus to Darwin – Workshop "'Evo-Eco 1840-1870': Evolutionary Biology and Economic Theory: Historical Perspectives of a Two-Way Relationship in the Darwinian Period", Institute d'Histoire et Philosophie des Sciences et Techniques, Paris
Jan 2012
Revisiting the Mendelian Revolution – Seventh Annual Wellcome Lecture, University of Cambridge
Dec 2011
Reproducing Species – Workshop "Communicating Reproduction", University of Cambridge
Sept 2011
The Gene in the Postgenomic Era – Keynote Lecture, 27th International Papillomavirus Conference and Clinical Workshop, Berlin

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