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Staffan Müller-Wille

Staffan Müller-Wille is Research Fellow for Philosophy of Biology at the ESRC Centre for Genomics in Society (Egenis), University of Exeter.

Titles by This Editor

Heredity Produced

At the Crossroads of Biology, Politics, and Culture, 1500-1870
Edited by Staffan Müller-Wille and Hans-Jörg Rheinberger

Until the middle of the eighteenth century, the biological makeup of an organism was ascribed to an individual instance of "generation"—involving conception, pregnancy, embryonic development, parturition, lactation, and even astral influences and maternal mood—rather than the biological transmission of traits and characteristics. Discussions of heredity and inheritance took place largely in the legal and political sphere.