Beauty or Statistics: Practice and Science in Dutch Livestock Breeding, 1900-2000

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Bert Theunissen

Beauty or Statistics

Practice and Science in Dutch Livestock Breeding, 1900-2000

Bert Theunissen

$160

Hardback

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English

University of Toronto Press
06 March 2020

European history; History of science; Animal breeding; Farm & working animals

In the 1970s, scientists claimed that farm animal breeding was finally evolving from an art into a science. In their view, the switch to scientific breeding was as inevitable as the ongoing process of agricultural modernization. However, the art-to-science scenario is too simplistic to do justice to the complex dynamic that characterized the transformation of the field.

The livestock breeds that take centre stage in this book

dairy cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, and horses

were products of the twentieth century. The methods used by breeders to improve their animals, however, were much older. Tracing the history of practical stockbreeding, the role of Mendelism in scientific breeding, and the emergence of quantitative genetics, Beauty or Statistics shows that the story of the scientific modernization of livestock breeding can be more fruitfully analysed from the perspective of changing cultures of breeding, taking practical, commercial, normative, and aesthetic considerations into account.

By: Bert Theunissen
Imprint: University of Toronto Press
Country of Publication: Canada
Dimensions: Height: 235mm, Width: 165mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 540g
ISBN: 9781487507008
ISBN 10: 1487507003
Pages: 288
Publication Date: 06 March 2020
Audience: College/higher education , Professional and scholarly , Primary , Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Bert Theunissen is the director of the Descartes Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Sciences and the Humanities, and the Chair of the History of Science Program at Utrecht University.

Reviews for Beauty or Statistics: Practice and Science in Dutch Livestock Breeding, 1900-2000

This book offers a magnificent panorama on animal husbandry, featuring concrete discussions on dairy cattle, chickens, pigs, sheep, and horses. -- Beat Bachi, University of Zurich * European Journal for the History of Medicine and Health * A work of excellent scholarship that will be recommended reading for scholars interested in twentieth-century agricultural history and in the history of animal breeding and genetics. -- Tarquin Holmes * History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences * This book beautifully straddles the line between the two apparently diverse (and often divisive) attitudes to breeding, because of a deep understanding of both genetic and practical breeding methods. -- Margaret E. Derry, University of Guelph * Agricultural History *