Seminar with Prof. Gregory Radick – 19 March

Gregory Radick

The Organization of Scientific Knowledge

19 March 2026 | 16:00–18:00
Deutsches Museum, Munich

The Chair of Philosophy and History of Science at the Technical University of Munich is pleased to host a joint seminar with the LMU Chair of History of Science featuring Gregory Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Leeds.

Gregory Radick is the author of Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (2023) and a former President of the British Society for the History of Science and of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology. In 2025, he received the J. B. S. Haldane Lecture Award from the Genetics Society.

About the Lecture

In the sciences, bodies of knowledge are not merely accumulations of facts; they are organized. Certain phenomena and practices become exemplary, central, and authoritative, while others are treated as marginal or exceptional.

Drawing on his recent book Disputed Inheritance, Professor Radick examines the organization of scientific knowledge about biological inheritance, focusing on the Mendelian framework that emerged after the 1900 “rediscovery” of Mendel and continues to shape biology today. Bringing together perspectives from the history and philosophy of science as well as from biology itself, he argues that this organization — and the genetic determinism it fostered — was not inevitable.

The lecture situates this argument within a broader History and Philosophy of Science tradition, from the Toulmin–Kuhn era to contemporary debates, and explores the possibility that re-engineering scientific concepts may become part of the core business of HPS. Particular attention will be given to the role of idealizations in science and the long-term consequences of specific conceptual choices.