Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology by William B. ProvinceReview by: Lois N. MagnerThe American Historical Review, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Jun., 1988), pp. 787-788Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Historical AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1868275 .

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United States 787

China in 191 1 was no different from that of Haiti or Hungary or Mexico or Russia" (p. 167).

Given this New Left framework that the authors impose on the whole of American foreign policy, it is hardly surprising that they find a remarkable consistency in the responses of the American gov- ernment under Taft and Wilson to revolution in China. Taft chose to cooperate with the great pow- ers; Wilson believed that American ends could be achieved independent of them. But the authors contend that the differences between the two ad- ministrations were minor and that both longed for stability and centralized rule, taking a narrow, self- interested view of America's interests. They believed that "penetration of the China market would thus make the United States a greater economic power and, significantly, it would quell the economic, po- litical, and religious unrest at home which so con- cerned the American leadership" (p. 175).

In an effort to advance this argument, the authors carefully examine early American reactions to the revolution of 191 1, the involvement of the United States in the six-power consortium and its loan negotiations, the lack of sympathy of American leaders for Chinese efforts to achieve political and economic independence, and the acquiescence of the American government to the emergence of a dictatorship under Yuan Shikai. Although they in- clude many interesting details on Sino-American relations during these years, they fail to create a convincing reinterpretation of American China pol- icy under Taft and Wilson. They dismniss the ideal- istic rhetoric of Taft and Wilson as camouflage for their pursuit of material interests, reject the auton- omy of the missionary impulse, and ignore divisions within the business community as well as the bu- reaucratic determinants of American policy. Their vision of a unified national leadership pursuing grand strategies abroad simplifies and distorts American foreign policy. They offer an old-fash- ioned New Left interpretation that long ago proved inadequate in explaining the complexities of Amer- ica's response to foreign upheavals.

CHARLES E. NEU

Brown University

WILLIAM B. PROVINE. Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology. (Science and Its Conceptual Foundations.) Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1986. Pp. xvi, 545.

Studies of the collaboration between Sewall Wright and Theodosius Dobzhansky first led William B. Provine to suspect that Wright had exerted a signif- icant influence on the development of modern evo- lutionary biology. By the time he had completed work on this excellent biography, Provine was con-

vinced that future historians and biologists would recognize Wright as the single most influential evo- lutionary theorist of the twentieth century. Born in 1889, the year Alfred Russel Wallace published Darwinism and Francis Galton published Natural Inheritance, Wright has been a participant in and witness to almost the entire history of genetics and its relationship to twentieth-century evolutionary biology.

Although Wright was apparently interested in natural history and evolution by the age of seven, it was a college biology course taught by Wilhelmine Marie Entemann that led him to decide on a career as a biologist. As a graduate student with William Ernest Castle at Harvard, Wright immersed himself in the two major themes of his scientific career, physiological genetics and evolutionary theory, and began his long-term work on guinea pig genetics. The concept of gene interaction that emerged from his studies of the inheritance of color patterns in the guinea pig was fundamental to all his later work on physiological genetics and population genetics. While working at the U.S. Department of Agricul- ture, Wright invented the method of path coeffi- cients, a powerful tool that essentially revolutionized the quantitative analysis of systems of mating.

Although Wright's papers were widely read, Provine admits that many biologists found them unreadable and his quantitative arguments obscure. Confronting this disparity between the influence and the comprehension of Wright's papers, Provine notes that many read Dobzhansky instead of Wright, because his prose was more accessible. Per- haps in biology as in economic theory, as John Kenneth Galbraith has said, writings that are unin- telligible are accorded more respect.

Provine demonstrates that the highly visible con- flict between Wright and R. A. Fisher had a pro- found influence on evolutionary theory and field research. Wright and Fisher shared certain funda- mental assumptions about the relationship of Mendelism to Darwinism, but their disagreement about the basic processes of evolution was irrecon- cilable. As the evolutionary synthesis moved toward a more thoroughly adaptationist stance in the 1 940s and 1950s, Wright felt that biologists tended to misrepresent his theory of evolution as pure ran- dom drift. But, with the subsidence of the most extreme selectionist attitudes in the 1970s and 1980s and the widespread influence of his four-volume series Evolution and the Genetics of Populations (1968-78), Wright's ideas have once again stimu- lated theorists and field workers.

In writing this biography, Provine had the re- markable experience of reading all of his subject's correspondence and published papers, discussing them with Wright, and having him read drafts of each chapter. Despite failing vision, Wright pro-

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788 Reviews of Books

vided about one hundred pages of comments. Does doing history of science this way interfere with objectivity? Although there is no doubt that Provine admires Wright for the breadth and depth of his scientific contributions, the text makes it clear that biographer and subject had cordially "agreed to disagree." Provine is certainly justified in asserting that having Wright read his manuscript prevented many errors, but do we have to accept Provine's implied judgment that other biographies of scien- tists, and perhaps all biographies, are necessarily "crammed with reasonable-sounding falsehoods" (p. xiv)? If this is true, elderly scientists may soon be surrounded by historians of science, much as the "last primitives" have been surrounded by anthro- pologists. Given the fact that there are more major scientists alive today than have ever lived in the history of the world, historians of science, unlike other historians, need not concentrate on subjects already dead.

LOIS N. MAGNER

Purdue University

JOHN G. CLARK. Energy and the Federal Goverment: Fossil Fuel Policies, 1900-1946. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. 1987. Pp. xxiii, 511. $39.95.

In the past three decades economic historians have written about federal regulatory policy toward spe- cific fuels during the twentieth century. John G. Clark has gone one step farther in synthesizing and summarizing this material with his own extensive research to create a comprehensive picture of fed- eral policy toward anthracite and bituminous coal, natural gas, and oil from the turn of the century to the end of World War II. Clark's book is the first major comparative study dealing with the regulation of these fossil fuels and its impact on the United States.

Clark has organized his book so that it will be useful to either the generalist who is interested in a survey of this subject or the specialist who desires in-depth information about a particular fuel in a specific time period from 1900 to 1946. The first chapter, "The Fuel Industry in the Early Twentieth Century," surveys the competitive nature of the different fuels as oil, gas, and electricity challenged coal as the mainstay for American energy needs. During this period the market for fuel also changed dramatically as the United States underwent rapid urbanization, and the population became depen- dent on the automobile. The last chapter summa- rizes the changing nature of federal fuel policy from 1900 to 1946 and evaluates its importance. Clark shows that the federal government created its policy in a haphazard manner in response to various events such as wars, depression, strikes, and fuel

shortages. While competing businesses in the pri- vate sector seeking government aid usually clustered into the two camps of free-market advocates and antitrust exponents, groups within the federal gov- ernment fluctuated between these viewpoints and failed to create a clearly comprehensive policy for the welfare of the entire country. As a result, Clark shows that the policy was vague, unsystematic, and essentially purposeless.

Clark goes into great depth in chapters 2 through 14 to prove his points, bringing into focus major companies and policies at the local and state level as well as the total national picture. The chapters are arranged chronologically from the pre-World War I period to 1946 and are divided into key subtopics such as specific fuels, agencies, policies, and events. Clark's ability to compress an extensive body of knowledge into three hundred ninety pages and skillfully make broad, well-written generalizations is indeed impressive.

Without a doubt this book is a major contribution to economic history and the history of federal poli- cy. It will be the definitive history of this subject that many libraries should have as part of their collec- tion.

H. BENJAMIN POWELL

Bloomsburg University

ROBERT ALAN GOLDBERG. Back to the Soil: The Jewish Farmers of Clarion, Utah, and Their World. (Utah Centennial Series, number 2.) Foreword by CHARLES

S. PETERSON. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press. 1986. Pp. xxviii, 196. $19.95.

Some historical themes contain surprising potential for analyzing divergent movements. This is true of efforts by Jewish immigrants to become farmers in the era of America's "last" farm frontier. The sub- ject requires evaluation of European conditions, ideological factors, as well as the socioeconomic context of America at the turn of the century. It is not a new formula, but Robert Alan Goldberg succeeds admirably in applying it to the unique circumstances of Utah. He includes succinct yet scholarly surveys of relevant research held together by diligent use of freshly discovered biographical sources. Thus, family records and interviews serve to trace the journey of individual Clarion settlers from tsarist oppression to urban sweatshops and, ultimately, to Utah farming. Consequently, the per- sonal feelings of pioneers emerge within the context of eventful transformation.

Out of the pogroms and prevalent anti-Semitism, Jewish agrarianism developed as a self-liberating movement. It united the impoverished refugees from Eastern Europe, some imbued with utopian ideals, and their acculturated western coreligionists

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