In this chapter, we describe traditional historical accounts of the gene and gene concepts and raise some issues from recent revisionist historiography dealing with this topic. Histories of the gene and genetics are still in their infancy. Until the mid-1970s, most histories were written by scientists and reflected the viewpoints of the victors in scientific controversies. Only recently have professional historians contested traditional accounts and probed deeply into lost aspects of the history of the gene. Recent biological work has raised doubt whether there is such an entity as “the” gene. Historians now disagree about whether the gene should count as an invention or a discovery, whether the history involved is fundamentally continuous or discontinuous, and how technical and theoretical developments in genetics are connected to larger social issues, including eugenics, genome projects, genetic medicine, and biotechnological “interference” with nature.

BEFORE MENDEL

From prehistoric times, people have recognized that like begets like and have believed in some form of inheritance of acquired characters, which was used to help explain familial inheritance of character traits and physique. Later, it was used to explain susceptibility to particular diseases, such as syphilis and tuberculosis, and the adaptation of imported plants and domesticated animals to their new environments. The Hippocratics had already developed explicit theories in support of such inheritance, but sustained efforts to develop particulate theories of heredity began with the introduction of the idea of evolution in the writings of such figures as Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744–1829), and, above all, Charles Darwin (1809–1882).