Abstract
MANY readers of NATURE will ask what Marxism has to do with biology. It would be possible to write a volume on the economic influences which have done much to determine the course of biological research. For example, botany was at one time largely concerned with medicinal herbs. The greatest age of systematic botany was that of the crude exploitation of Colonial floras, and interest in plant genetics arose with the need for improvement in Colonial plants, such as Canadian wheat and Javan sugar-beet.
Biology and Marxism
By Prof. Marcel Prenant. Translated by C. Desmond Greaves. Pp. xxiii + 223. (London: Lawrence and Wishart, Ltd., 1938.) 10s. 6d. net.
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HALDANE, J. Biology and Marxism. Nature 142, 851 (1938). https://doi.org/10.1038/142851a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/142851a0