Beauty or Statistics - Bert Theunissen

Beauty or Statistics

Practice and Science in Dutch Livestock Breeding, 1900-2000

(Autor)

Buch | Hardcover
288 Seiten
2020
University of Toronto Press (Verlag)
978-1-4875-0700-8 (ISBN)
85,95 inkl. MwSt
The long tradition of livestock breeding in the Netherlands serves as a valuable example of the delicate balance between art and science, beauty and statistics in the modernizing field of agriculture.
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.

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.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Breeding for Nobility or for Production? Friesian Dairy Cattle

The Breeders Get Organized
Type and Tuberculosis
The Moral Economy of Breeding
Bloodlines and Purity
Scientific Breeding
Nobility or Production?
Entrepreneurship
Indexes
Holsteinization
Market and Moral Economy

2. “The most efficient chickens in the world”

From Side Business to Mainstay
Hybrid Breeding
Hy-Line and Hendrix Genetics
From Purebreds to First-Generation Crossbreds
Industrialization
Developments in Breeding
Chickens are Not Peas

3. Breeding a Pig for all Parties

Testing for Productive Traits
Minkema’s Breeding Plan
AI in Pigs
Hybrid Pig Breeding
The Breeder’s Eye
Pigs are Not Chickens

4. Just Not Like any other Sheep Breed: The Texel

Creating the Texel
The Swifter
Breeding by Numbers or By Eye
AI in Texel Sheep
What’s in a Breed?

5. From Farm Horse to Riding Horse: The Dutch Warmbloods
 
Gelderlanders and Groningers
Introducing “Hot Blood”
Finding the Right Mix
The Government Intervenes
Scientific Breeding
Balancing Practical and Scientific Methods

Conclusions

List of illustrations
Sources
Index

Erscheinungsdatum
Zusatzinfo 24 b&w illustrations
Verlagsort Toronto
Sprache englisch
Maße 165 x 235 mm
Gewicht 540 g
Themenwelt Sachbuch/Ratgeber Natur / Technik Natur / Ökologie
Geisteswissenschaften Archäologie
Geschichte Allgemeine Geschichte Mittelalter
Geisteswissenschaften Geschichte Regional- / Ländergeschichte
Naturwissenschaften
Weitere Fachgebiete Land- / Forstwirtschaft / Fischerei
ISBN-10 1-4875-0700-3 / 1487507003
ISBN-13 978-1-4875-0700-8 / 9781487507008
Zustand Neuware
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