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International Journal of Epidemiology 2008 37(3):454-469; doi:10.1093/ije/dyn073
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Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Epidemiological Association © The Author 2008; all rights reserved.

Commentary: The six biological inventions in Haldane's Daedalus

Alun Evans

Department of Epidemiology and Public Health, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, UK. E-mail: a.evans@qub.ac.uk

Accepted 20 March 2008

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The great English Geneticist, John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), described six ‘biological inventions’ in his famous essay Daedalus. Three of these, and possibly a fourth, were straightforward domestications, the other two were more convoluted.

Haldane originally read ‘Deadalus, or Science in the Future’,1 as a paper to the ‘Heretics’ in Cambridge on February 4, 1923, and it was published later that year. ‘Daedalus’ is full of Utopian vision, following in the footsteps of many other works, such as Samuel Butler's ‘Erewhon’2 to which Haldane refers, and William Morris’ ‘News from Nowhere’.3

In ‘Daedalus’, before proceeding to ‘prophecy’, Haldane (Figure 1) wanted ‘... to examine very briefly the half dozen or so biological inventions which have already been made’.1 He then listed four ‘... which were made before the dawn of history’—the first of these was the domestication . . . [Full Text of this Article]


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