Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture and Health

“In this major collection of essays Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins draw on Marxist philosophy and their deep knowledge of living processes. Their topics range from the Human Genome Project and evolutionary psychology to Cuban agriculture. Each is illuminated by their insistence on a dialectical understanding of biology from the molecular to the socio-ecological. In rejecting simplistic reductionist understandings, they offer important insights into how biology—and science in general—could be reconceptualized in the service of human liberation.”                                                                                       —Steven Rose, emeritus professor of biology, Open University, United Kingdom

Richard Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Research Professor at the Museum of Comparative Zoology, Harvard University.

Richard Levins is John Rock Professor of Population Sciences, Department of Population and International Health at Harvard University.