CBC Digital Archives

Biology as ideology: The doctrine of DNA

What plays a bigger role in shaping humans - nature, or nurture? Is our destiny determined by our DNA, or is it our environment that makes us who we are? Scientists have been asking these questions since the age of Charles Darwin, and geneticist Richard C. Lewontin has a new variable to throw into the mix: ideology. In the last of his five-part Massey Lecture on CBC Radio's Ideas, Lewontin looks at the relations between organisms and their environment.
• The Massey Lectures were created in 1961 to honour Vincent Massey, Canada's governor general from 1952 to 1959. The lectures feature the work of leading thinkers in the humanities, arts, politics, physical and social sciences.
• In 1965 the CBC radio program Ideas began broadcasting and commissioning the annual series.
• Over the years the Massey Lecture has been given by speakers such as Northrop Frye, Martin Luther King, Jane Jacobs, and Noam Chomsky.

• Biology as Ideology: The Doctrine of DNA originally aired on Ideas in November 1990 as that year's Massey Lecture. It was aired again in 1996 after the Massey Lecture for that year was cancelled six weeks before the broadcast date.
• The 1996 Massey Lecture was to have been given by economist and futurist Robert Theobold on the subject of work, wealth and community.

• Theobald's thoughts had first aired on Ideas in 1965 in a 13-part series called Man in Tomorrow's World. Thirty years later Ideas condensed and rebroadcast the series in three parts, and then commissioned Theobald to produce the 1996 Massey Lecture on the post-employment world. The result, according to Michael Valpy of the Globe and Mail, was less an analysis of the past then a "mindquake," or "ignition for social and intellectual change."

• Valpy continued: "The CBC's programmers felt they could not get Mr. Theobald to make his ideas clear... (They) were optimistic until the end that they could fit Mr. Theobald's round peg of a mindquake into the square hole of the Masseys. Reluctantly they concluded that his manuscript could not be made to meet the Massey standards."
Medium: Radio
Program: IDEAS
Broadcast Date: Oct. 25, 1996
Guest(s): Richard Lewontin
Host: Lister Sinclair
Duration: 15:03

Last updated: May 10, 2012

Page consulted on April 2, 2013

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