The Fate of Mutation

Shift , Spread, and Disjunction in a Conceptual Trajectory

in Contributions to the History of Concepts
Author:
Jörg Thomas Richter Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin richter@zfl-berlin.org

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Hugo de Vries’s Mutation Theory (1901–1903) fell on fertile ground in the evolutionary sciences around the year 1900. Aside from the impact it had on biology, the concept of mutation also spread into a variety of non-biological discourses, including philosophy, sociology, historiography, and philology. The article follows the trajectory of de Vries’s concept through the discursive landscapes of the early 1900s and the 1960s. From its inception in the 1900s, the cultural imagination of mutation marks a field of conceptual crossing over rather than a mere takeover from biology.

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