Sahotra Sarkar is a Professor in the Departments of Philosophy and Integrative Biology at the University of Texas, Austin. He came to Texas after teaching at Boston and McGill Universities and holding fellowships at MIT and the Max Planck Institute. A specialist in the history and philosophy of science, he has particular interests in both philosophy of biology and physics.

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Types of reduction: formal issues; 3. Types of reduction: substantive issues; 4. The obsession with heritability; 5. Reduction and classical genetics; 6. Reduction and molecular biology; 7. Concluding polemics; Notes; References; Index.

Sarkar provides the philosophical background necessary to understand the debates over the Human Genome Project.