The Hegemony of Molecular Biology

Biology and Philosophy

Volumn 14, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 195-210

  Kitcher, Philip ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

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EID: 0041869987     PISSN: 01693867     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1006686417669     Document Type: Article

References (22)

1. This opposition is evident in many of the contributions to The Dialectical Biologist (Harvard, 1986), a volume of essays, some of which are by Lewontin alone, some by his colleague Richard Levins, and some that are jointly written. The attack on genetic deterḿ inism also permeates this volume, as well as surfacing in Not In Our Genes (written with Leon Kamin and Steven Rose; New York: Pantheon, 1984) and the more recent Biology as Ideology (New York: Harper, 1992). I discuss the varieties of Lewontin's critique of genetic determinism in "Battling the Undead: How (and How Not) to Resist Genetic Determinism", forthcoming in a Festschrift for Dick Lewontin; that essay should be seen as a companion piece to my efforts here.
2. This opposition is evident in many of the contributions to The Dialectical Biologist (Harvard, 1986), a volume of essays, some of which are by Lewontin alone, some by his colleague Richard Levins, and some that are jointly written. The attack on genetic deterḿ inism also permeates this volume, as well as surfacing in Not In Our Genes (written with Leon Kamin and Steven Rose; New York: Pantheon, 1984) and the more recent Biology as Ideology (New York: Harper, 1992). I discuss the varieties of Lewontin's critique of genetic determinism in "Battling the Undead: How (and How Not) to Resist Genetic Determinism", forthcoming in a Festschrift for Dick Lewontin; that essay should be seen as a companion piece to my efforts here.
3. This opposition is evident in many of the contributions to The Dialectical Biologist (Harvard, 1986), a volume of essays, some of which are by Lewontin alone, some by his colleague Richard Levins, and some that are jointly written. The attack on genetic deterḿ inism also permeates this volume, as well as surfacing in Not In Our Genes (written with Leon Kamin and Steven Rose; New York: Pantheon, 1984) and the more recent Biology as Ideology (New York: Harper, 1992). I discuss the varieties of Lewontin's critique of genetic determinism in "Battling the Undead: How (and How Not) to Resist Genetic Determinism", forthcoming in a Festschrift for Dick Lewontin; that essay should be seen as a companion piece to my efforts here.
4. Biology as Ideology, p. 15.
5. This problem affects the suggestion made in a provocative essay by C. Kenneth Waters "Genes Made Molecular", Philosophy of Science, 61, 1994, 163-185.
6. In fact, contemporary molecular biology is permeated by language that can't be replaced with an austere physico-chemical idiom. Consider the standard account of transcription. One talks of RNA polymerases "associating" with DNA. The suggestion, of course, is that the RNA polymerases come close - but how close is close enough? Well, that's going to depend on the conformation of the DNA, and there's no general structural criterion. In effect, molecular biologists, here and elsewhere, quietly take over functional concepts. This moved Sylvia Culp and me to suggest that molecular biology turns out not to be reducible to molecular biology (see our "Theory Structure and Theory Change in Contemporary Molecular Biology, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 40, 1989, 459-483).
7. D'Arcy Thompson On Growth and Form, Cambridge University Press, 1917; an abridged version, edited by the distinguished developmental biologist John Tyler Bonner was published by Cambridge University Press in 1961. Thompson's wish for a mathematical account of development and morphology is echoed in several speeches by the heroine of Stoppard's Arcadia.
8. This example is used as the first (simplest) illustration by Przemyslaw Prusinkiewicz and Aristid Lindenmayer in their book The Algorithmic Beauty of Plants (New York: Springer, 1990). The example comes from p. 5 (I have slightly modified the notation). As Prusinkiewicz and Lindenmayer note, L-systems are related to Chomskyan grammars. Subsequent examples reveal the possibilities of far more complex relations between symbols and biological entities (particularly through processes that draw out shapes dependent on the symbols), context-dependence, three-dimensionality, probabilistic systems and so forth. The resultant systems can simulate the growth of flowers and trees, generate the Fibonacci spirals found in sunflowers, and model compound leaves, among other achievements.
9. Specifically a paper, "The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis" (Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 237, 1952, 37-72). This essay was written shortly before Turing's tragic suicide. It is interesting to ponder whether, if he had lived, the pace of work in mathematical developmental biology would have accelerated, producing a very different distribution of work in the current field.
10. This extremely elementary example is from Hans Meinhardt The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells (New York: Springer, 1998). As Meinhardt shows, much more complex sets of partial differential equations give rise to a wide variety of patterns, including the elaborate branching and meshwork found in some shells. The case in the text is the foundation of a system that will yield regular stripes.
11. In fact, Murray has a very broad program of trying to understand pattern-formation, but I'll only consider one aspect of it here. The discussion is drawn from Chapter 15 of J.D. Murray Mathematical Biology (New York: Springer, 1989), although the essentials were already given in Murray's "On Pattern Formation Mechanisms for Lepidopteran Wing Patterns and Mammalian Coat Markings", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 295, 1961, 473-496. Murray provided an accessible overview in "How the Leopard Gets its Spots", Scientific American, 258, 1988, 80-87.
12. In fact, Murray has a very broad program of trying to understand pattern-formation, but I'll only consider one aspect of it here. The discussion is drawn from Chapter 15 of J.D. Murray Mathematical Biology (New York: Springer, 1989), although the essentials were already given in Murray's "On Pattern Formation Mechanisms for Lepidopteran Wing Patterns and Mammalian Coat Markings", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 295, 1961, 473-496. Murray provided an accessible overview in "How the Leopard Gets its Spots", Scientific American, 258, 1988, 80-87.
13. In fact, Murray has a very broad program of trying to understand pattern-formation, but I'll only consider one aspect of it here. The discussion is drawn from Chapter 15 of J.D. Murray Mathematical Biology (New York: Springer, 1989), although the essentials were already given in Murray's "On Pattern Formation Mechanisms for Lepidopteran Wing Patterns and Mammalian Coat Markings", Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B, 295, 1961, 473-496. Murray provided an accessible overview in "How the Leopard Gets its Spots", Scientific American, 258, 1988, 80-87.
14. Murray provides a lucid discussion of these equations in Chapter 14 of Mathematical Biology. He notes there that the equations describe the chemical kinetics of a substrate-inhibition system, which has been studied experimentally. Real instantiations of the system are thus known.
15. As in other parts of science, techniques in molecular biology have a life of their own, sometimes inspiring people to pursue questions because they can be addressed. For an illuminating study of the ways in which instruments and experimental skills possess an inertia that shapes the course of research, see Peter Galison's Image and Logic (University of Chicago Press, 1998) which pursues this theme in the context of particle physics.
16. Originally published in the New York Review of Books, and reprinted in Biology as Ideology.
17. Lewontin's attacks on this specific form of genetic determinism are quite devastating. I've tried to argue similar points in The Lives to Come (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) especially Chapter 11. In general, however, my critique of genetic determinism differs from that which has featured most prominently in Lewontin's recent writings. See my essay "Battling the Undead" (cited in note 2 above).
18. Lewontin's attacks on this specific form of genetic determinism are quite devastating. I've tried to argue similar points in The Lives to Come (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1996) especially Chapter 11. In general, however, my critique of genetic determinism differs from that which has featured most prominently in Lewontin's recent writings. See my essay "Battling the Undead" (cited in note 2 above).
19. I argued for the in principle possibility in The Lives to Come. Since I finished writing that book, there has been virtually no progress in addressing the problems of the proliferation of genetic tests, not only in the United States, but also in other affluent nations. Of course, the United States is especially backward because of its notable lack of commitment to universal health care coverage. My current position is thus much closer to Lewontin's pessimistic view of the likely social effects of the HGP.
20. See, for example, Alexander Rosenberg "Subversive Reflections on the Human Genome Project", PSA 1994 (East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, 1995), Volume II, 329-335 and A. Tauber and S. Sarkar "The Human Genome Project: Has Blind Reductionism Gone Too Far?", Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 35, 1992, 22-235.
21. See, for example, Alexander Rosenberg "Subversive Reflections on the Human Genome Project", PSA 1994 (East Lansing: Philosophy of Science Association, 1995), Volume II, 329-335 and A. Tauber and S. Sarkar "The Human Genome Project: Has Blind Reductionism Gone Too Far?", Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 35, 1992, 22-235.
22. In a forthcoming essay, Kenneth Schaffner argues for similar themes. Schaffner's lucid analysis of investigations of behavioral genetics in the nematode C. elegans reveals exactly the need for multi-levelled studies that I've been emphasizing. It seems to me also to show the fruitful possibilities of combining molecular work with mathematical studies of the properties of networks. Interestingly, the same cross-fertilization of intellectual disciplines is already envisaged in work on the development of the soil ameba Dictyostelium discoideum (in the work of William Loomis and his colleagues).