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Üçlü Sarmal - Gen, Organizma ve Çevre
Darwin sonrası yaşayan en büyük evrimsel biyolog ve genetikçilerden olan Richard Lewontin Üçlü Sarmal’da biyolojideki en can alıcı sorunlardan birini, moleküler biyoloji ve genetiğin bir bütün olarak organizma ve doğayı açıklama gücünü değerlendiriyor.
Lewontin, akıcı bir üslupla kaleme aldığı bu kitabında genleri tüm hücresel ve evrimsel süreçlerden soyutlayarak değerlendiren klasik moleküler genetik anlayışın sağlam bir eleştirisini yapıyor.
DNA tanımının gerçekçi biyoloji çalışmalarındaki yeri nedir? Moleküler ve gelişimsel genetiğin açmazları nerelerde yatıyor? Sağlıklı bir genetik ve evrimsel biyolojik yöntem nasıl oluşturulabilir? Bu soruların yanıtlarını ararken anlıyoruz ki, doğanın hem temel bilimsel amaçlar doğrultusunda hem de çevre koruma perspektifiyle gerçekçi bir biçimde kavranması mümkün. Üçlü Sarmal var olan indirgemeci perspektifin bırakılmasıyla biyolojik açıdan sağlam ve tutarlı projeler üretebilecek bütünlüklü bir yapının olanaklı olabileceğini gösteriyor.
Lewontin, akıcı bir üslupla kaleme aldığı bu kitabında genleri tüm hücresel ve evrimsel süreçlerden soyutlayarak değerlendiren klasik moleküler genetik anlayışın sağlam bir eleştirisini yapıyor.
DNA tanımının gerçekçi biyoloji çalışmalarındaki yeri nedir? Moleküler ve gelişimsel genetiğin açmazları nerelerde yatıyor? Sağlıklı bir genetik ve evrimsel biyolojik yöntem nasıl oluşturulabilir? Bu soruların yanıtlarını ararken anlıyoruz ki, doğanın hem temel bilimsel amaçlar doğrultusunda hem de çevre koruma perspektifiyle gerçekçi bir biçimde kavranması mümkün. Üçlü Sarmal var olan indirgemeci perspektifin bırakılmasıyla biyolojik açıdan sağlam ve tutarlı projeler üretebilecek bütünlüklü bir yapının olanaklı olabileceğini gösteriyor.
159 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1998
16 people are currently reading
1195 people want to read
About the author
Richard C. Lewontin
44 books97 followersRichard Charles "Dick" Lewontin is an American evolutionary biologist, mathematician, geneticist, and social commentator.
A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he pioneered the application of techniques from molecular biology, such as gel electrophoresis, to questions of genetic variation and evolution.
In a pair of seminal 1966 papers co-authored with J. L. Hubby in the journal Genetics, Lewontin helped set the stage for the modern field of molecular evolution. In 1979 he and Stephen Jay Gould introduced the term "spandrel" into evolutionary theory. From 1973 to 1998, he held an endowed chair in zoology and biology at Harvard University, and from 2003 until his death in 2021 had been a research professor there.
A leader in developing the mathematical basis of population genetics and evolutionary theory, he pioneered the application of techniques from molecular biology, such as gel electrophoresis, to questions of genetic variation and evolution.
In a pair of seminal 1966 papers co-authored with J. L. Hubby in the journal Genetics, Lewontin helped set the stage for the modern field of molecular evolution. In 1979 he and Stephen Jay Gould introduced the term "spandrel" into evolutionary theory. From 1973 to 1998, he held an endowed chair in zoology and biology at Harvard University, and from 2003 until his death in 2021 had been a research professor there.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 35 reviews
September 21, 2009
I agree with the basic sentiments of this book which are that human thought and behavior are a complex interaction of genetic and environmental factors and shouldn't be glossed over with simplistic "Nature" or "Nurture" explanations (which is what gives this one star in addition to what otherwise would just be one by its lonesome).
HOWEVER, what I take serious issue with is that Lewontin and his ideological compatriot Stephen Jay Gould (and others, less visibly), are hysterical in their fear of people positing a more blunt form of genetic determinism. I simply don't know where these scientists are that disregard environmental factors and think humans=genes. And the scientists and philosophers whom have received the most vicious and ridiculously misrepresentative criticisms from the Gould-Lewontin camp (namely E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker) I can say for certain, from personal research, are not guilty of these mistakes (genetic determinism, ultra-adaptionism, "Darwinian fundamentalism", etc) in the slightest. I've spent a fair amount of time arguing about these issues with people and will probably add some more details to this review later.
For the moment I'll leave a few links to short pieces that support my point of view here:
1. An extremely excellent and short essay (adapted from his book Freedom Evolves) about these broadly construed intellectual battles that is well-worth reading: The Mythical Threat of Genetic Determinism by Daniel Dennett
"Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatically filling in the gaps of specification left unfixed by our genes, and unfixed by salient causes in our environment."
"Is he a dread genetic determinist, or a dread environmental determinist? He is neither, of course, for both these species of bogeyman are as mythical as werewolves. By increasing the information we have about the various causes of the constraints that limit our current opportunities, he has increased our powers to avoid what we want to avoid, prevent what we want to prevent. Knowledge of the roles of our genes, and the genes of the other species around us, is not the enemy of human freedom, but one of its best friends."
2. In response to Gould's absurd, strawman-riddled article "Darwinian Fundamentalism":
Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange by Harold Kalant, Werner Kalow, Steven Pinker
"So where’s the controversy? Gould claims his targets invoke selection to explain everything. They don’t. Everyone agrees that aspects of the living world without adaptive complexity—numbers of species, nonfunctional features, trends in the fossil record—often need different kinds of explanations, from genetic drift to wayward asteroids. So yes, we all should be, and are, pluralists. But we should not be indiscriminate pluralists."
"A rejection of Gould’s theory does not put nonadaptive features "outside the compass of evolutionary psychology"; nor was Gould the first to call attention to them. The original arguments for recognizing nonadaptive features came from the founding document of evolutionary psychology, George Williams’s Adaptation and Natural Selection, long before Gould and Lewontin reiterated them (without attribution) in their "Spandrels" paper. Nonadaptive explanations have been commonplace in the field ever since, as Gould must be well aware, for in one column he touted a nonadaptive explanation of the female orgasm taken from another founder of evolutionary psychology, Donald Symons. According to the most popular view in the field, many other important human activities are spandrels, including art, music, religion, science, and dreams. Gould’s accusation is not even close to being accurate."
3. Letter to the Editor of The New York Review of Books on Stephen Jay Gould’s "Darwinian Fundamentalism" (June 12, 1997) and "Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism" (June 26, 1997)
John Tooby and Leda Cosmides
Center for Evolutionary Psychology, UCSB
July 7, 1997
"For biologists, the central problem is that Gould’s own exposition of evolutionary biology is so radically and extravagantly at variance with both the actual consensus state of the field and the plain meaning of the primary literature that there is no easy way to communicate the magnitude of the discrepancy in a way that could be believed by those who have not experienced the evidence for themselves."
More on all of this later...
HOWEVER, what I take serious issue with is that Lewontin and his ideological compatriot Stephen Jay Gould (and others, less visibly), are hysterical in their fear of people positing a more blunt form of genetic determinism. I simply don't know where these scientists are that disregard environmental factors and think humans=genes. And the scientists and philosophers whom have received the most vicious and ridiculously misrepresentative criticisms from the Gould-Lewontin camp (namely E.O. Wilson, Daniel Dennett, and Steven Pinker) I can say for certain, from personal research, are not guilty of these mistakes (genetic determinism, ultra-adaptionism, "Darwinian fundamentalism", etc) in the slightest. I've spent a fair amount of time arguing about these issues with people and will probably add some more details to this review later.
For the moment I'll leave a few links to short pieces that support my point of view here:
1. An extremely excellent and short essay (adapted from his book Freedom Evolves) about these broadly construed intellectual battles that is well-worth reading: The Mythical Threat of Genetic Determinism by Daniel Dennett
"Isn't it true that whatever isn't determined by our genes must be determined by our environment? What else is there? There's Nature and there's Nurture. Is there also some X, some further contributor to what we are? There's Chance. Luck. This extra ingredient is important but doesn't have to come from the quantum bowels of our atoms or from some distant star. It is all around us in the causeless coin-flipping of our noisy world, automatically filling in the gaps of specification left unfixed by our genes, and unfixed by salient causes in our environment."
"Is he a dread genetic determinist, or a dread environmental determinist? He is neither, of course, for both these species of bogeyman are as mythical as werewolves. By increasing the information we have about the various causes of the constraints that limit our current opportunities, he has increased our powers to avoid what we want to avoid, prevent what we want to prevent. Knowledge of the roles of our genes, and the genes of the other species around us, is not the enemy of human freedom, but one of its best friends."
2. In response to Gould's absurd, strawman-riddled article "Darwinian Fundamentalism":
Evolutionary Psychology: An Exchange by Harold Kalant, Werner Kalow, Steven Pinker
"So where’s the controversy? Gould claims his targets invoke selection to explain everything. They don’t. Everyone agrees that aspects of the living world without adaptive complexity—numbers of species, nonfunctional features, trends in the fossil record—often need different kinds of explanations, from genetic drift to wayward asteroids. So yes, we all should be, and are, pluralists. But we should not be indiscriminate pluralists."
"A rejection of Gould’s theory does not put nonadaptive features "outside the compass of evolutionary psychology"; nor was Gould the first to call attention to them. The original arguments for recognizing nonadaptive features came from the founding document of evolutionary psychology, George Williams’s Adaptation and Natural Selection, long before Gould and Lewontin reiterated them (without attribution) in their "Spandrels" paper. Nonadaptive explanations have been commonplace in the field ever since, as Gould must be well aware, for in one column he touted a nonadaptive explanation of the female orgasm taken from another founder of evolutionary psychology, Donald Symons. According to the most popular view in the field, many other important human activities are spandrels, including art, music, religion, science, and dreams. Gould’s accusation is not even close to being accurate."
3. Letter to the Editor of The New York Review of Books on Stephen Jay Gould’s "Darwinian Fundamentalism" (June 12, 1997) and "Evolution: The Pleasures of Pluralism" (June 26, 1997)
John Tooby and Leda Cosmides
Center for Evolutionary Psychology, UCSB
July 7, 1997
"For biologists, the central problem is that Gould’s own exposition of evolutionary biology is so radically and extravagantly at variance with both the actual consensus state of the field and the plain meaning of the primary literature that there is no easy way to communicate the magnitude of the discrepancy in a way that could be believed by those who have not experienced the evidence for themselves."
More on all of this later...
Read
June 22, 2023Aunque Lewontin es biólogo de formación y de profesión, fue uno de los grandes pilares de la filosofía de la biología y obras como esta no hacen sino confirmarlo. Hay una base empírica muy sólida para todo lo que dice, pero al mismo tiempo hace reflexiones fascinantes que desbordan el ámbito de lo científico y entran en terrenos teóricos y especulativos (en el mejor sentido de la palabra) que a mí personalmente me seducen mucho.
Su crítica a la retórica convencional de la biología evolutiva y su propuesta pluralista de retroalimentaciones entre la dimensión genética, la ambiental y la organísmica es uno de los grandes logros de la teoría biológica del siglo XX y hay que reivindicarla más, y a su autor también.
Su crítica a la retórica convencional de la biología evolutiva y su propuesta pluralista de retroalimentaciones entre la dimensión genética, la ambiental y la organísmica es uno de los grandes logros de la teoría biológica del siglo XX y hay que reivindicarla más, y a su autor también.
October 6, 2019
Recommended reading for any biology student and probably for a great many graduates too. Lewontin makes a great case against mechanistic interpretations of biology, and cautions against the temptation to reductionism. He takes this further to touch on some general questions about the nature of biology, and future directions for study.
It's an important point, I think, that much science is conceived of in terms of closed systems with a few major determining influences. He uses the example of the solar system, in which the main bodies and forces are fairly clear to us and few in number. On the other hand, biological systems are very different, as they are (1) governed by many weakly influential forces rather than a few determining forces; and (2) are open systems, where the impact on them from the outside (and their impact on, and shaping of their environment) is fundamental.
He notes in the final paragraph, most biologists know on some level that DNA doesn't determine everything about an organism, and so on, as argued convincingly, with good examples, in the first chapters. The need to find "new methodologies" to research biological issues, rather than all-encompassing rules and new paradigms, is a very practical and his argument to support this as a major goal of research is thought-provoking. "The invention of automatic DNA-sequencing machines was a response to a growing demand for sequence, but the availability of such machines and the great ease with which DNA can now be sequenced has meant that the problems on which geneticists work have become those that can be answered from DNA sequences." Which is a more specific way of phrasing the aphorism that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. Expanding the toolkit is necessary!
Despite being published in 2000, the book seems still very relevant. I think I picked up one example that has been superseded - he says we don't know what determines skin colour; as I recall, it has been found that a large group of genes all contribute a little each to determining skin colour. Otherwise it reads like a very contemporary argument.
It's an important point, I think, that much science is conceived of in terms of closed systems with a few major determining influences. He uses the example of the solar system, in which the main bodies and forces are fairly clear to us and few in number. On the other hand, biological systems are very different, as they are (1) governed by many weakly influential forces rather than a few determining forces; and (2) are open systems, where the impact on them from the outside (and their impact on, and shaping of their environment) is fundamental.
He notes in the final paragraph, most biologists know on some level that DNA doesn't determine everything about an organism, and so on, as argued convincingly, with good examples, in the first chapters. The need to find "new methodologies" to research biological issues, rather than all-encompassing rules and new paradigms, is a very practical and his argument to support this as a major goal of research is thought-provoking. "The invention of automatic DNA-sequencing machines was a response to a growing demand for sequence, but the availability of such machines and the great ease with which DNA can now be sequenced has meant that the problems on which geneticists work have become those that can be answered from DNA sequences." Which is a more specific way of phrasing the aphorism that if the only tool you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail. Expanding the toolkit is necessary!
Despite being published in 2000, the book seems still very relevant. I think I picked up one example that has been superseded - he says we don't know what determines skin colour; as I recall, it has been found that a large group of genes all contribute a little each to determining skin colour. Otherwise it reads like a very contemporary argument.
March 9, 2020
A very interesting and well-written book. It is a concise argument against reductionist interpretations of organisms (whether that be to genetics or to environmental adaptation). He does this in two main ways: the first is that he critiques interpretations that are generally reductionist, starting with guiding metaphor and general conceptions guiding research. One review mentioned that the opponents are illusions; there are, e.g., no genetic determinists in the way Lewontin writes. I didn't read Lewontin in quite this way, though admitted there are some points where he talks like that. He mentions throughout the book that nothing he says in Chs 1-3 is revolutionary; it's information known by *all* biologists. (Note: I am not one, and this was my first book in this general topic.) His point rather seems to be that biologists will tend to stick to a reductionist way of investigation, and just sort of ignore the other stuff while doing their experiments. It's not about biologists having absurdly reductionist views; it's about the field of biology concentrating on methods of research that require reductionist assumptions, e.g., with genetic perturbations. So I don't think that reviewer's criticism is quite on point. I do wish Lewontin had engaged with other scholars more directly though, just to get a better sense of the debate.
The second way is to point out "developmental noise," and here is where I wish Lewontin did a bit more. It just seemed a bit of a murky notion throughout the book, and the last chapter was a slight disappointment in that Lewontin basically just said, "Look we need to study this stuff." Included in developmental noise are sequences of gene mutations (rather than singular significant mutations), causal impact loops between gene, organism, and environment, and perhaps a couple others that I'm forgetting now. But then he spends some time (in Ch 3) talking about the influence of shape in genetic coding-- is this developmental noise? That seems a little strange, and it also seems a lot different from the others, which involve causal particularities/idiosyncracies in patterns. In any case, this thread of the book weaved in and out the text in a kind of suggestive way, and I wish he had given it some more robust attention at the end.
But the writing is superb and concise, which makes the book all the more enjoyable and impressive. It really stimulated my interest in many of these topics.
The second way is to point out "developmental noise," and here is where I wish Lewontin did a bit more. It just seemed a bit of a murky notion throughout the book, and the last chapter was a slight disappointment in that Lewontin basically just said, "Look we need to study this stuff." Included in developmental noise are sequences of gene mutations (rather than singular significant mutations), causal impact loops between gene, organism, and environment, and perhaps a couple others that I'm forgetting now. But then he spends some time (in Ch 3) talking about the influence of shape in genetic coding-- is this developmental noise? That seems a little strange, and it also seems a lot different from the others, which involve causal particularities/idiosyncracies in patterns. In any case, this thread of the book weaved in and out the text in a kind of suggestive way, and I wish he had given it some more robust attention at the end.
But the writing is superb and concise, which makes the book all the more enjoyable and impressive. It really stimulated my interest in many of these topics.
June 14, 2009
So far, this book has been a model of concision, argumentation, minimal style and cultural clued-in-ness. That last thing could have been said better, but you know what I mean. Lewontin is brilliant, renaissance man-style; he's no awkward technician in print, even though his mathematical ideas in evolutionary bio. are reputedly nothing to shake a stick at. Really, this is a scientifically-grounded piece of elegant epistemological and ontological criticism, the best a professional philosopher could expect to write, and it comes from a scientist. The only way this book could be clearer would be to present it in outline form, with premises and conclusions in linear groups. That would impoverish the experience of reading the book, though, since the prose is so good, you tolerate having to put two and two together yourself, which any reader could do, I imagine.
Here lies evidence that theory or philosophy can be deep, clear, and modest in its claims without byzantine sentence structure, jargon, or stilted, institutionally-approved tropes designed to ape mathematics. All of which, by implication, I find in contemporary continental and analytic philosophy. Both naturalist philosophers and anti-naturalists could probably benefit from reading this short book. The naturalists will have some real arguments to criticize and (some) anti-naturalists might be surprised by biologist Lewontin's attempt to avoid throwing the baby of humanism out with the pre-Darwinist cultural bathwater.
Here lies evidence that theory or philosophy can be deep, clear, and modest in its claims without byzantine sentence structure, jargon, or stilted, institutionally-approved tropes designed to ape mathematics. All of which, by implication, I find in contemporary continental and analytic philosophy. Both naturalist philosophers and anti-naturalists could probably benefit from reading this short book. The naturalists will have some real arguments to criticize and (some) anti-naturalists might be surprised by biologist Lewontin's attempt to avoid throwing the baby of humanism out with the pre-Darwinist cultural bathwater.
August 14, 2019
Why the genome project may disappoint
This little book contains three lectures given by Lewontin at the Lezioni Italiani in Milan a few years ago. It is technical and aimed at an educated readership. Since there is not enough space here to discuss the entire book, I will concentrate on a brief discussion of the first lecture, "Gene and Organism."
In this lecture Professor Lewontin outlines the role that genes, environment and chance ("random noise") play in the development of an organism. As he phrases it on page 20: "the organism is not specified by its genes, but is a unique outcome of an ontogenetic process that is contingent on the sequence of environments in which it occurs." This means that you could take the same genetic code and have it unfurl in Hyde Park and get an organism different from one you would get having it unfurl on, say, the Boston commons. Lewontin shows how cuttings from the same plant cultured at different altitudes developed differentially, and in a manner that could not be predicted. The reason they could not be predicted is that there is a significant amount of random variation ("developmental noise") that occurs as the plant grows. Lewontin gives the further example of a multiplying bacterium on page 37. The bacterium divides in 63 minutes. In another 63 minutes the daughter cells should divide again, giving four bacteria, but actually there is some random variation in how long it takes them to divide, so that one daughter divides in say 55 minutes, the other in an hour and five minutes. And this continues so that the bacteria culture does not increase in pulses, but continuously in random increments. This difference in timing in multi-cellar organisms may result in morphological differences since a catalytic enzyme may arrive too late to, say, grow a side bristle on a fruit fly (an example that Lewontin gives). Lewontin applies this understanding to the development of our brains on page 38. First there are random connections set. "Those connections that are reinforced from external inputs during neural development are stabilized, while the others decay and disappear." This process, Lewontin advises us, can lead to differences in cognitive function that are neither strictly genetic nor strictly environmental. They are influenced by random (unpredictable) factors.
This understanding is the reason that Lewontin is less than thrilled with the Human Genome Project. He believes, as he makes clear in another book, It Ain't Necessary So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions (2000), that we will be disappointed by what can be accomplished simply from sequencing the genetic code, his point being that even though we know the code, the environmental and random factors cannot be known in any precise or predictive sense. It is true that the genome for a chimp will always code for a chimp and never for a rabbit, but whether that chimp is good at math or has unusually aggressive tendencies is something we cannot know from an understanding of the genetic code alone. Chance and environmental factors in development can result in a passive chimp even though its parents are aggressive.
Applying this idea to evolution in general, we can see that individual variation is not strictly a result of environmental differences but also of chance differences. Consequently, what we are is not shaped strictly by adaptive pressure (natural selection) but is to some extent the result of purely random processes. At one time in my life I studied chance and random events, and one of the most important things I learned is that the term "random" is not clearly defined, except in the sense that something that is random is unpredictable, which is a "you can't prove a negative" sort of definition. I also learned that there is considerable doubt as to whether a truly randomizing device actually exists. All real world devices, such as roulette wheels and computer random number algorithms can be shown to have some tiny bias, or to break down at the extremes. (Don't trust the random number generator on your computer when you are generating a very large number of trials: it will begin to repeat, and your Monte Carlo simulation will be flawed.) So what Lewontin calls "random events" are actually events that we simply do not know enough about to describe accurately. It may be that with greater ability we will eventually be able to describe or control these events. However, it may also be that at some level such events are the direct result of the probabilistic nature of a quantum event, and therefore in principle unpredictable. I suspect that Lewontin believes something like this.
In the second lecture Lewontin makes the point that to a significant degree organisms create their environment, and it is wrong to think of a place (such as the surface of the moon) without organisms as an environment. His dictum is "...[T]here are no environments without organisms" (p. 67). In the third lecture Lewontin discusses some of the problems associated with genetic causation and its analysis. There is a fourth chapter in which Lewontin attempts to provide some direction for future studies in biology.
I did not understand his assertion on page 81 that "Only a quasi-religious commitment to the belief that everything in the world has a purpose would lead us to provide a functional explanation for fingerprint ridges or eyebrows or the patches of hair on men's chests." The hair, I imagine is the result of sexual selection, but surely the fingerprint ridges allow us a better grip, and our eyebrows shade the sunlight as well as providing some small cushioning for our eye sockets.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
This little book contains three lectures given by Lewontin at the Lezioni Italiani in Milan a few years ago. It is technical and aimed at an educated readership. Since there is not enough space here to discuss the entire book, I will concentrate on a brief discussion of the first lecture, "Gene and Organism."
In this lecture Professor Lewontin outlines the role that genes, environment and chance ("random noise") play in the development of an organism. As he phrases it on page 20: "the organism is not specified by its genes, but is a unique outcome of an ontogenetic process that is contingent on the sequence of environments in which it occurs." This means that you could take the same genetic code and have it unfurl in Hyde Park and get an organism different from one you would get having it unfurl on, say, the Boston commons. Lewontin shows how cuttings from the same plant cultured at different altitudes developed differentially, and in a manner that could not be predicted. The reason they could not be predicted is that there is a significant amount of random variation ("developmental noise") that occurs as the plant grows. Lewontin gives the further example of a multiplying bacterium on page 37. The bacterium divides in 63 minutes. In another 63 minutes the daughter cells should divide again, giving four bacteria, but actually there is some random variation in how long it takes them to divide, so that one daughter divides in say 55 minutes, the other in an hour and five minutes. And this continues so that the bacteria culture does not increase in pulses, but continuously in random increments. This difference in timing in multi-cellar organisms may result in morphological differences since a catalytic enzyme may arrive too late to, say, grow a side bristle on a fruit fly (an example that Lewontin gives). Lewontin applies this understanding to the development of our brains on page 38. First there are random connections set. "Those connections that are reinforced from external inputs during neural development are stabilized, while the others decay and disappear." This process, Lewontin advises us, can lead to differences in cognitive function that are neither strictly genetic nor strictly environmental. They are influenced by random (unpredictable) factors.
This understanding is the reason that Lewontin is less than thrilled with the Human Genome Project. He believes, as he makes clear in another book, It Ain't Necessary So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions (2000), that we will be disappointed by what can be accomplished simply from sequencing the genetic code, his point being that even though we know the code, the environmental and random factors cannot be known in any precise or predictive sense. It is true that the genome for a chimp will always code for a chimp and never for a rabbit, but whether that chimp is good at math or has unusually aggressive tendencies is something we cannot know from an understanding of the genetic code alone. Chance and environmental factors in development can result in a passive chimp even though its parents are aggressive.
Applying this idea to evolution in general, we can see that individual variation is not strictly a result of environmental differences but also of chance differences. Consequently, what we are is not shaped strictly by adaptive pressure (natural selection) but is to some extent the result of purely random processes. At one time in my life I studied chance and random events, and one of the most important things I learned is that the term "random" is not clearly defined, except in the sense that something that is random is unpredictable, which is a "you can't prove a negative" sort of definition. I also learned that there is considerable doubt as to whether a truly randomizing device actually exists. All real world devices, such as roulette wheels and computer random number algorithms can be shown to have some tiny bias, or to break down at the extremes. (Don't trust the random number generator on your computer when you are generating a very large number of trials: it will begin to repeat, and your Monte Carlo simulation will be flawed.) So what Lewontin calls "random events" are actually events that we simply do not know enough about to describe accurately. It may be that with greater ability we will eventually be able to describe or control these events. However, it may also be that at some level such events are the direct result of the probabilistic nature of a quantum event, and therefore in principle unpredictable. I suspect that Lewontin believes something like this.
In the second lecture Lewontin makes the point that to a significant degree organisms create their environment, and it is wrong to think of a place (such as the surface of the moon) without organisms as an environment. His dictum is "...[T]here are no environments without organisms" (p. 67). In the third lecture Lewontin discusses some of the problems associated with genetic causation and its analysis. There is a fourth chapter in which Lewontin attempts to provide some direction for future studies in biology.
I did not understand his assertion on page 81 that "Only a quasi-religious commitment to the belief that everything in the world has a purpose would lead us to provide a functional explanation for fingerprint ridges or eyebrows or the patches of hair on men's chests." The hair, I imagine is the result of sexual selection, but surely the fingerprint ridges allow us a better grip, and our eyebrows shade the sunlight as well as providing some small cushioning for our eye sockets.
--Dennis Littrell, author of “Understanding Evolution and Ourselves”
November 11, 2018
Her ne kadar büyük bilgiler açıklayan, güzel bilgiler veren bir kitap gibi durmasa da, bilinenlerin üzerinden geçme, işleyiş hakkında bilgi sahibi olma adına okunabilecek güzel bir kitap.
November 5, 2025
The Dialectical Biologist (1985) is a tour de force, compellingly arguing simultaneously for the need to overthrow the capitalist system as well as the need to overthrow dated scientific approaches. That book has rightly earned its place as one of the key texts on the relationship between science and Marxism. However, despite its name, biology plays more of a supporting role, with the collected essays centering on philosophy, society, and the history of biology. The examples of dialectics in nature are discussed at a high level, primarily drawing from evolutionary biology. The book, being a collection of articles and book chapters published elsewhere, lacks some cohesion, and the arguments repeat.
The Triple Helix (2002) addresses both these weaknesses. The book presents the dialectics of living things as a three stranded system: genes, organism, environment. The argument is well structured, examining first the gene-organism relationship, then the organism-environment relationship, then drawing all three together with a critique of reductionist approaches in science that try to view things in isolation. The work finally concludes with a section putting forward a positive plan for how biologists should conduct their research to avoid such pitfalls. After all,
It is easy to be a critic. All one needs to do is to think very hard about any complex aspect of the world and it quickly becomes apparent why this or that approach to its study is defective in some way. It is rather more difficult to suggest how we can, in practice, do better.
Lewontin fills in these arguments with a variety of well-chosen examples (the 17 years between this work and the earlier effort were important ones for biology, and although already decades old, the discussion of molecular biology feels considerably more current). His narrative unfolds satisfyingly, flowing from one problem to the next, teaching the controversies and their resolutions. It is a wonderful work of science communication.
Despite the skilled writing on display here, I found it to be a less impactful read than his earlier book. Though the argument was delivered more sharply, the main ideas of The Triple Helix will be familiar to any reader of The Dialectical Biologist. Furthermore, while the author gestures towards the societal implications of the dialectical world view, the lines are never as explicitly drawn, and I missed some of the political fire of The Dialectical Biologist (a favourite example: “But whether the cause of tuberculosis is said to be a bacillus or the capitalist exploitation of workers, whether the death rate from cancer is best reduced by studying oncogenes or by seizing control of factories—these questions can be decided objectively only within the framework of certain sociopolitical assumptions”).
I’d recommend The Triple Helix for any young scientist or for any reader interested in the big ideas of biology. I’d recommend The Dialectical Biologist for scientists with an interest in political philosophy.
May 9, 2025
This is a collection of Lewontin's lectures on the interactions of gene, organism, and environment in which he suggests an original evolutionary framework that evolution is not just organism adapts passively to its environment but an interaction both internally and externally among genes, organism and environment.
In the first lecture, Gene and Organism, he first criticised the over use of metaphors in public dissemination of scientific knowledge that sometimes gives inaccurate depiction of ideas. Then he presents the oppositional models of biology, the developmental model and the variation model. The developmental model suggests biology is about the unfolding of biological features of an organism from its genetic information through its life history. The variation of model is about the evolutionary transformations of an organism while adapting to its environment. Lewontin points out though an organism's capacity is specified by its genes, it is also an ontogenetic process that is contingent upon the sequence of environments in which it occurs .
The next lecture, Organism and Environment, Lewontin points out an error of Darwin which he separates the inside from the outside alienating the interaction between two areas of processes. Darwin's original idea is just the organism has internal development independent of the environment. The environment's uses a natural selection to make the organism to adapt. But the fact is instead the organism does not only determine what features of the environment are relevant to them, they also create an environment for themselves. This creation is more than just Dawkins extended phenotype of building nest and dams, but also the organism's metabolic heat and water creating a layer of air around them such that an organism is not directly in the air of the environment but in it's own environment. This discovery shows the idea of organism creating environment for itself.
In the third lecture, Parts, Wholes, Causes, and Effects, the relation between how the parts of an organism work in conjunction to make the whole function. The modern trend uses the Descartes machine model according to which the whole can be understood if one studies the parts. This approach leads to natural reductionism which does not always work to fulfill its objective. The problem with this model is that there is no obvious way of partitioning an organism into organs and identify each of their function in a heterogeneous organ. There is also a debate in biology about studying at a molecular level is the way to understand a biological system versus studying the organism as a whole to understand how the whole organism works .
The last lecture on directions in the study of biology is on being innovative in new methods to meet questions to be answered such as using protein gel electrophoresis to characterise genetic diversity.
These lectures are presented with clear and precise prose with relevant supporting experimental results typical of Lewontin style. His writing style brings readers on an interesting journey of discovery.
In the first lecture, Gene and Organism, he first criticised the over use of metaphors in public dissemination of scientific knowledge that sometimes gives inaccurate depiction of ideas. Then he presents the oppositional models of biology, the developmental model and the variation model. The developmental model suggests biology is about the unfolding of biological features of an organism from its genetic information through its life history. The variation of model is about the evolutionary transformations of an organism while adapting to its environment. Lewontin points out though an organism's capacity is specified by its genes, it is also an ontogenetic process that is contingent upon the sequence of environments in which it occurs .
The next lecture, Organism and Environment, Lewontin points out an error of Darwin which he separates the inside from the outside alienating the interaction between two areas of processes. Darwin's original idea is just the organism has internal development independent of the environment. The environment's uses a natural selection to make the organism to adapt. But the fact is instead the organism does not only determine what features of the environment are relevant to them, they also create an environment for themselves. This creation is more than just Dawkins extended phenotype of building nest and dams, but also the organism's metabolic heat and water creating a layer of air around them such that an organism is not directly in the air of the environment but in it's own environment. This discovery shows the idea of organism creating environment for itself.
In the third lecture, Parts, Wholes, Causes, and Effects, the relation between how the parts of an organism work in conjunction to make the whole function. The modern trend uses the Descartes machine model according to which the whole can be understood if one studies the parts. This approach leads to natural reductionism which does not always work to fulfill its objective. The problem with this model is that there is no obvious way of partitioning an organism into organs and identify each of their function in a heterogeneous organ. There is also a debate in biology about studying at a molecular level is the way to understand a biological system versus studying the organism as a whole to understand how the whole organism works .
The last lecture on directions in the study of biology is on being innovative in new methods to meet questions to be answered such as using protein gel electrophoresis to characterise genetic diversity.
These lectures are presented with clear and precise prose with relevant supporting experimental results typical of Lewontin style. His writing style brings readers on an interesting journey of discovery.
November 1, 2021
The title implies this book deals with the three important aspects of organisms, and attempts to revolutionize our way of thinking about biology. Indeed, from this seminal book, our century knowledge of double helix was reexamined carefully and it is reasoned that biology must go past the stage of Darwinism even though Darwinism has its own glorious days.
The author criticizes with sufficient evidence and solid reasoning that our current approach to biology must be altered with the help of technological advances. He criticizes with sarcasm that scientists sometimes do not ask the most important questions because they don't know yet how to answer them.
The relations between the 3 aspects are discussed separately and then jointly in 4 chapters. The first chapter focus on the relation between gene and organism. The author criticized the old and renewed idea of pre-determinism. It is indeed true if life would be much more boring if it is determined by some mechanical forces including genes. When life is affected by environment, much variations and possibilities become available.
The author provide 2 persuasive scientific examples. A dedicated reader should read carefully into them. I can't help but wonder the implications of the 2 experiments to human life. The first experiment implies that one environment may not fit all types of individuals. When parents have children, it may take some efforts to find out what kind of environment is best for them individually. This experiment also provides strong support for personal freedom. Because only when one is free to make movements on his own, can he have the chance to move towards the environment which is best suited for him. The second experiment can be rather philosophical. In his book, A sorrow beyond Dreams, Peter Handke describes the lives of villages girls as several stages. Tired/Exhausted/Sick/Dying/Dead. It's sad to follow a blueprint pattern for life. The plants teach as to break out of current stage and get back to previous stages. Many people in the US choose to go back to school even after they are well above their school age. They are the models to follow.
The author criticizes with sufficient evidence and solid reasoning that our current approach to biology must be altered with the help of technological advances. He criticizes with sarcasm that scientists sometimes do not ask the most important questions because they don't know yet how to answer them.
The relations between the 3 aspects are discussed separately and then jointly in 4 chapters. The first chapter focus on the relation between gene and organism. The author criticized the old and renewed idea of pre-determinism. It is indeed true if life would be much more boring if it is determined by some mechanical forces including genes. When life is affected by environment, much variations and possibilities become available.
The author provide 2 persuasive scientific examples. A dedicated reader should read carefully into them. I can't help but wonder the implications of the 2 experiments to human life. The first experiment implies that one environment may not fit all types of individuals. When parents have children, it may take some efforts to find out what kind of environment is best for them individually. This experiment also provides strong support for personal freedom. Because only when one is free to make movements on his own, can he have the chance to move towards the environment which is best suited for him. The second experiment can be rather philosophical. In his book, A sorrow beyond Dreams, Peter Handke describes the lives of villages girls as several stages. Tired/Exhausted/Sick/Dying/Dead. It's sad to follow a blueprint pattern for life. The plants teach as to break out of current stage and get back to previous stages. Many people in the US choose to go back to school even after they are well above their school age. They are the models to follow.
June 29, 2025
A short, easy read arguing for a perspective shift in how we understand and study living things.
Much of modern biology is about how genes make the organism. We think of an organism as a machine, with the DNA serving as the program for that machine. Biologists generally know this is an over-simplification, but Lewontin argues we still let this metaphor cloud our vision far too often. Instead, he proposes a new story, one where the environment changes how an organism uses its genes, and the genes change how the organism uses its environment. In his view, genes, organism, and environment shape each other recursively, and we can't properly understand what life and evolution are without keeping this idea in mind at all times.
I love this book because it's such a concise, accessible telling of a difficult and important story. It actually reminds me a lot of Evolution in Four Dimensions, except that book took me weeks of study to ingest, while this one took a few days of casual reading. Triple Helix is primarily aimed at Biologists, but I think it would be even more valuable for non-experts. This book tears down misconceptions about evolution we're taught in public school. Most Biologists know these are over-simplifications, so Lewontin reminds them of the counter examples, and puts them into a new and eye-opening philosophical frame. But he presents those examples in a very non-technical way, so it doesn't matter if you've heard them before! Anyone can appreciate what he's saying.
If you've ever thought that the way we talk about evolution is too simple to explain the complexity we see, or wondered why genetics hasn't cured all diseases yet, this book offers a very clear, simple explanation as to why. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to understand better, but doesn't have the time / expertise for a gigantic tome like Evolution in Four Dimensions.
Much of modern biology is about how genes make the organism. We think of an organism as a machine, with the DNA serving as the program for that machine. Biologists generally know this is an over-simplification, but Lewontin argues we still let this metaphor cloud our vision far too often. Instead, he proposes a new story, one where the environment changes how an organism uses its genes, and the genes change how the organism uses its environment. In his view, genes, organism, and environment shape each other recursively, and we can't properly understand what life and evolution are without keeping this idea in mind at all times.
I love this book because it's such a concise, accessible telling of a difficult and important story. It actually reminds me a lot of Evolution in Four Dimensions, except that book took me weeks of study to ingest, while this one took a few days of casual reading. Triple Helix is primarily aimed at Biologists, but I think it would be even more valuable for non-experts. This book tears down misconceptions about evolution we're taught in public school. Most Biologists know these are over-simplifications, so Lewontin reminds them of the counter examples, and puts them into a new and eye-opening philosophical frame. But he presents those examples in a very non-technical way, so it doesn't matter if you've heard them before! Anyone can appreciate what he's saying.
If you've ever thought that the way we talk about evolution is too simple to explain the complexity we see, or wondered why genetics hasn't cured all diseases yet, this book offers a very clear, simple explanation as to why. Highly recommend for anyone who wants to understand better, but doesn't have the time / expertise for a gigantic tome like Evolution in Four Dimensions.
May 14, 2025
Great read to prepare for graduate school. A lot of insights from this book were extremely helpful or good reminders as I start to formulate my project for the next four years. Genes, organisms, and environments are not closed and independent systems but are complex interpenetrating relationships. They are both causes and effects of each other. Recognizing this should help me design experiments and projects. In plant breeding there is an interest in genotype x environment effects, but as plant breeders we also need to think about the genotype’s effect on the environment, how do new varieties change the environment in which they grow? How do they introduce changes which may challenge their development? Lewonkin also asks scientists to more carefully consider form and spacing in biological systems. In wheat I am thinking of the large, complex, and repetitive genome. How does gene structure and location affect expression? How does the actual layout of the genome change crops? These are questions I am interested in and hope to work on as a scientist.
September 3, 2018
Bu kitabı okumak için çok geç kalmışım! Öyle ki, kitabın arkasında 3,5 YTL fiyat etiketi var. Yazarın "bu konularda şöyle detaylı incelemeler yapmamız mümkün değil" dediği pek çok konu geçmişte kalmış, çünkü ben onların çoğunu okulda veya stajda yüksek teknolojili aletler ve yeni moleküler deney kitleri ile yaptım.
Kitap okuyucuya genlerin organizmayı, genlerin çevreyi, organizmaların çevreyi nasıl etkilediğini ve nasıl yapılandırdığını evrim çerçevesinde anlatıyor. Kitaba ne kadar geç kalmış olursam olayım, çevre ve organizmalar arasındaki ilişkiyle ilgili çok farklı ve çok haklı görüşler edindim, zaten aşina olduğum konuları çok farklı örneklerle yeniden okumuş oldum ki bu da o konuları daha iyi pekiştirmemi sağladı.
DİKKAT: Bana göre bu kitap bir popüler bilim kitabı değil. Eğer Biyoloji, Genetik, Biyoteknoloji alanlarından birinde okumuyor veya çalışmıyorsanız, bu kitabın size göre olduğunu düşünmüyorum.
Kitap okuyucuya genlerin organizmayı, genlerin çevreyi, organizmaların çevreyi nasıl etkilediğini ve nasıl yapılandırdığını evrim çerçevesinde anlatıyor. Kitaba ne kadar geç kalmış olursam olayım, çevre ve organizmalar arasındaki ilişkiyle ilgili çok farklı ve çok haklı görüşler edindim, zaten aşina olduğum konuları çok farklı örneklerle yeniden okumuş oldum ki bu da o konuları daha iyi pekiştirmemi sağladı.
DİKKAT: Bana göre bu kitap bir popüler bilim kitabı değil. Eğer Biyoloji, Genetik, Biyoteknoloji alanlarından birinde okumuyor veya çalışmıyorsanız, bu kitabın size göre olduğunu düşünmüyorum.
January 20, 2024
An excellent introduction, deals with topics that are covered in a lot of other Levins/Lewontins works, but this strikes a nice medium by being more scientifically in depth than Biology as Ideology, but shorter than The Dialectical Biologist. As usual, clearly argued and convincing, the last two chapters were especially interesting to me. The final chapter deals with how he believes biology should be working, an important topic that he acknowledges is far more difficult than critiquing the shortcomings of the current methodology. Well worth the read.
October 9, 2019
“As there is a dialectic between organisms and their environments, each forming the other, so there is a dialectic of method and problematic in science... Progress in biology depends not on revolutionary new conceptualizations, but on the creation of new methodologies that make questions answerable in practice in a world of finite resources.”
Want to read
December 22, 2020recommendation: [Transcript of #140 – Lisa Feldman Barrett: Love, Evolution, and the Human Brain from Lex Fridman Podcast podcast | Happy Scribe Public](https://www.happyscribe.com/public/le...)
September 3, 2017
Bir popüler bilim kitabına oranla yer yer fazla teknik ayrıntı içeriyor. Konu hakkında biraz ön bilgi sahibi olmadan, genel kültür maksatlı dümdüz okunabilecek bir kitap değil.
February 7, 2018
Esemplare nella chiarezza. Fa piazza pulita per sempre di ogni riduzionismo, genetico o ambientale: ognuno di noi è il risultato di entrambi i contributi.
November 27, 2018
Wonderful. I don't think its as overtly-Marxist as people claim...
September 3, 2019
Siguiendo con la temática de Not in our genes, Lewontin continúa su cruzada contra el determinismo biológico. Algunas ideas nuevas y otras repetidas.
May 1, 2021
scientifically heavy book, researchers of the subject should only read
January 13, 2022
Great for understanding how genetics and the environment interact
October 15, 2022
Fun, thought-provoking, and accesible meditation on the conceptual foundations of methodology (and explanation) in biology.
January 17, 2025
Every biology major should read this book! It teaches u so much about science and the truth about metaphors u hear all the time in university!
March 28, 2020
Sober, critical view of the limitations of our understandings of biology. Lewontin makes the case that the relationship between genetics, living organisms, and the environment is reciprocal. Big takeaway was that analytic approaches to the study of biology are limited because (1) ontologies of biological components are difficult to construct (2) there are a number of weakly determining factors that influence the development of a living organism, and (3) cause and effect are not distinct in biological systems.
"Over the last three hundred years the analytic model has been immensely successful in explaining nature in such a way as to allow us to manipulate and predict it. It seems abundantly clear to us now that the holistic view of the world obstructs any possibility of a practical understanding of natural phenomena. But the success of the clock model, in contrast to the failure of obscurantist holism, has led to an overly simplified view of the relation of parts to wholes and of causes to effects. Part of the success of naive reductionism and simplistic analysis comes from the opportunistic nature of scientific work. Scientists pursue precisely those problems that yield to their methods… Science as we practice it solves those problems for which its methods and concepts are adequate, and successful scientists soon learn to pose only those problems that are likely to be solved.
… Despite the extraordinary successes of analytic and reductionist biology, the most interesting questions remain: the problems of mind and shape. What are the neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of specific stores memories? … The difficulty of the problem is not that we lack some crucial bit of knowledge, but that we do not know how to frame questions. Trapped by the machine model, we have passed through a succession of fashionable metaphors in different technological eras. "
"Over the last three hundred years the analytic model has been immensely successful in explaining nature in such a way as to allow us to manipulate and predict it. It seems abundantly clear to us now that the holistic view of the world obstructs any possibility of a practical understanding of natural phenomena. But the success of the clock model, in contrast to the failure of obscurantist holism, has led to an overly simplified view of the relation of parts to wholes and of causes to effects. Part of the success of naive reductionism and simplistic analysis comes from the opportunistic nature of scientific work. Scientists pursue precisely those problems that yield to their methods… Science as we practice it solves those problems for which its methods and concepts are adequate, and successful scientists soon learn to pose only those problems that are likely to be solved.
… Despite the extraordinary successes of analytic and reductionist biology, the most interesting questions remain: the problems of mind and shape. What are the neurophysiology and neuroanatomy of specific stores memories? … The difficulty of the problem is not that we lack some crucial bit of knowledge, but that we do not know how to frame questions. Trapped by the machine model, we have passed through a succession of fashionable metaphors in different technological eras. "
March 15, 2022
This is a fairly interesting little book.
In it, Richard Lewontin, a prominent biologist of the second half of the 20th century, constructs an argument against strict genetic determinism and extreme reductionism in general.
He gives some facts of the complexity of gene-organism-environment interactions: the evolutionary fitness of organisms is affected by environmental conditions, but environmental conditions are in turn affected by the changes they effected in organisms and on and on, genes are polytropic (a particular allele can be advantageous or deleterious in different environments, a particular allele can have different effects according to which other gene alleles the organism happens to have, small changes in initial conditions can have huge effects on the genes that come to dominate in a population, there is inherently random developmental noise, and so on...
Being written 20 years ago (in 2000), some arguments are obsolete (the argument about protein folding, for instance), but that is also somewhat interesting to observe.
The book is fairly small, so it requires only a modest time investment, language is a bit dry and at times a bit hard but certainly not impossible, it has some interesting thoughts and gives a brief and fairly concise description of complexity in gene expression and biological systems in general. Helped me see a bit more clearly how one needs to always supplement reductionism with a holistic perspective (and how simple/narrow reductionism can lead to overlooking important aspects of reality and, ultimately, to uncertain - or false - conclusions).
Takeaway: relying narrowly on either reductionism or holism as the basis of one’s worldview is limiting.
In it, Richard Lewontin, a prominent biologist of the second half of the 20th century, constructs an argument against strict genetic determinism and extreme reductionism in general.
He gives some facts of the complexity of gene-organism-environment interactions: the evolutionary fitness of organisms is affected by environmental conditions, but environmental conditions are in turn affected by the changes they effected in organisms and on and on, genes are polytropic (a particular allele can be advantageous or deleterious in different environments, a particular allele can have different effects according to which other gene alleles the organism happens to have, small changes in initial conditions can have huge effects on the genes that come to dominate in a population, there is inherently random developmental noise, and so on...
Being written 20 years ago (in 2000), some arguments are obsolete (the argument about protein folding, for instance), but that is also somewhat interesting to observe.
The book is fairly small, so it requires only a modest time investment, language is a bit dry and at times a bit hard but certainly not impossible, it has some interesting thoughts and gives a brief and fairly concise description of complexity in gene expression and biological systems in general. Helped me see a bit more clearly how one needs to always supplement reductionism with a holistic perspective (and how simple/narrow reductionism can lead to overlooking important aspects of reality and, ultimately, to uncertain - or false - conclusions).
Takeaway: relying narrowly on either reductionism or holism as the basis of one’s worldview is limiting.
August 17, 2009
I really enjoyed this, although I would say that Lewontin is not really that clear a writer sometimes. Yet the overall point of the book is really interesting: that there is a dialectical relationship between organism and environment, i.e. there is coevolution of organism and environment. This means that what is internal to the organism forms the organism's environment, while the environment also forms what is internal to the oragnism, and on and on. This seems, philosophically at least, a much more sensible approach than the reductionist approach (which thinks everything important happens at the level of the gene only), and it seems to take into account the new developments in understand genomes, like DNA redundancy, the complicated process of folding amino acids, etc. Life is so complex it takes a much more pluralistic approach to deal with it, and Lewontin makes a pretty strong case that this is the best biologically.
January 2, 2009
An excellent explanation of how the metaphors employed by biologists in explaining their science have obscured the true reality of the concepts they are trying to communicate. While once necessary, this language has resulted in some fundamental misunderstandings that prevent the public from understanding the inadequacy of the nature versus nurture dichotomy and the complexity of developmental variation. The end result is that the very questions that biologists now pursue have been focused onto very narrow characterizations of the greater questions in which we are interested. Unfortunately, I don't think that the casual reader would enjoy this book. But for anyone with a hint of scientific inkling could likely get through it (especially since it is just over 100 pages long), and learn a good deal on the way.
September 14, 2012
I limiti della scienza
Lewontin è un genetista di fama mondiale, nessuno meglio di lui è in grado di smontare gli argomenti di chi accusa la scienza di credersi onnipotente.
"La scienza come noi la pratichiamo risolve quei problemi per i quali i suoi metodi e i suoi strumenti sono adeguati e gli scienziati imparano presto a porsi solo i quesiti che possono essere risolti"
"La domanda originaria era: perché le appendici che crescono ai due lati della mia testa hanno la forma e la struttura di orecchie puttosto che di piedi [...]? La domanda alla quale la genetica dello sviluppo ha trovato una risposta è quali geni vengono letti dalle cellule all'estremità anteriore di un embrione e quali alla sua estremità posteriore. "
Lewontin è un genetista di fama mondiale, nessuno meglio di lui è in grado di smontare gli argomenti di chi accusa la scienza di credersi onnipotente.
"La scienza come noi la pratichiamo risolve quei problemi per i quali i suoi metodi e i suoi strumenti sono adeguati e gli scienziati imparano presto a porsi solo i quesiti che possono essere risolti"
"La domanda originaria era: perché le appendici che crescono ai due lati della mia testa hanno la forma e la struttura di orecchie puttosto che di piedi [...]? La domanda alla quale la genetica dello sviluppo ha trovato una risposta è quali geni vengono letti dalle cellule all'estremità anteriore di un embrione e quali alla sua estremità posteriore. "
Want to read
November 9, 2017organisms big and small
relationship of DNA to environment and organisms. Favorite theory: random changes as to where the chromosomes are on the DNA causing mutations and small differences such as feet size! Insane!
relationship of DNA to environment and organisms. Favorite theory: random changes as to where the chromosomes are on the DNA causing mutations and small differences such as feet size! Insane!
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