For any one interested in biology, genetics, and the molecular level view of the cell, I would suggest reading or at least having as a reference:
_Molecular Biology of the Cell_, Alberts B, et. al, Garland Publishing, New York. 1146p
I have a very dated '83 edition, but this text has several newer editions. Look for the newest one you can find.
What you get is a well laid out, detailed compendium of current work, with direct references to the journal and other texts. Each chapter is broken down into sections and each section down to topic paragraphs.
I suggest this book because it is essentially meaningless to discuss either the potential ideological underpinnings of work, or the concrete potential of biological science without knowing specifically what is known, what is understood, what is theoretical.
This isn't to say, that particular opinions and discussions are false or wrong. But, such discussion has to be directly related to the science in order to have any meaning or have any impact. From my limited experience with the science world, people there will only listen, if they think you know what you are talking about. This textbook gives you that background. After some study, you will see that there are many different directions and positions to take in viewing the conceptualizations used in bio-science.
A determinist, mechanistic, and reductionist view of what is going on in living processes is very dated and anachronistic. Here is a quote from the preface:
"The eucaryotic cells that form multicellular animals and plants are social organisms to an extreme degree: they live by cooperation and specialization. To understand how they function, one must study the ways of cells in multicellular communities, as well as the internal workings of cells in isolation. These are two very different levels of investigation, but each depends on the other for focus and direction. We have therefore devoted Part III of the book to the behavior of cells in multicellular animals and plants. ..." (v)
The idea that an organism has a dialectical relation to the environment is equally narrow. The reciprocity of the dialectic is only one of many sorts of relations that can be examined, as is the completely deterministic relation of cause -> effect. In fact the set of relationships that exist is much richer than a simple logical relation between elements. What is perhaps even more interesting is that these relationships have changed over time, have co-evolved and therefore reveal their historical formative processes. They are more like a family history, than a system of causal chains.
Instead of examining various ideological schools and their skewing of bio-science, it is a lot more interesting to examine the science and find relationships that expand our understanding of just what a relationship between entities can be. In other words, the biology of the cell is richer in relationships than any assembly of ideologies or theoretical designs. That's the problem.
Chuck Grimes