SJ Gould on genome

[Carl Remick]

>Humbled by the Genome's Mysteries
>By STEPHEN JAY GOULD ...
>
>But the deepest ramifications will be scientific or philosophical in
>the largest sense. From its late 17th century inception in modern
>form, science has strongly privileged the reductionist mode of
>thought that breaks overt complexity into constituent parts and then
>tries to explain the totality by the properties of these parts and
>simple interactions fully predictable from the parts. ("Analysis"
>literally means to dissolve into basic parts). The reductionist
>method works triumphantly for simple systems ...

... and not well at all for interpreting biological nature as a totality.  
This gets to the heart of why GM technology in agriculture is so potentially 
hazardous.

Carl
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