Biologists used to think, and most lay people went along with them, that genes were the book of life, the determining code, and all that. That's rather definitively been shown to be wrong - context and totality matter, timing matters. As Gould puts it, "So organisms must be explained as organisms, and not as a summation of genes."
Doug
Justin Schwartz wrote:
>Gould's article contains an important fallacy, maybe several. He
>infers from the relative paucity of "human" genes that the "central
>dogma" (one-way directionality of explanation from DNA through
>protein) is false, because so few genes cannot produces od many
>proteins, and infers from that we must reject "reductionism,"
>understood as explaining "higher level" phenomena, e,.g.,
>biological, or maybe even psychological and social phenomena, in
>terms of lower level phenomena, e.g., genetic or even biochemical
>phenomena. None of these inferences will hold.
>
>I should remark that years ago I wrote a dissertation defending a
>sophisticated reductionsim about the mind (roghtly taht we ould
>expklain mental phenomena in physical terms) against abd
>philosophical objections. I published several papers out of it, then
>lost interest, since it seemed to me that I was saying oveer and
>over again that either the scientists would produce reductions, in
>which case the philosophical objections were obviously wrong, or
>they wouldn't, in which case the issue would lose its urgency. I no
>longer care very much about reductionism. But I do know a lot about
>it. And despite Gould's immense scientific learning, far greater
>than mine, what he has presented here is another bad philosophical
>objection, not a scientific refutation.
>
>OK, the first step: few genes, many proteins. That refutes the idea
>that there is a single gene that by itself turns on each protein in
>every circumstance. It does not even refute the idea, however, that
>there is a single gene that turns on each protein in some
>circumstance. Nor does it show that discrete combination of genes do
>not make each particular proteins in some or all circumstances. If
>only two genes are required to turn on or make each protein, we have
>already got a huge increase in the number of explananda in the
>explanatory base. This means that the central dogma stands, unless
>we identify it with the one gene-one protein view. The paucity of
>genes does not by itself tell us anything about the explanatory
>direction.
>
>Now, the second move: from the failure of the central dogma to the
>falsity of reductionism. This is a bad argument for several reasons.
>The first is already indicated; since several genes, or single
>genese in particular circumstances, may make single proteins, the
>lower level phenomena, so understood, may still explain the high
>level ones.
>
>Second, I remark that is is somewhat difficult to imagine how else
>it could be: is Gould suggesting that there are genetic explanations
>for biochemical phenomena? That, say, the laws of population
>genetics explain how RNA encodes information from DNA and makes
>proteins? How could that be? Maybe he just means that there are
>several ways that the biochemsitry of DNA/RNA means proteins, that,
>in the jargon of the discussion, the manufacture of proteins is
>multiply realized. It's true that multiple realizability is often
>taken to be a refutation of reduction, but it isn't. It just shows
>that there are several reduction bases.
>
>But even if the "central dogma" is refuted by the results of the
>human genome project, and we accept that there are emergent
>properties that can affect lower-level ones, evolutionary properties
>that can affect biochemical ones somehow, that does not show that
>reductionism is false, that we cannot explain higher level phenomena
>in terms of lower level ones, even exhaustively. It just shows that
>explanation can run both ways. It would take more argument to show
>that exhaustive explanation of the higher levels in terms of the
>lower levels is impossible; that does not follow from the premise
>that explanation in the reverse direction is possible.
>
>I comment that "reduction" is not elimination: no onme argues that
>there are no proteins just becaust or if we can esxplain their
>behavior in biochemical terms.
>
>I don't see why any of this discussion has any implicatiosn for
>"bourgeois" thought one way or the other.
>
>--jks