OK, as I say, I don't know that much biology anymore. You may be right about the view that Gould is attacking. I am still not sure how the relative paucity of human genes has anything to do with it. It doesn't even refute the one gene-one protein view. After all, another point I didn't mentioned, who's to say that you need specifically human genes to get the proteins you get? I mean, maybe a genes we share with chimps producers the appropriate protein. As for the view you say Gould attacks, I would have thought it unpromising on general principles, and I am not unsympathetic to reductionism. --jks
> C. Schwartz,
>
>
> You're missing the point of Gould's article. Biologists assumed that
>the
>phenomenon they understood (a gene coding for a protein) represented the
>entire underlying mechanism of biology. The reductionism was biology as an
>expression of the known gene-for-protein phenomenon. Now it's clear that
>while genes code for proteins in general they do so in a way or ways that
>we
>don't understand. They may do so in ways that may be subject to complexity
>and irregularity. They may do so in ways that may not even be consistent
>among all species. They may do so in ways that cannot be predicted from
>looking at the genome. Therefore the reductionism of the genome as the
>predictive mechanism for biology is lost.
>
> Up to now evolution was reduced to the increasing of complexity in the
>genome itself. Now we see that's not true as such. Therefore evolution
>(and Gould really equates evolution and biology) represents two processes:
>the increasing of complexity in the genome and the increasing of complexity
>in the expression of the genome. When your reductionism has failed to
>include the entire second process, it has failed. Or, more correctly, it
>may have failed. That is, if the complexity involved in gene expression
>cannot be predicted by looking at the genome. Reductionism has to be
>predictive. It's not enough to say that genes code for proteins.
>
> peace
>
>
>
>
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