PART III - GENETICS AND MOLECULAR BIOLOGY

Summary

Shortly before moving to Virginia Tech in 1983, I began a study of gene concepts and how they changed over the years. Much of the work from this project has been published in article form, including three papers incorporated in this book as Chapters 7, 8, and 11. (For related papers, see Burian 1987, 1990, 2000; Burian and Zallen 2004 [in press]; Burian, Gayon, and Zallen 1988; Burian, Richardson, and Van der Steen 1996; Zallen and Burian 1992.)

Chapter 7 derives from a paper delivered at a 1984 conference on “The New Biology and the New Philosophy of Science,” organized by David Depew and Bruce Weber at California State University, Fullerton. The main point of the chapter is that the classical gene concept is categorially open. By this, I mean that Mendelian gene concepts employed devices of indefinite reference that did not even specify the category to which genes belong – that is, if there really are such things as genes, what kind (or category) of entity they are. Thus, it was possible to identify and reidentify particular genes without knowing their exact constitution. I argue specifically that even though Bateson, one of the founders of genetics, thought that genes could not be “mere” material particles (he thought that they might be stable harmonic resonances of some sort), whereas the Morgan group thought genes to be chemical units or material particles contained on chromosomes, Bateson and the Morgan group could agree on clear-cut criteria sufficient to determine when genes had been properly identified.