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Richard Lewontin, The Triple Helix, (2000).
conclusion

CONTENTS

I. Gene and Organism

II. Organism and Environment

III. Parts & Wholes, Causes & Effects

IV. Directions in the Study of Biology

Ehrlich on genes

pages


Pages

1-38, Chapter I

39-68, Chapter II

69-106, Chapter III

107-129, Chapter IV

lead ideas


I

"It is not possible to work in science without using a language that is filled with metaphors. Virtually the entire body of modern science is an attempt to explain phenomena that cannot be experienced directly by human beings...."

II

"The belief that organisms are remarkably well suited to the world in which they live predates scientific biology."

III

"The problem of how to parse the world into appropriate bits and pieces is a consequence of the analytic tradition that modern science has inherited from the seventeenth century."

IV

"...explanations of the way in which a reductionist approach to the study of living organisms can lead us to formulate incomplete answers to questions about biology or to miss the essential features of biological processes, or to ask the wrong questions in the first place."

Conclusion

"It is useless to call...for some more synthetic approach or to say that ...we need a new insight."

109.

Progress in biology depends not on revolutionary new conceptualizations, but on the creation of new methodologies that make questions answerable in practice in a world of finite resources.

129.

What is biology?

Genetics

The Century of the Gene

Ehrlich