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