The underlying confidence in gene shearing is based on a reductionist notion
that nature can be understood as a simple sum of some of its parts and also
assumptions about the singular importance of genes in inheritance.
Reductionist research goes through fads and phases of power in pursuing
fundamental causes. Genetics is just the latest fad focus. Richard Lewontin
in his Canadian Broadcasting Corporation Massey Lectures 1991 criticised
[chapter 3] the ideological prejudice in modern biology particularly as
relates to causes, or rather the tendency to seek THE cause of an effect.
This he says is "nowhere more evident than in our theories of health and
disease". In discussing pursuit of the 'cause' of cancer he runs through the
history of cancer research, pursuing a viral cause, an environmental cause
and more recently in the human genome project, of which he is sharply
critical. He asks (or, in 1991 asked, but the question remains valid):
"Why, then, do so many powerful, famous, successful, and extremely
intelligent scientists want to sequence the human genome? The answer is in
part, that they are so completely devoted to the ideology of simple unitary
causes that they believe in the efficacy of the research and do not ask
themselves more complicated questions. But in part, the answer is a rather
crass one. The participation in and the control of a multibillion dollar,
30- or 50-year research project that will involve the everyday work of
thousands of technicians and lower-level scientists is an extraordinarily
appealing prospect for an ambitious biologist..." R.C. Lewontin, The
Doctrine of DNA, Penguin Books 1993 p. 51.
The need to look at whole systems rather than fragments was expressed
perhaps most elegantly by the great physiologist Albert Szent-Gyorgyi:
"1+1>2"
Or, at more length:
"One particle, plus one particle, put together at random, are two particles,
1+1=2; the system is additive. But if two particles are put together in a
meaningful way then something new is born which is more than their sum:
1+1>2. This is the most basic equation of biology. It can also be called
organisation." Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Bioelectronics: A Study in Cellular
Regulations, Defense, and Cancer, Academic Press New York, 1968, p 4.
While individual genetic research projects into particular gene functions
may inspire confidence that individual genes may trigger or control
particular actions or events, the generality of their function cannot be so
readily understood, any more than there is general understanding of the role
or history or sensitivity or reactivity of the host of retroviruses in
genetic material. There is also a blithe disregard of functions of the
cytosol and organelles and their roles in cellular memory and intelligence.
It is the greatest of simplifications in 'science' to observe an action
somewhere and be blinded to reality that other things not understood may
have roles of equal significance.
If you wonder about the term 'cell intelligence' see:
http://www.basic.nwu.edu/g-buehler/summary.htm
I was delighted to find that a former Senator, former Australian Federal
Health Minister, now Head of the School of Community Medicine at the
University of New South Wales, in Sydney, had written this about medicine,
which applies as much to biology:
“If we look back 150 years, to the paradigms and practices of that time, we
are likely to smile indulgently. Many of us can see clearly that the belief
systems then operating were inadequate to explain events, and have been
overtaken. But too many of us lack a capacity to learn from that observation
about our current paradigms. If we go forward 150 years in our imagination
and then look back it seems likely that practitioners of that day will smile
again at our belief systems. There is nothing wrong with this - we are using
the best paradigms we have. They are not perfect and they will be overtaken.
We need to be relaxed and ready - and not be prisoners of the paradigms of
today.”
Peter Baume "The Tasks of Medicine: An Ideology of Care" Sydney 1998
This is NOT in my view a statement that we must yield to the advance of
technology, but that me must recognise that contemporary advances are
inherently flawed and need to be addressed with wisdom, rather than blind
enthusiasm. There is no reason for organic agriculture to be thought
backward. It should, if not always is, respectful of nature as a system
rather than just a clutter of manipulable bits and pieces. Wholesale
rejection of technology may be backward; wholesale enthusiasm for inherently
simplistic and mechanistic technology is naive and foolish in the extreme.
my thoughts
Dennis Argall
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