I wonder, do readers know much about "Post Modern" biology? Radio Open Source contacted me about this topic...the thing is that I don't usually pay much attention to the "overthrow" of the "orthodox" doctrine because I don't think these "doctrines" are really adhered to in the same way that Marxism or Christianity are. Science is about change, falsification is a feature and not a bug! Myself, contravention of standard orthodoxy is cool, that means the low hanging fruit might still be around. Epigenetics and phenotypic plasticity seem to be well acknowledged phenomena which might be considered outside the conventional box if they weren't widely accepted. Since biology is the science of flexible and fuzzy generalizations I am not usually surprised by rivers which flow uphill...it seems much of the "debate" lay in the realm of semantics and rhetoric than science. To me a large fraction of "controversy" in natural science is captured by an anecdote that Martin Gradner recounted about the relationship between Sir Karl Popper and Rudolf Carnap's ideas in the philosophy of science, "the distance between him and Popper was not symmetrical. From Carnap to Popper it was small, but the other way around it appeared huge." Here the abstract of the precipitating article:
Recent insights regarding stem cells, repression and de-repression of gene expression, and the application of Complexity Theory to cell and molecular biology require a re-evaluation of many long-held dogmas regarding the nature of the human body in health and disease. Greater than expected cell plasticity, trafficking of cells between organs, 'cellular uncertainty', stochasticity of cell origins and fates, and a reconsideration of Cell Doctrine itself all logically follow from these observations and conceptual approaches. In this paper, these themes will be considered and some implications for the investigative pathologist will be explored.Laboratory Investigation advance online publication, 13 February 2006; doi:10.1038/labinvest.3700401.
I doubt the distance between the author and I is really that large. Regular readers know I'm a big fan of R.A. Fisher, he of the gas law analogy, but I don't have big issues with the rise of evolutionary development biology, or the possibility that epigenetics might be a powerful force in biology. Life is a messy thing to create a science out of, and biology is an enormous territory. Some molecular biologists are probably tied to a tightly knitted heuristic around which their career has been based, but I haven't talked to many of these. I would bet that most "deterministic" quotes from the "orthodox" school imply a lack of consideration of context because the quotes are taken out of context, or their proper frame. People don't regularly expose their axioms in everyday conversation, and so confusion grows from the fertile soil of the perceived and assumed gaps between explicit assertions. I do think we live in the era of Post Modern Biology,
but I think we've always lived in the era of Post Modern Biology
, insofar that science is implemented by humans, a species that is characterized by faction, self-interest and emotion. The filter through which we view the universe biases our perception of it, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the universe dances to our beck and call. I suspect many controversies, whether between Selectionists vs. Neutralists or Bayesians vs. Frequentists, tell us more about the science of humanity than the science done by humans.
