Genes 
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necessary metaphors | prescientific beliefs | inappropriate taxonomy | incomplete answers | new methods
CONTENTS
I. Gene and Organism
II. Organism and Environment
III. Parts & Wholes, Causes & Effects
IV. Directions in the Study of Biology
metaphors | prescientific beliefs | inappropriate taxonomy | incomplete answers | new methods
Pages
1-38, Chapter I
39-68, Chapter II
69-106, Chapter III
107-129, Chapter IV
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...."
prescientific beliefs | inappropriate taxonomy | incomplete answers | new methods | more
II
"The belief that organisms are remarkably well suited to the world in which they live predates scientific biology."
necessary metaphors | inappropriate taxonomy | incomplete answers | new methods | more
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."
necessary metaphors | prescientific beliefs | incomplete answers | new methods | more
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."
necessary metaphors | prescientific beliefs | inappropriate taxonomy | new methods | more
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.
necessary metaphors | prescientific beliefs | inappropriate taxonomy | incomplete answers | new methods | more
