http://lists.econ.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism-thaxis/2001-February/017071.html
[Marxism-Thaxis] "LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY Charles Brown CharlesB at cncl.ci.detroit.mi.us Fri Feb 16 08:54:44 MST 2001 Previous message: [Marxism-Thaxis] "LYSENKO, VIEWS OF NATURE AND SOCIETY Next message: [Marxism-Thaxis] Nepal, Maoism gathers strength Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- >>> cburford at gn.apc.org 02/16/01 02:05AM >>> At 09:00 15/02/01 -0800, you wrote: >Heh, Charles, sometimes I still look for loons far, far to your "left". Have >a chuckle. ;-) > >http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Atrium/1091/lysenkotable.html However my impression is that Lysenko actually was not so completely wrong as he was made out to be in the west. Of course there were some very good aspects to Soviet Science: Luria was far ahead of the west, in emphasising neuronal circuits rather than individual loci as the organising unit for mental processes. ))))))))))))) Charles B:This site and an earlier one that Michael sent raise an interesting paradox: Lysenko ,the Stalinist ,was not the dogmatist in this argument. Lamarckian claims are against the central dogma of modern genetic theory. This article articulates the fundamentals of genetics in attacking them ( which is a timely clarification with the publishing of the human genome) For example, It received a molecular updating in 1957. Francis Crick, one of the co-discoverers of the importance of the genetic molecule DNA, called this hypothesis, the "Central Dogma" which : "Stated that once "information" has passed into protein it cannot get out again. The transfer of information from nucleic acid to nucleic acid, or from nucleic acid to protein may be possible, but transfer from protein to protein, or from protein to nucleic acid is impossible." This is anti-LaMarckianism in DNA language (obviously). It helps as a mental notation in examing the genome project as to whether there is any new evidence there that might tickle the dogma's toes. MOLECULAR BIOLOGY: In the Beginning Was the Word A review by R. C. Lewontin* ----------------------------------------------------------------- Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code Lily E. Kay Stanford University Press, Stanford, CA 2000. 470 pp. $60, £45. ISBN 0-8047-3384-8. Paper, $24.95, £17.95. ISBN 0-8047-3417-8. ----------------------------------------------------------------- It seems impossible to do science without metaphors. Biology since the 17th century has been a working out of Descarte's original metaphor of the organism as machine. But the use of metaphor carries with it the consequence that we construct our view of the world, and formulate our methods for its analysis, as if the metaphor were the thing itself. The organism has long since ceased to be viewed like a machine and is said to be a machine. The ways in which the metaphors of biology have molded the concepts and experiments of the science have been a preoccupation of the historian of molecular biology Lily Kay. In Who Wrote the Book of Life? her most recent and unfortunately final book (she died of cancer in December), Kay asks how the view that DNA is "information" that is "written" in a "language" whose "words" are in "code" has driven the research program and claims of molecular biology. Kay's analysis of the history of molecular genetics is poststructuralist. That is, while not denying the objective reality of genes, proteins, and cellular elements, it is "grounded in the conviction that once a commitment to a particular representation of life is made--material, discursive and social--it assumes a kind of agency that both enables and constrains the thoughts and actions of biologists." Unfortunately, the outline of this claim in the early part of the book makes a formulaic use of the special jargon of poststructuralist theory, a jargon that will be impenetrable to any biologist not possessed of a considerable education in literary theory. But the biologist should persist, because the central chapters on "Genetic Codes in the 1950s" and "Writing Genetic Codes in the 1960s" present a compelling case for the ways in which the purely theoretical analysis of DNA as a code led to the determinative experiments that demonstrated the mechanism by which amino acid sequences are specified and constructed. Many biologists in the late 1950s (I among them) regarded with a certain contemptuous hauteur the attempts of renegade physicists to illumine the relation between gene and protein by engaging in the sort of cryptanalysis that became so romantic as a result of the wartime triumphs of Bletchley Park. But Kay shows quite convincingly that, although these codebreaking techniques could not in themselves provide the right answer, the view of DNA as code and amino acid sequence as plaintext was absolutely essential in the very conception of the critical experiments at the beginning of the 1960s. The brilliant paper by Crick, Barnett, Brenner, and Watts-Tobin, which demonstrated so elegantly that the DNA sequence was processed from a fixed starting point using each successive non-overlapping triplet to determine the next amino acid in the chain, and Nirenberg and Matthaei's path-breaking demonstration that poly-U RNA in an in vitro synthetic system resulted in the construction of a polypeptide consisting solely of phenylalanine, would have been conceptually impossible without the metaphor of the code. This, then, raises the problem of the counter-factual conditional that plagues all attempts to understand history: What if? What would have happened had the language metaphor never taken hold in molecular genetics? Would we now be ignorant of the details of the relation between DNA and protein? Would we have a different understanding? Would we know more about the world? or less? complete review at: http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/291/5507/1263 I can't find my way around this site. I am alarmed by the length of it and the reference ot "several deadly battles", and an attempt it seems to encapsulate revisionism neatly. My eye alighted on this passage from the website. >Briefly, the author will argue that Lysenko fell into biological >reductionism, in order to >counter another form of biological reductionism - Morganism. >Neither form of reductionism is adequate. But much of Lysenkoism was >motivated to ensure the >possibility of change, and much of Morganism was motivated to ensure >continuity. Furthermore, >Lysenkoism does contain some elements that have been vindicated by later >biological research. >Finally, the parallel to some Western research, shows that Lysenko's >discomfort with Morganism >was not unique to Soviet geneticists. Although rather schematic that might be an interesting take. Chris Burford London _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
