You know, I never got the sense that most biological researchers
(with the exception of molecular biologists :^) "forgot" that
organisms should be studied within multiple contexts or levels.
Those who appreciated how complex the interactions are seem to
recognise this.
A few years ago I was at an E. coli genome meeting, listening to
a speaker who seemed fresh out of a computer science background.
He was interested in finding ways of organizing and using the
mounds of sequence data that was being acquired. In the talk
he mentioned that with the sequence of whole genomes of organisms
in hand, we would soon be able to "finally figure out how cells work".
I chuckled, and a colleague sitting next to me rolled his eyes in
disbelief. I don't think that many in the audience thought is was
going to be quite that simple. That sequence data is extremely handy,
but definitely not the whole story.
If anything, perhaps the "big picture" questions of developmental
biology & etc. were only being shelved temporarily, until the tools
needed to crack them were developed. Sequencing is easy; synthesis
is tough.
Regards, Tim Ikeda (timi@mendel.berkeley.edu)