Again, I welcome this overt and clear statement - it's not often I
come across people saying things like this.
I went on to quote from:
> >Gilbert, S.F., Opitz, J.M. and Raff, R.A. 1996, Developmental
> >Biology, 173, 357-372.
and invited further comment from you.
Tim responded:
> Masters of the obvious, IMHO. In every "new" branch of biology
> you find a lot of people who think they invented the wheel.
I did not notice protests like this at the time! However, I suppose
there's nothing new under the sun in every discipline. Most advances
are only "new" in a restricted sense.
TI:
> The genome is often likened to a recipe or blueprint - A passive
> role. But the genome turns out to also be "active" and changeable
> as well. However, it is not the only object in the cell that
> "calls the shots" and determines where everything else is supposed
> to go. Each genome exists in a particular environment with a
> particular history, and is influenced by that environment and
> history. I, and most others (IMO), do not feel that genome sequences
> can be completely understood outside of their environmental contexts.
> I think I've heard the phrase, "the ecology of the gene" mentioned
> to describe this. All this is uncontroversial.
It may be uncontroversial to you. But I keep coming across
literature which is locked into genetic reductionism. I have puzzled
how to respond to your posts on this - and have now identified a
train of thought which offers the possibility of moving forward.
It seems to me that the more we know of development (or anything to
do with living things!), the more we recognise complex information
systems and transactions. After Darwin, cell biologists thought the
cell was a simple blob of protoplasm - but their expectations were
confounded. Now, we have genetic reductionists - but they are
continually oversimplifying the systems they are studying and
claiming too much for their findings. People like you, Tim, are
willing to say that these researchers are over-simplifying, but I
would suggest that you need to offer an alternative paradigm in order
to resist the tide of genetic reductionism. If Gilbert, Opitz, and
Raff's paper has failed to check the momentum, what can do it?
We need a different paradigm that can do justice to the complexity
in living things. We need a paradigm which can handle information at
more than the signalling level, and which can view the cell as an
integrated whole.
Could it be that this is what ID is able to offer?
Feedback welcome.
Best regards,
David J. Tyler.