On Conceptual Change in Biology: The Case of the Gene

Abstract

The current situation in philosophy of science generally, and in philosophy of biology in particular, is most unsatisfactory. There are at least three general problems that many philosophers thought themselves near to solving twenty years ago, only to find that the anticipated solutions have come unglued. These are (1) the problem of characterizing and understanding the dynamics of conceptual change in science; (2) he problem of understanding the interrelationships among theories including particularly the reduction of one theory to another); and (3) he problem of scientific realism (i.e., the problem of how seriously to take the claims of theoretical science or, at least, of some theoretical scientists, to be describing the world literally--in terms of such theoretical entities as genes and protons, DNA molecules, and quarks). This general situation has significant effects on the philosophical study of particular sciences. In philosophy of biology, for example, although one finds a large number of elegant studies of particular topics, the sad fact is that there is no generally satisfactory large-scale synthesis n sight. We have no agreed-on foundation, no generally acceptable starting point from which to delimit and resolve the full range of theoretical problems of interest to scientists and philosophers regarding biology. This chapter provides a preliminary report on a new approach to conceptual change, together with a sketch of its application to important biological subject matter. The approach offers some promise of providing satisfactory framework, compatible with scientific realism, for detailed, studies of particular scientific developments. Before I sketch in some of the relevant philosophical background, it will be useful to indicate how various concepts of the gene will enter the discussion. It is now 84 years since Mendel's work was rediscovered. Within fifteen years of that event, say with the publication of The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity by T. H. Morgan and his coworkers in 1915, the main elements of the classical theory of the gene were fairly well established. A nearly constant series of improvements and refinements in that theory grounded in good part in laborious but fascinating experimental work, resulted in considerable revision of that theory. Indeed, the accumulated changes run so deep that some have characterized this historical process as one in which Mendelian genetics was replaced by a series of improved successors which can be grouped under the label transmission genetics. (For one example, cf. Hull, 1974, chap. 1.) This extended process, both in its theoretical and its empirical aspects helped prepare the way for what is usually considered to be (to use the vogue label) a scientific revolution brought on by the