Paradigms and the history of human genetics.

Abstract

DRONAMRAJU has written the first history of human genetics, a relatively new science sometimes dates its origin to 1957 (the ushering in of clinical cytogenetics) or to 1948 (the founding of the Society for Human Genetics and its journal, The American Journal of Human Genetics). As is so often true for other fields, there are antecedents for human genetics also. Daniel Kevles's In the Name of Eugenics includes a superb section on Lionel Penrose's role in shaping a clinical human genetics purged of its eugenic mission. Dronamraju's first venture into this history explores a philosophic issue: does the field of human genetics represent a revolution in science in the sense presented by Thomas Kuhn in his famous and stimulating book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions? Before I read Dronamraju's book I was myself immersed in a debate with a colleague when I took his psychology course as part of an undergraduate program the State University of New York at Stony Brook offers with a faculty mentor (called a master learner) who helps students make connections among the courses they take in common. The psychology course was taught by a cognitive psychologist, Robert Liebert, who used Kuhn's theory as a basis for supporting his view that we all create our own reality. Throughout the course I found myself resisting thesis and confronting Liebert with examples from the life sciences where model did not fit. The experience raised a thought had puzzled me since my graduate school days. Why do scientists, particularly biologists, ignore the writings of colleagues who call themselves philosophers of science? Some, like geneticist H. J. Muller, rejected them because philosophers likeJan Christian Smuts or Teilhard de Chardin tended to favor mystical, holistic, or anti-science views. Also, most scientists do not feel a need to study deeply the processes of creativity, the assumptions or values shared by their fellow scientists, or the possible weaknesses or inconsistencies of their scientific beliefs. Like the terms love or self-identity, for the scientist, is recognizable but never precisely defined. If the analogy is valid and an artist does not need to know the critic's perception of the artistic process, so too, scientists need not depend on philosophers of science in order to do the science itself. Dronamraju explores Kuhn's theory, which is one of the most influential philosophic studies of science in the 20th Century. Scientists are more likely to have read or heard of Kuhn's books and ideas of science than works by Whitehead, Russell, Braithwaite, Ayers, or Popper. Kuhn's book has a quickly grasped thesis: scientists usually do normal science, they fill in or extend the gaps of a new or established field of science; or, less often, scientists do revolu-