In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about
genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most
gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful,
profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular
biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene. Not just
a chronicle of biology's progress from gene to genome in one
hundred years, "The Century of the Gene" also calls our attention
to the surprising ways these advances challenge the familiar
picture of the gene most of us still entertain.
Keller shows us that the very successes that have stirred our
imagination have also radically undermined the primacy of the
gene--word and object--as the core explanatory concept of heredity
and development. She argues that we need a new vocabulary that
includes concepts such as robustness, fidelity, and evolvability.
But more than a new vocabulary, a new awareness is absolutely
crucial: that understanding the components of a system (be they
individual genes, proteins, or even molecules) may tell us little
about the interactions among these components.
With the Human Genome Project nearing its first and most
publicized goal, biologists are coming to realize that they have
reached not the end of biology but the beginning of a new era.
Indeed, Keller predicts that in the new century we will witness
another Cambrian era, this time in new forms of biological thought
rather than in new forms of biological life.
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