Genetic Analysis: A History of Genetic Thinking (Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology) - Ebook Detail

There is a paradox lying at the heart of the study of heredity. To understand the ways in which features are passed on down from one generation to the next, we have to dig deeper and deeper into the ultimate nature of things - from organisms, to genes, to molecules. And yet as we do this, increasingly we find we are out of focus with our subjects. What has any of this to do with the living, breathing organisms with which we started? Organisms are living. Molecules are not. How do we relate one to the other? In Genetic Analysis, one of the most important empirical scientists in the field in the twentieth century attempts, through a study of history and drawing on his own vast experience as a practitioner, to face this paradox head-on. His book offers a deep and innovative understanding of our ways of thinking about heredity.
Reviews
This is a very interesting book, not exactly a text on genetics and heredity, but summarizing the body of knowledge in those fields. It gives an excellent high level view of genetics and shows how individual experiments or discoveries have produced the current science. It is also, in part, a history of the subject relating the way these discoveries have built one upon another.

As he discusses the developments in the science he also reflects that as we delve deeper into the understanding of molecules we get further away from the fact that we are really dealing with living, breathing, thinking organisms that somehow go beyond these bare molecules. He looks for a greater understanding between the molecular and the finished living system.

The book is written by a genetic scientist who spend the first part of his career working in the field and later moved more to the study of the history and philosophy of the field.

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