It Ain't Necessarily So: The Dream of the Human Genome and Other Illusions

الغلاف الأمامي
New York Review of Books, 30‏/09‏/2001 - 400 من الصفحات
Is our nature—as individuals, as a species—determined by our evolution and encoded in our genes? If we unravel the protein sequences of our DNA, will we gain the power to cure all of our physiological and psychological afflictions and even to solve the problems of our society? Today biologists—especially geneticists—are proposing answers to questions that have long been asked by philosophy or faith or the social sciences. Their work carries the weight of scientific authority and attracts widespread public attention, but it is often based on what the renowned evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin identifies as a highly reductive misconception: "the pervasive error that confuses the genetic state of an organism with its total physical and psychic nature as a human being."

In these nine essays covering the history of modern biology from Darwin to Dolly the sheep, all of which were originally published in The New York Review of Books, Lewontin combines sharp criticisms of overreaching scientific claims with lucid expositions of the exact state of current scientific knowledge—not only what we do know, but what we don't and maybe won't anytime soon. Among the subjects he discusses are heredity and natural selection, evolutionary psychology and altruism, nineteenth-century naturalist novels, sex surveys, cloning, and the Human Genome Project. In each case he casts an ever-vigilant and deflationary eye on the temptation to look to biology for explanations of everything we want to know about our physical, mental, and social lives.

These essays—several of them updated with epilogues that take account of scientific developments since they were first written—are an indispensable guide to the most controversial issues in the life sciences today.

The second edition of this collection includes new essays on genetically modified food and the completion of the Human Genome Project. It is an indispensable guide to the most controversial issues in the life sciences today.
 

الصفحات المحددة

المحتوى

Introduction
xv
THE INFERIORITY COMPLEX
1
AN EXCHANGE
21
EPILOGUE
34
DARWINS REVOLUTION
41
EPILOGUE
69
DARWIN MENDEL AND THE MIND
75
EPILOGUE
104
SECOND EPILOGUE
187
WOMEN VERSUS THE BIOLOGISTS
197
AN EXCHANGE
228
SEX LIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE
237
AN EXCHANGE
265
THE CONFUSION OVER CLONING
281
AN EXCHANGE
302
EPILOGUE
310

THE SCIENCE OF METAMORPHOSES
109
EPILOGUE
131
THE DREAM OF THE HUMAN GENOME
133
EPILOGUE
177
SURVIVAL OF THE NICEST?
313
GENES IN THE FOOD
341
حقوق النشر

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عبارات ومصطلحات مألوفة

نبذة عن المؤلف (2001)

Richard C. Lewontin is Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology and Professor of Biology at Harvard University. He is the author of The Genetic Basis of Evolutionary Change and Biology as Ideology, and the co-author of The Dialectical Biologist (with Richard Levins) and Not in Our Genes (with Steven Rose and Leon Kamin).

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