linkedin post 2021-06-12 03:58:10

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TWO DISCIPLINES. “By the 1930s, genetics and embryology had their own rules of evidence, their own paradigmatic experiments, their own favored organisms, their own professors, their own journals, and most importantly, their own vocabulary. Since then, genetics has become explained in terms of molecular biology, and embryology has become developmental biology.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-13 04:58:54

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CONSEQUENCES. “The predominant problem of embryology from the 1700s through the 1950s was the creation of ordered form, morphogenesis, not differentiation. Morphogenesis was a whole-embryo question, differentiation a cellular question. The genetic redefinition of embryology collapsed the morphogenesis question into a subset of the cell differentiation question.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-12 03:56:16

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FRAGMENT FROM NATURE features for this and next weekend an excellent article titled “Enzymatic Adaptation and the Entrance of Molecular Biology into Embryology” by Scott F. Gilbert. It describes the acute rivalries between embryologists and geneticists as the two disciplines came to overlap, and is a testament to the resistance of science to new ideas based on turf and the ideology of reductionism versus holism. https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-13 04:57:07

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THE GRADUAL INVASION. “Embryology was redefined as the study of changes in gene expression over time, and evolution was redefined as changes in gene frequency over time. Thus, evolution and embryology, which had traditionally been sciences of the phenotype, were given new, genotypic, definitions. These new definitions went against the prevailing paradigms of these fields.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-13 04:54:14

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THE FEAR. “One of the reasons that molecular biology has taken so long to enter embryology is the longstanding fear among embryologists that genetics—whether it be classical genetics or molecular biology—is trying to take over their discipline and bring with it all its reductionism and lack of appreciation for the complexity and species differences.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-13 04:52:41

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NATURALISM. “The traditional asthetic of embryology has been naturalism. Every species develops in a different manner, and generalizations from one species to another are very risky. So aesthetically, embryology is to molecular biology as a Michaelangelo statue is to a Brancussi.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-13 04:49:47

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ABSTRACT FORMALISM. “Like abstractionist art, molecular biology seeks to get past the apparent diversity of nature to reveal an underlying unity "more real than the real." Just as an abstract painter might represent a table by a line without concern as to whether the table is oak, plastic, metal, red, or white, so molecular biology has traditionally ignored species differences to discover the underlying unities of living organisms. https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn
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linkedin post 2021-06-12 04:10:55

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THE STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD. “Still there are moments when one feels free from one’s own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some spot of a small planet, gazing in amazment at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable; life and death flows into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being.” (Albert Einstein, and Burnt Norton). https://lnkd.in/dJ6fFGM View in LinkedIn
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