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EMBRYOLOGIST PAUL WEISS. “The true test of a reductionist system is whether or not an ordered unitary system...can, after decomposition into a disorderly pile of constituent parts, resurrect itself from the shambles by virtue solely of the properties inherent in the isolated pieces." https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

EMBRYOLOGICAL PARADIGM. “Embryologists, on the other hand, have a reputation for being holistic thinkers. Embryologists have historically stressed that "the organism in its totality is as essential to an explanation of its elements as an explanation of its elements are to an explanation of the organism" https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

GENETIC PARADIGM. “If you know the rules for the "genetic program," the development and evolution of the organism can be understood. In this way,"genetic program" becomes synonymous with mechanism of development.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

THE DIVIDE. “The geneticists of the 1930s and the molecular biologists of the 1980s tend to be reductionists.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

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

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

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

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

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

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