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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

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

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

Fungi belong to a kingdom as strange as it is large, with enormous diversity of form and function. Dropped from Mars probably. View in LinkedIn

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

DIFFERENT PARADIGMS. “Embryologist Berrill, for instance writes repeatedly of "the amazing diversity of developmental performances" and "the complex reality" of embryonic development. Molecular biologists such as Monod claim that the elephant is constructed on the same principles and using the same materials as E. coli. The aesthetic of molecular biology is abstract formalism.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

THE CRUX OF THE SPLIT. “Embryology has a tradition of celebrating the complexity and diversity of life. Molecular biology has a tradition of celebrating life's underlying unity and simplicity.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

CLASH OF PARADIGMS. “Pnina Abir-Am (1991) has shown the difficulties that Joseph Needham experienced in his attempt to try to reconcile the holistic embryology of the 1930s with reductionist chemistry. The chemists saw the constantly changing embryo as poor material from which they could isolate and characterize their enzymes.” https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn

HOLIST VIEWPOINT. “He graphically illustrated this point by showing a photograph of an intact chick embryo, a chick embryo that had been blended through a homogenizer, and a chick embryo whose homogenized components had been centrifuged. The problem for reductionists, he maintained, was how to get that chicken back.” (Weiss). https://lnkd.in/dQuxg6Y View in LinkedIn