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Reduction in Genetics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

David L. Hull
David L. Hull*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
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Extract

In a recent paper, William K. Goosens (1978) objects to the arguments I set out some time ago attacking the logical empiricist analysis of reduction as applied to genetics (Hull 1972, 1973, 1974, 1976a). In these works I did not argue against the claim that Mendelian genetics was being reduced to molecular biology. Nor did I conclude, as Goosens asserts, that in the case of genetics, “reduction is insignificant” (p. 93). To the contrary, I repeatedly stated that, “given our pre-analytic intuitions about reduction,” the reduction of Mendelian to molecular genetics “is a case of reduction, a paradigm case” (Hull 1974 p. 44). And in agreement with Kenneth Schaffner (1967) I argued that reduction “in some very important, pre-analytic sense has taken place and is taking place in genetics” (Hull 1973, p. 634). The target of my objections to reduction in genetics was not “reduction” in some pre-analytic sense. Nor was it the various explications which have appeared since. Rather it was the notion of theory reduction set out a generation ago by such logical empiricists as Ernest Nagel (1961), The particular version of this analysis which I chose to attack was that presented by Schaffner (1967, 1969); for Schaffner's later views, see his (1974, 1976, 1977). I chose Schaffner's explication to attack because I thought it was the best of its kind and because it was the only defense of the logical empiricist analysis at the time which used genetics as one of its chief examples. Contrary to Goosens' assumption, in criticizing Schaffner's explication, I did not thereby “endorse” it (p. 82).

Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 316 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1979

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