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A Kernel of Truth? On the Reality of the Genetic Program

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2022

Lenny Moss
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Extract

The full understanding of the nature of the genetic program was achieved by molecular biology only in the 1950's after the elucidation of the structure of DNA. Yet, it was already felt by the ancients that there had to be something that ordered the raw material into the patterned system of living beings….What is particularly important is that the genetic program itself remains unchanged while it sends out its instructions to the body.

One of the properties of the genetic program is that it can supervise its own precise replication and that of other living systems such as organelles, cells, and whole organisms.

Ernst Mayr (1982)

The notion of a genetic program, as described by Mayr, is ripe for an analysis inspired, at least in part, by recent debates in the philosophy of science taken under the heading of realism versus anti-realism.

Type
Part IX. Topics in the Philosophy of Biology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1992 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1992 , 1992 , pp. 335 - 348
Copyright
Copyright © 1992 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

1

This paper is an outgrowth of Arthur Fine’s Northwestern University graduate seminar on “Realism and Anti-realism.” I thank Professor Fine for his encouragement, and Professors Fine, David Hull, Thomas Ryckman, Susan Oyama, and Elizabeth Lloyd for their comments.

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