Séminaire Philbio

Nous aurons le plaisir d'accueillir : Gregory Radick (School of Philosophy, Religion and History of
Science, Univ. of Leeds), dont le sujet sera : "The gene at mid-century: How dependent was molecular genetics on Mendelian genetics?"

Résumé : Famously, Evelyn Fox Keller's The Century of the Gene (2000) tells the story of the gradual dissolution over the twentieth century of the conception of the gene as the stable atomic entity evoked in elementary Mendelism.  Although much has been written about whether or not molecular genetics reduced Mendelian genetics, in my Fox Keller-inspired book Disputed Inheritance: The Battle over Mendel and the Future of Biology (2023) I explore a related but distinctive question: how dependent was molecular genetics on Mendelian genetics?  The answer I venture in the book is that the dependency relationship was thin to non-existent, i.e., that much or even all of molecular genetics would have come about anyway, no matter whether the Mendelians won or lost the great "battle over Mendel" of the early twentieth century. In this talk I want to develop that answer further, in part by looking more closely at the reasoning and evidence supporting it, and in part by considering pro-dependency sceptical challenges. »