- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226727295
- eISBN:
- 9780226727318
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226727318.003.0009
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Philosophy of Science
This chapter considers the subject of genetic determinism. Since the eagerness to refute the thesis motivates so much of the resistance to reductionism about biology, it is truly ironic that the ...
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This chapter considers the subject of genetic determinism. Since the eagerness to refute the thesis motivates so much of the resistance to reductionism about biology, it is truly ironic that the strongest argument against the thesis rests on evidence we would never have acquired but for pursuit of the reductionistic research program of molecular genetics. The chapter concludes this book's articulation and defense of Darwinian reductionism by showing exactly how its research program makes genetic determinism untenable even for its paradigm cases, the so-called inborn errors of metabolism.Less
This chapter considers the subject of genetic determinism. Since the eagerness to refute the thesis motivates so much of the resistance to reductionism about biology, it is truly ironic that the strongest argument against the thesis rests on evidence we would never have acquired but for pursuit of the reductionistic research program of molecular genetics. The chapter concludes this book's articulation and defense of Darwinian reductionism by showing exactly how its research program makes genetic determinism untenable even for its paradigm cases, the so-called inborn errors of metabolism.
