1 result for (book:nome AND session:821 AND stemmed:gene)
3/44 (7%)
dna
epidemics
myths
disasters
Christ
[... 40 paragraphs ...]
3. Seth referred to the latest scientific ideas concerning “selfish genes” — a subject Jane and I had been talking about today. (Genes are units found on the chromosomes of the cell nucleus; they carry hereditary characteristics, and consist mainly of protein and DNA, or deoxyribonucleic acid.)
A number of scientists — biologists, zoologists, and psychologists, among others — have recently published highly praised books in which they claim to show how our genes manipulate our individual behavior with only their own genetic survival at stake, even when we think we are displaying subjective qualities like altruism. Jane and I think the idea of such self-centered genetic behavior is much too limited, simple, and “mechanistic,” to use another term that’s currently in scientific vogue. The idea of selfish genes also implies plan on the part of such entities — and so comes dangerously close to contradicting several basic tenets of science itself: among them that life arose by chance, that it perpetuates itself through random mutations and the struggle for existence (or natural selection), and that basically life has no meaning.
As I occasionally do in my notes, I’m anthropomorphosizing “science” by casting a multifaceted discipline in simple human or individual terms. But now it seems that when science claims to understand the workings of a molecule of DNA, for example — the “master molecule” of life, as it’s often called — science then states that it’s stripped away the mystery of DNA and reduced our functions to easily understood mechanistic ones. But Jane and I maintain that grasping the marvelous workings of DNA should instead increase our sense of the wonder and mystery of life. The DNA lies exposed in all of its parts, but the questions about the life within it remain unanswered. Why does science want us to live thinking that we’re creatures programmed only for the survival of our selfish genes? Even the biologists (and other scientists) who insist upon our mechanistic bases do so with feeling!
