From: Scott Chase (ecphoric@hotmail.com)
Date: Wed 11 Jun 2003 - 16:09:08 GMT
>From: "Reed Konsler" <konslerr@mail.weston.org>
>Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
>To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
>Subject: Biologists and Wishful Thinking
>Date: Wed, 11 Jun 2003 10:29:39 -0400
>
>Here's an illuminating excerpt from the August 2001 issue of Scientific
>American ("Cybernetic Cells," by W. Wayt Gibbs):
>
>"[M]ost biologists still use computers as little more than receptacles for
>the surge of data gushing from their robotic sequencers and gene chip
>analyzers. The 'models' they publish in their journal articles are sketchy
>caricatures based on the best theory they have: the central dogma that a
>gene in DNA is converted to an RNA that is translated to a protein that
>performs a particular biochemical function."
>
>That would tend to confirm that most biologists are "bottom-up."
>
>==================
>
>"We're witnessing a grand-scale Kuhnian revolution in biology,"
>avers Bernhard O. Palsson, head of the genetic circuits research
>group at UC San Diego.
>
>"We are so going to get laid by those chicks" avers Sean,
>self-proclaimed 'ladies man' of the Druid pub in Inman Square.
>
>
A buzzphrase like "grand-scale Kuhnian revolution" is usually enough for me
to run, not walk, toward the nearest exit and establish a cordon sanitaire.
Even if a concept has merit, parading it as a "Kuhnian revolution" tends to
raise the red flags.
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