 |
British scientist Steven Rose has spent a lifetime studying the brain, and is a tireless critic of what he regards as exaggerated views of the importance of genes. He has long reminded readers that there is more to organisms than DNA, and more to human life than biology. Lifelines is his best effort to explain his approach to life science. His main target is reductionism, personified for him by Richard Dawkins and his world of 'selfish genes'. But unlike some critics of Dawkins, Rose has read him carefully, and knows that the man himself is not an arch-reductionist. The complaint is more that his guiding metaphors, even in some ways his writing style, lend themselves to simple reductionist interpretations. Dawkins knows perfectly well that there are no 'genes for' any complex trait, but his gene-centred view of evolution nevertheless encourages those who are less scrupulous about the details. To make things a bit trickier for Rose the critic, his own work in the lab is firmly in the reductionist tradition – he studies memory by tracking chemical changes in chicks' brains. So Rose develops his critical take on what he sees as prevalent ideas about life obliquely. Reductionism in the lab moves science forward, but must be complemented by an integrated study of organisms each of which moves along a unique developmental and behavioural track from conception to death – a 'lifeline'. And for humans, lifelines are braided with the social and cultural threads that make us what we are. Hence the objection to any account of behaviour, and especially behavioural problems, which focuses on genes to the exclusion of other influences. More generally, Rose wants to look carefully at what counts as an explanation, in science or in society. And he would like scientists and science writers to be more careful with their metaphors. If they cannot quite do without them, they should at least acknowledge when they are using one, and be open to possible alternatives. Here again, Dawkins becomes his foil, with his gift for building whole books around a single guiding metaphor. Dawkins knows very well how metaphors work, and that genes cannot be selfish, but Rose wants everyone else to realize it too. His book is well worth reading by itself, but putting it alongside, say, 'The Selfish Gene' will give even more food for thought. The two authors share some sympathies. Both are staunch materialists who have no time for theories of biology which depend on new forces or laws of nature. But their emphases beyond that differ radically. For Dawkins, important things happen at the level of genes. For Rose, the whole organism and its history is what ultimately matters. Yet from an evolutionary standpoint those selfish genes embody a record of many organisms' histories, or at least a version of strategies for life which were successful in the past. Contradictory, or complementary? Read them and decide! Book details
Paperback 352 pages (October 29, 1998) |
|
Wellcome Trust, Gibbs Building, 215 Euston Road, London NW1 2BE, UK T:+44 (0)20 7611 8888