Genetics and the Manipulation of Life: The Forgotten Factor of Context (Renewal in Science) (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Now let us try to recover a landscape for the isolated basswood..." (more)
Key Phrases: composted garden soil, hybrid generation, chromosome theory, Human Genome Project, Down's Syndrome, National Institutes of Health (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Holdrege uses responsible and friendly language to expose the co-option of scientific curiosity, industrial greed, and objectification of flowers..." -- Lynn Margulis, Distinguished University Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and co-founder of What Is Life?

"I am tempted to shout that this may be the most essential new book of our time." -- Wes Jackson, The Land Institute

"With a wealth of interesting examples, he shows how genes (DNA) alone cannot 'determine' traits, much less organisms." -- Ruth Hubbard, Professor Emerita of Biology, Harvard University, author of Exploding the Gene Myth

Product Description

A provocative work that challenges our common assumptions about nature and science, this book is for all who want to understand the biological revolution of the late 20th century. Clearly written, well-illustrated, and without unnecessary technical jargon, Holdrege describes through fascinating examples how living organisms develop and exist within the context of their environment, and asserts that genes alone cannot determine organisms because their effects are always qualified by the contexts within which the organisms live. With a unique and probing perspective on contemporary science, Holdrege shows how scientific theory and practice inevitably fuse to produce the systems that will ultimately create our future, and he questions our understanding of the organisms we manipulate through genetic engineering and the consequences of such manipulation. In an age when we are able to reshape life on earth, this book offers a deeper, more complex vision of nature, and gives us the means for establishing a more conscious and responsible connection to the world around us.

From the Renewal in Science series.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 190 pages
• Publisher: Lindisfarne Books (September 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0940262770
• ISBN-13: 978-0940262775
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.9 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #1,223,958 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

  Popular in this category: (What's this?)

  #60 in

  Books > Science > History & Philosophy > Philosophy of Biology

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great book, dispels myths spread to laymen, October 3, 2004

By	Langer - See all my reviews

In the past few years people outside of the academic pursuit of genetics have been fed terms like secret to life, code of life, and other central dogmas. Very misleading, very wrong. Holdrege does an excellent job of explaining why this is so in terms that is understandable to anyone. It may not spark a revival in Goethe's method but it will dispel the illusions cast by advertisment, the media, and science itself. A must buy for a philosopher, a scientist, or anyone looking to enlighten themselves above what CNN headlines feed you.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Pinned Butterfly Effect, August 5, 2008

By	Andre (Amherst, MA) - See all my reviews

Because it is so filled with philosophical quotes - from Hegel, Emerson, Alfred North Whitehead, etc. - one might be tempted to think that in Genetics and the Manipulation of Life: The Forgotten Factor of Context, Craig Holdrege is theorizing about science as a discipline from a postmodern viewpoint. Nothing could be further from the truth. Holdrege is in debt to a decidedly earlier philosopher and scientist, Goethe, whose method he imitates, and whom he quotes freely and happily.
"If we want to reach a living perception of nature," Goethe wrote, "we must become as living and flexible as nature herself." (42) This sentiment is echoed later in Holdrege's own words, which conclude the book:

"A contextual approach is not to be looked at as yet another solidified doctrine or theory. Rather, it is a necessary complement to the prevailing conceptions and practices of contemporary science. It is a way of making science a healthier whole, modeled after the organisms it studies." (173)

Both Goethe's and Holdrege's methods of science rely heavily on observation without jumping to conclusions. They advise letting conclusions emerge themselves from repeated observations. We should not try to fill that space between prior knowledge and the unknown with theory. Nature will fill the gaps itself if we are patient and careful in observation. This unpredictability in method thus follows the unpredictability of nature itself rather than attempting to control it, and so is likely to yield a better understanding of the natural world. In his book, Holdrege reveals how and why the history of the science of genetics is riddled with presumptuous conclusions.

Holdrege's thrust is the condemnation of geneticists' collective dismissal of the natural context of organisms (including environment, but also behavior) in favor of what he refers to as "object-thinking", the seeing of isolated "things" rather than relationships. Holdrege is not content with typical reductionism-is-bad arguments, but instead provides real examples. A few exceptions to the genetic model of inheritance would be glaring - the wealth of examples he provides is damning. He shows this, at first, through botany. Silhouettes of leaf and flower and root structures are provided to show changes in plant development based on variations in soil and light conditions. The differences are striking and extreme. A dandelion grown in the woods, for example, is shown to have leaves well over four times the size than those of a dandelion which grows in the yard.

"If we now imagine one of these plants producing seeds that are dispersed by the wind, we may correctly suppose that the offspring will develop according to the conditions in each different microhabitat. The seeds from the small-leafed plants will not develop into tiny forest-clearing plants; we find no such plants in forest clearings." (22)

Given the ubiquity of dandelion seeds, this is, of course, no coincidence. Rather, the organism's relationship to the environment heavily influences the size of the organism, within a very large range of forms. In other plants, a difference in soil quality - sand loam for one, garden soil for another of the same species - create differentiation so stark that the plants appears at first to be of different species all together. Holdrege cites research done by French botanist Gaston Bonnier, who noticed that these differences in the same species in different environments go down to a cellular level. It would be wrong-headed, Holdrege tells us, to assume that these changes did not echo throughout the entire organism.

"...while the roots, in direct contact with the soil, change according to soil type, so does every other part in a similar way. The part serves the whole, but the whole also lives in every part." (34)

Such a statement poses problems for the reductionist-functional view of evolution by random genetic mutation. If every part changes as the whole develops, how can separate features of an organism be viewed as aspects that developed independently of the rest of the organism? Either all of it changes, Holdrege suggests, or nothing does. A mutated sheep with an extra leg does not die prematurely because it has an extra leg. Rather the extra leg is a reflection of an unhealthy development.

Furthermore, the changes in one part of an organism, echoed throughout the rest, change its relationship to the environment, which in turn changes its morphology, all in a rather cyclical motion. The roots of broad bean and rape plants form larger nodules in garden soil than sand loam. The bacterial-plant relationship is altered in regards to environment (27). Cultivations of greater numbers of bacteria are obviously not incidental when it comes to the health of the plant or symbiosis, which are intertwined with one another.

It may be tempting at first to understand environmental influence on morphology as a plant-specific phenomena. So embedded in the earth, it is easier to view plants as an expression of their environments than any other organism - which, aside from some fungi and select exceptions in the other five kingdoms, are mobile.

This is perhaps why geneticists are so apt to study animals, which do not display such extreme morphological variety in regards to environment. However, as Holdrege explains, animals, rather than having morphological plasticity as plants do, have a plasticity of behavior. Like weather, animals respond to the environment with varying reactions because they are so mobile. They have what Holdrege calls a "behavioral environment". In other words, whereas a plant has a vocabulary in its form, an animal expresses its relationships most obviously with its behavior.

Perhaps for the sake of zoologists, Holdrege does not confine his investigation to plants. He ventures into the animal kingdom several times, but most notably with the example of the human foot, the very appendage of locomotion. He painstakingly details the development of the human foot in accordance to its environment and the individual's behavior. "The feet we walk on when we are seven are not the ones we inherited." (142)

Interestingly, geneticists often view genes as a static thing, even as they are examining animals, which are mobile. But this is ideological, not scientific. Genes themselves are not examined in time (that is, in the context of dynamic change), nor in the context of their environment: the organism. Constant development is a prerequisite of nearly all life. To examine stillness in biology is contradictory; it is to examine death. Indeed, death is so often that which produces the genes to be studied. Holdrege details the typical acquisition of sequenced genomes from a mouse:

"The mouse is killed and its thymus is immediately frozen...The frozen tissue in a salt solution is homogenized in a mixer for three minutes. The homogenized pulp is centrifuged at three thousand revolutions per minute for ten minutes. A separation takes place, and the more solid precipitate is saved; the more fluid portion is discarded. Centrifugation is usually repeated one or two times. Then a salt solution and alcohol are added, and a milky white precipitate begins to form in the solution. This...can be further purified in additional steps by adding specific enzymes or other substances. When alcohol is added again, white threads form, which can be rolled up onto a glass rod. One now has DNA in hand!" (101-102)

To someone unfamiliar with DNA extraction processes, this would no doubt seem daunting and strange. All this takes place before the DNA is separated into distinct genes and sequenced. Certainly, this is incongruous with the common perception of genes as "things" that one can simply look at through a microscope. This is not to say that the sequenced pairs of nitrogenous bases in the nucleotides of DNA have nothing to do with inheritance, but one can see through this description of extraction process that they cannot possibly exist inside the organism in the same state in which they are examined in a laboratory.

Referencing David Bower, environmentalist David Foreman once said, "...you can't take a California Condor out of the wild and put it in the L.A. zoo and still have a Condor, because the being of the Condor does not end at those black feathers at the tips of its wings. It's the rising thermals over the Coast Range. It's the rocky crag where she lays her egg. It's the carrion she feeds on." In genetics, the rapidly spun, alcohol-processed, partially discarded, salt-added, rolled-up threads are often considered to be not just the organism, but - if the geneticist subscribes to the idea that organisms are "vehicles" for genes - the organism's reason for being.

If it seems surprising that genetics as a science is based on such far-reaching jumps in logic, that's only because the history of genetics is not often exposed as tellingly as it is in Holdrege's book. He starts with Mendel, finding the very foundations of the science wanting.

Scrutinizing Mendel's experiments reveal the depth of its arbitrariness. Mendel famously tried to determine inheritance of features by examining the flowers and seeds of pea plants. He separated the plants based on specific features, and into two categories in each case, and these categories were based on Mendel's discretion: purple flowers vs. white flowers, yellow seeds vs. green seeds, and round seeds vs. angular seeds. When we look closely at a plant, no matter what the plant, we will see variations at every level. There are no plants with only purple flowers or only white flowers. The flowers vary in color. Some are lighter purple than others. Some are whitish-purple. Others are more... Read more ›

5.0 out of 5 stars very relevant, clearly written, May 21, 2008

By	Ted Byrd - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This book challenges the current,generally favorable view of genetics "engineering" as presented in the popular media as well as science writing. Not that these researches should necessarily be abandoned, but they should be carried out in a manner more respectful of the processes nature already has in place. The author shows with clear examples the kind of decisions that are prompted by reductionist thinking in scientific circles. Holdrege shows that much of the public awareness of genetics is based on information that is given a positive spin by self-interested parties. Along the way, he exposes us to a different way of thinking about scientific endeavor; one that urges the consideration of every act as having possible ramifications in the broader environment. A good case is made that the genetics supporters are so enamored of their newfound knowledge that they have become overconfident and blinded to ethical considerations.The conclusion is that we should pay more attention to the formation of traits in the context of their interaction with the total organism, rather than seeking to manipulate them as though they existed in a vacuum. I found the ideas in this book easy to comprehend,yet profound. To get a balanced viewpoint I am also reading books by writers who favor genetic manipulation. So far, this book seems to me to contain much more earth-friendly and human-friendly ideas than others I am reading. I highly recommend this book for the clarity of the writing and its thought-provoking message.