Abstract
Philosophy of Science, 73 (April 2006) pp. 247–257. 0031-8248/2006/7302-0007$10.00
Copyright 2006 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.
247
BOOK REVIEWS
Lenny Moss,
What Genes Can’t Do
. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press (2004),
256 pp., $21.00 (paper).
Many philosophers of science will have encountered the core distinction
between two different gene concepts found in
What Genes Can’t Do
. Moss
argues that contemporary uses of the term ‘gene’ that denote an infor-
mation bearing entity result from the conflation of two concepts (‘Gene-
P’ and ‘Gene-D’). These concepts arise out of distinct trajectories in the
history of biology (preformation and epigenesis, respectively) but are
glued together by the rhetoric of linguistic and textual metaphors (e.g.,
blueprints and programs). Gene-P picks out an instrumentalist use of
‘gene’ as phenotypic indicator or predictor, whereas Gene-D refers to
DNA sequences as developmental template resources for RNA and pro-
tein products that play variegated cellular roles in the production of many,
distinct phenotypes. A number of critical responses to the distinction are
now extant in the literature, but my aim is to answer a different question.
Why should philosophers of science who have not read the book be
interested in it (besides the fact that it is now available in paperback)?
The answer is found at the level of methodology and is relevant to crit-
icisms of Moss’s distinction.