"what if we learned to change our genetic code intentionally? If such technologies were available, who would control them, and who would ensure their safety? Who would be the masters, and who the victims, of this technology? How would the acquisition and control of this knowledge—and its inevitable invasion of our private and public lives—alter the way we imagine our societies, our children, and our- selves?"
When the poet Wallace Stevens writes, "In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts," he is referring to the deep structural mystery that runs through language: you can only decipher the meaning of a sentence by deciphering every individual word—yet a sentence carries more meaning than any of the individual words. And so it is with genes. An organism is much more than its genes, ofcourse, but to understand an organism, you must first understand its genes. When the Dutch biologist Hugo de Vries encountered the concept of the gene in the 1890s, he quickly intuited that the idea would reorganize our understanding of the natural world. "The whole or anic world is the result of innumerable different
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
The atom, the byte, and the gene provide fundamentally new scientific and technological understandings of their respective systems. You cannot explain the behavior Of matter—why gold gleams; why hydrogen combusts with oxygen—without invoking the atomic nature of matter. Nor can you understand the complexities of computing—the nature of algorithms, or the storage or corruption of data—without comprehending the structural anatomy of digitized information. "Alchemy could not become chemistry until its fundamental units were discovered,"
"That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable," Thomas Morgan, the influential geneticist, wrote. "Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion."
The atom provides an organizing principle for modern physics—and it tantalizes us with the prospect of controlling matter and energy. The gene provides an organizing principle for modern biology—and it tantalizes us with the prospect of controlling our bodies and fates. Embedded in the history of the gene is "the quest for eternal youth, the Faustian myth of abrupt reversal of fortune, and our own century's flirtation with the perfectibility of man." Embedded, equally, is the desire to decipher our manual of instructions.
Most important, I owe a debt to my grandmother. She did not—she could not—outlive the grief of her inheritance, but she embraced and de- fended the most fragile of her children from the will of the strong. She weathered the buffets of history with resilience—but she weathered the buffets of heredity with something more than resilience: a grace that we, as her descendants, can only hope to emulate. It is to her that this book is dedicated.
The Gene: An Intimate History
By Siddhartha MukherjeeWhen the poet Wallace Stevens writes, "In the sum of the parts, there are only the parts," he is referring to the deep structural mystery that runs through language: you can only decipher the meaning of a sentence by deciphering every individual word—yet a sentence carries more meaning than any of the individual words. And so it is with genes. An organism is much more than its genes, ofcourse, but to understand an organism, you must first understand its genes. When the Dutch biologist Hugo de Vries encountered the concept of the gene in the 1890s, he quickly intuited that the idea would reorganize our understanding of the natural world. "The whole or anic world is the result of innumerable different
The Gene: An Intimate History
By Siddhartha Mukherjee
The atom, the byte, and the gene provide fundamentally new scientific and technological understandings of their respective systems. You cannot explain the behavior Of matter—why gold gleams; why hydrogen combusts with oxygen—without invoking the atomic nature of matter. Nor can you understand the complexities of computing—the nature of algorithms, or the storage or corruption of data—without comprehending the structural anatomy of digitized information. "Alchemy could not become chemistry until its fundamental units were discovered,"
"That the fundamental aspects of heredity should have turned out to be so extraordinarily simple supports us in the hope that nature may, after all, be entirely approachable," Thomas Morgan, the influential geneticist, wrote. "Her much-advertised inscrutability has once more been found to be an illusion."
The atom provides an organizing principle for modern physics—and it tantalizes us with the prospect of controlling matter and energy. The gene provides an organizing principle for modern biology—and it tantalizes us with the prospect of controlling our bodies and fates. Embedded in the history of the gene is "the quest for eternal youth, the Faustian myth of abrupt reversal of fortune, and our own century's flirtation with the perfectibility of man." Embedded, equally, is the desire to decipher our manual of instructions.
Most important, I owe a debt to my grandmother. She did not—she could not—outlive the grief of her inheritance, but she embraced and de- fended the most fragile of her children from the will of the strong. She weathered the buffets of history with resilience—but she weathered the buffets of heredity with something more than resilience: a grace that we, as her descendants, can only hope to emulate. It is to her that this book is dedicated.
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