Century of the Gene

In a book that promises to change the way we think and talk about genes and genetic determinism, Evelyn Fox Keller, one of our most gifted historians and philosophers of science, provides a powerful, profound analysis of the achievements of genetics and molecular biology in the twentieth century, the century of the gene. Not just a chronicle of biology’s progress from gene to genome in one hundred years, The Century of the Gene also calls our attention to the surprising ways these advances challenge the familiar picture of the gene most of us still entertain.Keller shows us that the very successes that have stirred our imagination have also radically undermined the primacy of the gene—word and object—as the core explanatory concept of heredity and development. She argues that we need a new vocabulary that includes concepts such as robustness, fidelity, and evolvability. But more than a new vocabulary, a new awareness is absolutely crucial: that understanding the components of a system (be they individual genes, proteins, or even molecules) may tell us little about the interactions among these components.With the Human Genome Project nearing its first and most publicized goal, biologists are coming to realize that they have reached not the end of biology but the beginning of a new era. Indeed, Keller predicts that in the new century we will witness another Cambrian era, this time in new forms of biological thought rather than in new forms of biological life.

In this elegantly written book, Evelyn Fox Keller tells the fascinating story of how the heuristic power of genetic experimentation interacts with the narrative power of the word 'gene.' Both are built on and reinforce each other. I never saw an equally convincing and well informed narrative on how language mediates the interaction between experimental research and its social context., Genes have captured the scientific and popular imagination. But in The Century of the Gene, Evelyn Fox Keller provides us with a powerful analysis of the limits of the gene as an explanatory concept. Indeed, the success of molecular biology and greater understanding of biological development have exposed the wide gap between genetic information and biological meaning, undermining the very concept of the gene. Yet gene talk with all its historical baggage persists in shaping both science and popular perceptions. Keller argues convincingly for a new language, for new concepts that will enable us to deal with the real complexity of biological organization. This is a critically important book to be very widely read., Evelyn Keller has the disturbing ability to make you think again from scratch about things you thought you had already understood. It is a long time since I have thought so hard about fundamental problems in genetics as I did when reading The Century of the Gene., In The Century of the Gene, Evelyn Keller gathers together her considerable skills as a mathematician, physicist, historian and philosopher and applies them to the central problem of the last 100 years of biology, namely the relation of the genes to the building of an organism. The scholarship is masterly, not only because of her wide reading of the literature, but her deep, penetrating understanding of what she reads. To cap it all she writes clearly and elegantly so that the book is a pleasure to read. This is a conspicuously intelligent book., Top-drawer science reading.

Evelyn Fox Keller is Professor Emerita of History and Philosophy of Science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship and numerous honorary degrees.