Résumés
Résumé
Au sens institutionnel du terme «discipline», la génétique est assurément une discipline. Au sens intellectuel du terme, l’on peut se demander si elle l’est encore. Avec l’émergence de la biologie moléculaire, et plus encore à l’occasion de ses développements récents, le concept de gène, concept théorique central de la génétique, est devenu manifestement obscur. Loin de simplifier la définition du gène, sa caractérisation structurale (moléculaire) l’a rendu totalement équivoque, et ce de manière probablement irréversible. Les raisons que les biologistes ont de garder ce terme sont davantage pragmatiques (communication scientifique entre disciplines biologiques) et idéologiques que théoriques.
Summary
In the institutional sense of the term «discipline» (laboratories, societies, congresses, curricula, etc.), genetics remains a discipline. In the intellectual sense of the term (consensus on a definite array of concepts, methods and theoretical purposes), it is doubtful that genetics is still a discipline. At first, molecular biology seemed to have introduced an unequivocal structural (or molecular) definition of the gene: a definite sequence of nucelotides that code for a protein. In fact, as it appears in retrospect, this was not the case . Even in 1961, when Jacob and Monod proposed their first model of genetic regulation in bacteria, there was no possibility of constructing a non equivocal concept of the gene. More recent developments in molecular genetics have made this situation worse. There is no possible definition of the gene as a general category. The reasons why biologists keep the word are pragmatic rather than theoretical: communication among scientists, economic interests and ideology.
Parties annexes
Références
- 1. Dictionnaire alphabétique et analogique de la langue française. Paris: Dictionnaires Le Robert, 1983.
- 2. De Solla Price D. Little science, big science. New York: Columbia University Press, 1963.
- 3. Servos JW. Research schools and their histories. In: Geison GL, Holmes FL, eds. Research schools: historical reappraisals. Osiris, 2nd series, 1993; 8: 3-15.
- 4. Gayon J. De la catégorie de style en histoire des sciences. Alliage 1996; 26: 13-25.
- 5. Kragh H. An Introduction to the historiography of science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987.
- 6. Rashed R. L’histoire des sciences entre épistémologie et histoire. Historia Scientiarum 1997; 7: 1-10.
- 7. Ruse M. Monad to man: the concept of progress in evolutionary biology. Cambridge (MA) and London: Harvard University Press, 1996: 596 p.
- 8. De Vries H. Intracelluläre pangenesis (1889). Traduction anglaise, Intracellular pangenesis. Chicago : Open Court Publishing Co, 1910.
- 9. Johannsen WL. Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre. Jena: Gustav Fischer, 1909: 170.
- 10. Johannsen WL. Aristotle and Hippokrates (1916). Cité et commenté. In: Roll-Hansen N. The genotype theory of Wilhelm Johannsen and its relation to plant breeding and the study of evolution. Centaurus 1978; 22: 124.
- 11. Morgan TH. Discours de réception du prix Nobel, 4 juin 1933. Nobel Lectures Physiology and Medicine, 1922-1941. Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1934: 315-6.
- 12. Benzer S. Fine structure of a genetic region in bacteriophage. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 1955; 41: 344-54.
- 13. Benzer S. The elementary units of heredity. In: McElsoy WD, Glass B, eds. A Symposium on the chemical basis of heredity. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1951: 70-93.
- 14. Jacob F, Perrin D, Sanchez C. L’opéron: groupe de gènes à expression coordonnée par un opérateur. CR Acad SciParis 1960; 250: 1727-9.
- 15. Jacob F, Monod J. Genetic regulatory mechanisms in the synthesis of proteins. J Mol Biol 1961; 3: 318-56.
- 16. Portin P. The concept of the gene: short history and present status. Q Rev Biol 1993; 68: 173-223.
- 17. Sarkar S. Genetics and reductionism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998: 156-9.
- 18. International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium. Initial sequencing and analysis of the human genome. Nature 2001; 409: 860-921.
- 19. Fox Keller E. The century of the gene. Cambridge (MA): Harvard University Press, 2000.
- 20. Fox Keller E. Is there an organism in this text. In: Sloan PR, ed. Controlling our destinies. Historical, philosophical, ethical, and theological perpectives on the human project. Notre Dame (IN): Notre Dame Press, 2000: 273-89.
- 21. Rheinberger HJ. Gene concepts: fragments from the perspective of molecular biology. In: Beurton P, Falk R, Rheinberger HJ, eds. The concept of the gene in development and evolution: historical and epistemological perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000: 219-39.
- 22. Burian RM. On conceptual change in biology: the case of the gene. In: Depew DJ, Weber BH, eds. Evolution at a crossroads: the new biology and the new philosophy of science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1995: 21-42.