Greetings Economists, On Jul 1, 2007, at 11:43 AM, raghu wrote:
2) The gene concept has enormous power as a metaphor. An excellent not-too-technical presentation of this idea is in Evelyn Keller's "The Century of the Gene" where the author (who is a physicist turned feminist-historian of biology) traces the history of the gene metaphor through the 20'th century and argues for retiring the term altogether because it has outlived its usefulness.
Doyle; That's a wow response. Wow meaning to me a beautiful and in depth flow. I think though, that the breakdown of the concept in science doesn't really deal with the support for this process. For example, pesticides have come back with this idea DDT saved lives from malaria, and when it was banned the environmentalist killed millions. So the 'argument' of logic is widespread of cause and effect that still has great popular support in how knowledge in public information is generated. The network process underlying this struggle rests upon how knowledge is made. And that to me is where it probably will be settled in terms of the culture at large. community knowledge rests upon mass support for ways of thinking about everyday reality that is really socialist community versus individual will. Big media can broadcast meaning like the Nazi's used to say, repeat it long enough it is believed. Community ties have to manifest in a way that make big lies impossible to propagate into a stable long term cultural artifact taken for granted by most people. thanks, Doyle Saylor
