A Critique of Pure (Genetic) Information

Introduction xv
argument was mistaken. In the second instance, that concerning disorder,
my principal point of reference is the somatic mutation hypothesis.
Albeit in evolving forms, some version of the somatic mutation hypothesis
has dominated cancer biology throughout the twentieth century. I
mean to show how a bifurcation in the understanding of cancer commenced
with the “phylogenetic turn” that took place at the beginning
of the twentieth century and resulted in an ongoing dialectic between
genetic determinists at the center and developmentalists at the margins.
I have reconstructed the history and fortunes of the somatic mutation
hypothesis program in part to give shape and philosophical meaning to
the recurrent challenges that have been brought forth from the margins.
Philosophers of biology have hitherto steadfastly avoided the topic of
cancer (almost as if talking about it could make it catching). But in considering
the loss of organismic order (and the corresponding emergence
of malignant order) philosophically charged questions about the distinction
between normal and pathological come quickly to the fore.
Carefully considered, the research trajectory of the somatic-mutation
hypotheses when confronted by its own empirical shortcomings provides
some of the most cogent evidence against the conflated preformationist
view from which it arose.
With this somewhat bare-boned structure in mind, I will now try
better to prepare the reader for some of the winding curves and vistas
that come up along the way. A main objective of chapter 1 is to account
for how a putatively misguided notion of the gene could have possibly
arisen and in so doing to clarify just what is conceptually at issue. My
principal strategy is that of reconstructing the conceptual pathway to our
contemporary genes as a highly contingent transformation of those basic
life concepts which held sway during the nineteenth century. Telling this
story is complicated by the need to debunk two pervasive myths about
the life sciences—namely, that real biology only begins with Darwin and
that the conceptual ground of genetics owes its existence to some chancy
rediscovery of the work of Mendel.
The particular bone I have to pick with these myths has nothing to
do with the giving or taking of scientific credits but rather with their role
as impediments to a coherent conceptual history of our most basic biological
concepts. With respect to the nineteenth century, I have benefited