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Why are scientists so brilliant?

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Thelibrarian
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19 Oct 2013, 5:17 pm

Janissy wrote:
Thelibrarian wrote:
Janissy wrote:
Thelibrarian wrote:
Janissy wrote:
Thelibrarian wrote:
naturalplastic wrote:
Scientists havent found the elixer of life, the perpetual motion machine, time machines, nor even cold fusion, either.

Thats the "fault"(if fault needs to be found) of nature, and not of either scientists, nor of society.


I think one of the problems is that science hasn't had any new paradigms now in many years. Anybody who has read Kuhn's "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" will understand what I'm talking about. Kuhn noticed a pattern whereby a new paradigm is adopted despite much resistance from scientists invested in the old paradigm. The reason new paradigms are adopted is that they are able to solve problems not amenable to solution with the old paradigm.


I think we are on the cusp of a paradigm shift relevant to this thread. The old (and current) paradigm is nature versus nurture, genes versus environment. But the emerging science of epigenetics is starting to shift this either/or dichotomy. Genes and environment are starting to look interactive. Researchers are finding that environmental factors can switch genes on or off. Once medicine catches up with this, I think it will change healthcare in interesting ways.


I agree, except that nature versus nurture is in no way a new paradigm. Examples of paradigms that revolutionized science are adopting evolutionary approaches in biology, and the replacement of Newtonian with Einsteinian physics.


Nature versus nurture isn't a new paradigm. It's the old paradigm that is about to be replaced by epigenetics. It isn't as big a shift as the ones brought in by Darwin and Einstein, but a shift nonetheless.


Please explain.


The old paradigm in biology is nature versus nurture, genes versus environment. This old paradigm says that a phenomenon is caused by environment or by genes. The emerging field of epigenetics says that environment can cause genes to switch on or off. The change from genes or enviroment to genes interacting with enviroment is small compared to the change brought by evolutionary theory, but it is a new way of looking at biological phenomena.


Actually, I think environment being able to influence gene behavior--and vice versa--has been around for many decades. The Soviet doctrine intended the replace Evolution, something called Lamarckism, actually used this fact as an antecedent to their very flawed conclusions:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lamarckism