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Listening to this next interview might fundamentally change the way you regard yourself and the question of what it is to be an individual human being.
It might also alter your view on whether human lives are determined by their genes.
Here's the eminent philosopher of science, John Dupre.
John Dupre, welcome to philosophy Bites.
Thank you for having me here.
Pleasure to be here.
The topic we're going to focus on is genomics.
Most people know what genetics is, I think, but what's genomics?
Well, genetics originates in experiments on inheritance and is essentially a rather atomistic theory of how things are inherited.
So you hear genes for this and that, genes for various traits, characters of organisms.
And this originates from breeding experiments with flies, mice, mendels, peas, where you track traits and people hypothesized there were genes that carried these traits.
In genomics, we are starting to think much more holistically about the DNA, the structures which carry DNA, which for a while were sort of associated with the traditional genes as these trait carriers.
And what we're finding is that this is a much more complex system.
It has a material reality, it has a shape which is essential to its function.
It responds to the cellular environment, and the cellular environment actually responds to the wider environment.
So it's a very complex system.