Memo from
JOSHUA LEDERBERG

To: Dr. Nancy L. Maull
Dept Philosophy
Yale University

FEB 23 1978

... reductionism

Thank you for the reprint.

_ Your argument resonates with my own
increasing conviction (perhaps shared with Popper)
that the questions asked in a science are more
important than the explanations.

In any event, I am also delighted that a
philosopher is looking at the actual history of
scientific development, and especially when this
is in my own field. I hope we might have some
occasions for more extensive discussions of these
issues, and especially (from my perspective) how
they can help in the management of research.

Your first footnote prompted me to dig out a
couple of items:

1) An important attack on the over-idealiza-
tion of 'the gene’ by Haldane.

2) Evidence that unprofitable doubts still
persist, though by now confined to an older genera
tion. (Brom Pais tells me this is a backwash of
the shattering effects of Heisenberg on the
world-structure of classical physicists).

My own Nobel lecture (1958-9) was intentionally
calculated to certify the first sentence of your
article. (Only Lindegren complained directly |
about it; Barry Commoner was the die-hard, before
he turned to his equally foolish ecological
thermo dynamics).

p. 149 transformation and transduction are
further examples of appropriated terms: they have
ended up both being horrendous-- tranformation a/c
vagueness; transduction a/c confusion of subject
and_indirect object.

 

PROFESSOR JOSHUA LEDERBERG
Department of Genetics
School of Medicine

Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305

 

 

 

Memo from To:
JOSHUA LEDERBERG

Further, I had intended transduction to be a

generic term for the transfer of genetic fragments
from one cell to another. But almost immediately,
the context of the experimental work, transduction
by bacteriophage, led my colleagues to disregarded
the generic usage; and in practica now transduction
means BOTH: the transfer of a genetic fragment by
a virus, or the genetic transformation of a geno-
type as a consequence of that transfer.

There is surely a lesson to be learned from the
invariable carelessness of my collegues about
grammatical niceties; and their tendency to grasp
terms as cliches.

I was more fortunate with 'plasmid' -- a term
which was designed and coined quite self-consciously

- with the aim of founding a field.

p-152 I still have trouble with my graduate student
whowill use 'leucine' as the name of a gene in the
set of those which influence the biosynthesis of
leucine. There is an effort to sustain distinctions
by italicizing labels like leu for that name. You
may have surmized that I tend to be fussy about
such matters: it is perhaps not a coincidence where

you found your example. (And I could find too many
counterexamples in my own writing.)

{ s6ug. Hes Pli (Sa 8: 142 417)

 

PROFESSOR JOSHUA LEDERBERG
Department of Genetics
School of Medicine

Stanford University
Stanford, California 94305