International Encyclopedia of Systems and Cybernetics

The recently completed sequencing of the human genome introduces again the possibility of a exclusively reductionist view of life: looking for ex. for the "gene of schizophreny". In the extreme view, the gene becomes "the atom of the biologist".

However, in a review of E. FOX KELLER's book "The Century of the Gene"(2000), H. J. RHEINBERGER observes that FOX KELLER "goes so far as to question the very possibility of compressing development into a meaningful algorithm"(2001, p. 65)

In his view "the dynamics of development and evolution will call for an integrated understanding of the organism as a whole and will not be crudely reduced to genetic mechanisms"(p. 66) and that "gene technology may well be, indeed must be regarded as an obligatory passage point on the way to a more systemic view of how organisms work, develop and evolve"(p. 66)

We should be attentive in FOX-KELLER view as quoted by RHEINBERGER to the "complexity of the regulatory dynamics" that mediate between genetic constitution and bodily performance", lest "the term gene…may even have become, as W. GELBART has suggested, a "hindrance to the understanding of biologists" and perhaps even more of a hindrance to the understanding of lay readers "(p. 66)

Genes are basically elements. As such, that can have position values and become dynamically associated in organization process. It would thus be apt to speak of "developmental dynamics-a field quite widely open to further research- better than of "genetic program" (Sh. PENMAN, 2001, p. 66-67)