Domondon Andrew T
Committee on Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science, University of Chicago, 1126 East 59th St. Room 205, Chicago, IL 60637, USA.
Stud Hist Philos Biol Biomed Sci. 2006 Sep;37(3):433-58. doi: 10.1016/j.shpsc.2006.06.014. Epub 2006 Aug 28.
The received view on the contributions of the physics community to the birth of molecular biology tends to present the physics community as sharing a basic level consensus on how physics should be brought to bear on biology. I argue, however, that a close examination of the views of three leading physicists involved in the birth of molecular biology, Bohr, Delbrück, and Schrödinger, suggests that there existed fundamental disagreements on how physics should be employed to solve problems in biology even within the physics community. In particular, I focus on how these three figures differed sharply in their assessment of the relevance of complementarity, the potential of chemical methods, and the relative importance of classical physics. In addition, I assess and develop Roll-Hansen's attempt to conceptualize this history in terms of models of scientific change advanced by Kuhn and Lakatos. Though neither model is fully successful in explaining the divergence of views among these three physicists, I argue that the extent and quality of difference in their views help elucidate and extend some themes that are left opaque in Kuhn's model.
物理学界对分子生物学诞生所做贡献的传统观点倾向于认为，物理学界对于如何将物理学应用于生物学达成了基本共识。然而，我认为，仔细研究参与分子生物学诞生过程的三位杰出物理学家玻尔、德尔布吕克和薛定谔的观点就会发现，即便在物理学界内部，对于如何运用物理学解决生物学问题也存在着根本性的分歧。具体而言，我关注的是这三位人物在互补性的相关性评估、化学方法的潜力以及经典物理学的相对重要性方面存在的巨大差异。此外，我评估并拓展了罗尔 - 汉森依据库恩和拉卡托斯提出的科学变革模型对这段历史进行概念化的尝试。尽管这两种模型都未能完全成功地解释这三位物理学家观点的分歧，但我认为，他们观点差异的程度和性质有助于阐明并拓展库恩模型中一些仍不清晰的主题。
