Frezza Giulia, Capocci Mauro
Unit of History of Medicine, Department of Medico-Surgical Sciences and Biotechnologies, Viale dell'Università 34/a, 00185, Rome, Italy.
Hist Philos Life Sci. 2018 Apr 24;40(2):31. doi: 10.1007/s40656-018-0196-z.
The paper analyzes the early theory building process of Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945) from the 1910s to the 1930s and the introduction of the invisible gene as a main explanatory unit of heredity. Morgan's work marks the transition between two different styles of thought. In the early 1900s, he shifted from an embryological study of the development of the organism to a study of the mechanism of genetic inheritance and gene action. According to his contemporaries as well as to historiography, Morgan separated genetics from embryology, and the gene from the whole organism. Other scholars identified an underlying embryological focus in Morgan's work throughout his career. Our paper aims to clarify the debate by concentrating on Morgan's theory building-characterized by his confidence in the power of experimental methods, and carefully avoiding any ontological commitment towards the gene-and on the continuity of the questions to be addressed by both embryology and genetics.
本文分析了托马斯·亨特·摩根（1866 - 1945）在20世纪10年代至30年代早期的理论构建过程，以及将不可见基因作为遗传主要解释单元的引入。摩根的工作标志着两种不同思维方式之间的转变。在20世纪初，他从对生物体发育的胚胎学研究转向了对遗传机制和基因作用的研究。根据他同时代的人以及史学研究，摩根将遗传学与胚胎学分离，将基因与整个生物体分离。其他学者在摩根整个职业生涯的工作中发现了一个潜在的胚胎学关注点。我们的论文旨在通过专注于摩根的理论构建（其特点是他对实验方法力量的信心，并谨慎避免对基因做出任何本体论承诺）以及胚胎学和遗传学要解决的问题的连续性来澄清这场争论。
