Bellazzi Francesca
Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, Bristol, UK.
Eur J Philos Sci. 2022;12(1):17. doi: 10.1007/s13194-022-00446-0. Epub 2022 Feb 15.
The identity and the existence of genes has been challenged by postgenomic discoveries. Specifically, the consideration of molecular and cellular phenomena in which genes are embedded has proved relevant for their understanding. In response to these challenges, I will argue that the complexity of genetic phenomena supports the weak emergence of genes from the DNA. In Section 2, I will expose what genes are taken to be in the postgenomic world. In Section 3, I will present the relevant account of emergence. I consider weak emergence as in Franklin and Knox (, 68-78, 2018), for which a phenomenon is emergent when it displays novelty and robustness. In Section 4, I will argue that genes are weakly emergent since they are novel, improving explanations, and robust in respect to some perturbations. Then, I will conclude in Section 5 that genes' emergence is a way to allow genes' flexibility and context dependency, without compromising their existence.
后基因组时代的发现对基因的特性和存在提出了挑战。具体而言，对基因所嵌入的分子和细胞现象的考量已证明与理解基因相关。为应对这些挑战，我将论证遗传现象的复杂性支持基因从DNA中弱涌现。在第2节中，我将揭示后基因组时代人们对基因的认知。在第3节中，我将阐述涌现的相关观点。我所考虑的弱涌现如富兰克林和诺克斯（《，68 - 78，2018》）所述，即当一种现象展现出新颖性和稳健性时，它就是涌现的。在第4节中，我将论证基因是弱涌现的，因为它们具有新颖性、能改进解释，并且在某些扰动下具有稳健性。然后，我将在第5节中得出结论，即基因的涌现是一种在不损害其存在的情况下赋予基因灵活性和情境依赖性的方式。
