Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Watson seems to be a good sidekick sort of name. It reminds some of us of the Dr. Watson who shared a flat with Sherlock Holmes and wrote up his adventures for the world. Also, those two syllables may call the mind Thomas Watson, the fellow who worked with Alexander Graham Bell, and was on the receiving end of the first message ever transmitted by telephone. "Mr Watson, come here, I want to see you," is how I think it went. Anyway, one famous Watson who was a member of a duo and who was most definitely not a sidekick was James Watson, the biochemist who in association with Francis Crick, developed the double helix model of DNA. Watson's famous 1968 memoir of that achievement, THE DOUBLE HELIX, begins with the statement, "I have never seen Francis Crick in a modest mood." A fair reading of the book generally indicates that Watson hadn't known many modest moods himself, either. In the above photo, Crick is standing, pointing out features of the model...

The September issue of HARPER's included a review by David Quammen of three recent books on the subject of the Neanderthals. What caught my attention, and made me want to commonplace a bit of this, was Quammen's digression onto the two different sorts of biology in general. There are biologists who look at their field as a batter of applied chemistry -- molecules interacting and compounding. There are also biologists who look at life on the level of the organism, or on the still broader level of the whole populations or ecosystems. Reductionists versus holists, if you will, although those words are judgment freighted. Quammen speaks of organismic versus molecular biology. Here's a passage, without further comment. You may have missed this argument, unless you work in the field or are somehow involved with the allocation of university budgets and buildings. It has been quiet and internecine but bitter, and traceable back to the late 1950s and early 60s, when Edward O...