1.

3 Going Molecular
In a 1963 letter to Max Perutz, molecular biologist Sydney Brenner foreshadowed what
would be molecular biology’s next intellectual migration:
It is now widely realized that nearly all the “classical” problems of molecular biology have
either been solved or will be solved in the next decade…. Because of this, I have long felt
that the future of molecular biology lies in the extension of research to other fields of
biology, notably development and the nervous system. (Brenner, letter to Perutz, 1963)
Along with Brenner, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, many of the leading molecular
biologists from the classical period redirected their research agendas, utilizing the newly
developed molecular techniques to investigate unsolved problems in other fields. Francois
Jacob, Jacques Monod and their colleagues used the bacteria Escherichia coli to investigate
how environmental conditions impact gene expression and regulation (Jacob and Monod
1961; discussed in Craver and Darden 2013; Morange 1998: Ch. 14; Schaffner 1974a; Weber
2005; see also the entry on the developmental biology). The study of behavior and the
nervous system also lured some molecular biologists. Finding appropriate model organisms
that could be subjected to molecular genetic analyses proved challenging. Returning to the
fruit flies used in Mendelian genetics, Seymour Benzer induced behavioral mutations
in Drosophila as a “genetic scalpel” to investigate the pathways from genes to behavior
(Benzer 1968; Weiner 1999). And at Cambridge, Sydney Brenner developed the nematode
worm, Caenorhabditis elegans, to study the nervous system, as well as the genetics of
behavior (Brenner 1973, 2001; Ankeny 2000; Brown 2003). In subsequent decades, the study
of cells was transformed from descriptive cytology into molecular cell biology (Alberts et al.
1983; Alberts et al. 2002; Bechtel 2006). Molecular evolution developed as a phylogenetic
method for the comparison of DNA sequences and whole genomes; molecular systematics
sought to research the evolution of the genetic code as well as the rates of that evolutionary
process by comparing similarities and differences between molecules (Dietrich 1998; see
also the entries on evolution, heritability, and adaptationism). The immunological
relationship between antibodies and antigens was recharacterized at the molecular level
(Podolsky and Tauber 1997; Schaffner 1993; see also the entry on the philosophy of
immunology). And the study of oncogenes in cancer research as well as the molecular bases
of mental illness were examples of advances in molecular medicine (Morange 1997b; see
also the entry on philosophy of psychiatry).
This process of “going molecular” thus generally amounted to using experimental methods
from molecular biology to examine complex phenomena (be it gene regulation, behavior, or
evolution) at the molecular level. The molecularization of many fields introduced a range of
issues of interest to philosophers. Inferences made about research on model organisms such
as worms and flies raised questions about extrapolation (see Section 3.3). And the reductive
techniques of molecular biology raised questions about whether scientific investigations
should always strive to reduce to lower and lower levels (see Section 3.1).