An example of an analogy in public science discourse:
JA-K: "That gene, FBN1 is the gene that encodes the protein fibrillin, which of course is what helps make the elastic fibres that bind our tissues together,…
[AC: "correct"]
JA-K: now, if the gene mutates, my understanding is then the body can't make fibrillin, and you have a rather nice analogy to explain how someone with Marfan's syndrome might differ genetically."
AC: "As I say, it's a long gene, it's got 65 exons or coding regions, and it's like a train that has 65 cars, freight cars, full of oranges, and you are looking for one orange that's gone off. So, the hunt is very difficult and it does take time…if you are looking at 65 thousand amino acids that make up the fibrillin gene, and you have got to study each one, that takes, nowadays it takes four months. We can't do it any faster. And the other thing is, everybody with Marfan's syndrome, virtually, has a unique mutation, so it's not like cystic fibrosis, where most people have the same gene so it's easy to screen in different populations. Every patient with Marfan has a different error [sic] in their fibrillin-1 gene."
A-K: "So that mutated bit of the gene could be in any one of those freight cars.
AC: "That's correct."
Dr Anne Child (Cardiovascular and Cell Sciences Research Institute, St. George's, University of London, London) was being interviewed by Prof. Jim Al-Khalili for an episode ('Anne Child on Marfan syndrome and love at first sight') of The Life Scientific.
The reference to the mutation in the gene as being an 'error' makes sense from a perspective where the 'correct' base sequence of a gene is copied in perfect fidelity from generation to generation. From such a perspective a mutation is an accident or mistake. However from a purely objective perspective (and given how the variety of life – including the existence of humans – depends on mutations) ther is no correct or right outcome and a mutation is just another natural outcome of a process. It could therefore be seen to reflect teleology (e.g., thinking that Nature has a purposes and wants or intends a particular outcome) to refer to the mutation as an error.
Read examples of scientific analogies
Read about teleology in science
Read examples of teleological (pseudo)explanations for scientific pheneomena
[Please be aware that a word may have different nuances, or even a different meaning, according to context.]« Back to Index
