On Experimental Approaches and Evolution A Comment

Abstract

Two conceptual revolutions, which occurred a long time ago, shaped the face of modern research in the life sciences. The first was the mechanistic revolution, the cornerstones of which were formulated mainly by Rene Descartes in the seventeenth century. Animals, said Descartes, are machines governed by the same laws that govern any other physical object under the Sun. (Man, he added, has in addition a soul, that resides in the machine and interacts with it.) It is Descartes’ mechanistic views that paved the way to the reductionistic approach characterizing most, if not all, of the work carried out today in biology laboratories. The second major revolution culminated two centuries later. The living world is not static, but undergoes continuous alterations and innovations; species were not created as such in the beginning of time but evolved from ancestral forms. Man is no exception. The clear-cut, poetic events of the third, fifth and sixth days of creation, as depicted in Genesis, were thus replaced by a seemingly cold and dry scientific alternative. For this revolution, the main responsibility lies with Charles Darwin — although he was not the first to initiate it.