Lessons from a Living Cell: The limits of reductionism by Stephen Rothman,
McGraw-Hill, 拢18.99, ISBN 0071378200
STEPHEN Rothman has spent thirty years trying to get cell biologists to
accept his theory for the transmission of cellular proteins across the cell wall
over the prevailing theory known as the vesicle model. He hasn鈥檛 succeeded yet,
but he鈥檚 struggling on.
Lessons from a Living Cell is his account of biology鈥檚 war zone.
Rothman believes a particular form of scientific enquiry that he calls 鈥渟trong
micro-reductionism鈥� can impede the progress of science. He blames it for the
failure of his theory of protein transport to oust the vesicle model. Strong
micro-reductionism asserts that all phenomena can be completely understood from
knowledge of their underlying structures.
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To understand a cell, a strong micro-reductionist studies the constituent
parts of cells, believing that all properties of the whole will follow from the
properties of the components. Rothman disputes this, saying that properties of
wholes emerge that are not predictable from the properties of the parts alone.
Component parts can act within a milieu that is not itself defined by the
parts.
This critique of science and reductionism has been put forward many times
before. But Rothman and other anti-reductionists offer little by way of
alternative. Indeed, the anti-reductionist stance seems to derive most of its
appeal from being a subversive view, a suggestion that there is a group of
scientists who are at best misled, or worse, attempt to atomise all natural
phenomena as a way of controlling and manipulating them.
Rothman鈥檚 account of the vesicle theory of protein transport seldom strays
far from this sense of scientists鈥� dim-wittedness or outright resistance to new
ideas. He recounts experiment after experiment performed in his own laboratory
that he feels falsified the dominant vesicle theory, and yet has gone largely
unheeded. With two Nobel prizes on the side of the vesicle theory, Rothman鈥檚
account begins to sound like special pleading.
Remarkably, Rothman鈥檚 story of the cell wars fails to make the case that
reductionism is the evil force. Insofar as one is prepared to believe Rothman鈥檚
own theory鈥攖hat of direct protein transport鈥攖he evidence in its
support would seem to derive from the best sort of careful experimental and
reductionist science.
He could have dispensed with his first 100 pages, in which he gives a clear
but unneeded introduction to philosophy of science. The remaining pages provide
a detailed history of a debate on protein transport.