Metaphors of Coordination and Development

1. Introduction

• Until the 1920s, biological inheritance had much broader connotations than transmission of something discrete (which we now call genes). It also included development. After all, when it is said that a person resembles their parent, two aspects of the transmission of traits to offspring are being raised: how does an offspring develop to have the trait in question at all, e.g., its eye color, and how does the outcome of the development at some point in the lifespan differ from that person to the rest of the family or population. What, then is the relationship between the study of development and the study of difference? What is the role of genes in both? Competing answers to these questions are evident in the contrast between the work of Just and Goldschmidt in the early decades of the twentieth century.
• Interpreting the work of Darwin has introduced the role of metaphor in scientific theories and their presentation to an audience. The account by Gilbert of Just versus Goldschmidt revolves around his interpretation of the metaphors underlying their work.

1b. Mini-lecture (18-minute audio lecture)

• Multiple views of heredity in the early 1900s.
• Begin the exercise of explaining to aliens how offspring come to resemble their parents.
• Metaphor; metaphors in science; metaphors in interpretation of science.

2. Reading and other Preparation

• Review Gilbert, "Animal development," to inform or remind yourself of the processes by which an egg grows and changes form as an embryo.
  • (Morphogenetic development is not emphasized in biology education. The emphasis is on genes getting switched on and off.)
• Complete the exercise of explaining to aliens how offspring come to resemble their parents.
  • (This is difficult to do without phrases and metaphors that beg for explanation themselves.)
• Read Gilbert, "Cellular politics,” in which Gilbert describes the different views of heredity espoused by Just and Goldschmidt.
  • Draw up a chart summarizing the different views of heredity espoused by Just and Goldschmidt. Note, in particular, what controls what and how coordinated action of the different parts of a cell and organism are achieved.
  • Think about these questions to prepare for class discussion: Gilbert sees a correlation between the scientists' social position and their actual scientific research. How could social position influence actual research even if the scientists were consciously trying to build in their social position? Does Gilbert's interpretation devalue the science done by these scientists?
• Read Lakoff and Johnson, "Concepts We Live By," on metaphors.
• Take a quick look at software or http://www.math.com/students/wonders/life/life.html on the Game of Life. If the applets on these sites do not work, google game of life and the name of your browser (e.g., chrome) to find a working version.

3. Activities

• Use the "Game of Development" to explore analogies with principles of biological development (see below).
• Invent alternative metaphors of or analogies to embryological development that do not rely on a central controller but capture the ability of the organism to co-ordinate its own differentiation and change and thereby make itself.
  • (Build on discussion of inheritance to aliens exercise. Students in the past have described, for example, improvisational dance, cheese making, and a casual conversation in an elevator. When compared with the popular metaphors of DNA as code, there is lack of familiar phrases about development that depict or explain coordination of complex developing parts.)
• Discuss Gilbert's interpretation of the different views of heredity espoused by Just and Goldschmidt.
  • (See questions under #2.)

Game of Life as "Game of Development"
Warm-up Exercises
1. Begin by setting up a random screen (on software or alternative) and watching it until it stabilizes. If it doesn’t stabilize after many cycles stop it. Note the different forms you have at the end and their approximate relative frequencies.

2. Play around with the controls, freezing the game, adding and subtracting pixels, changing the speed and resolution, until you have a feel for how to run the software.

3. Clear the screen, set up an R- Pentomino and watch it develop. Freeze it after one minute and note the relative frequency of different forms. Let it go, stop after some more cycles, record, and so on for more cycles.

4. Start again with an R-Pentomino but perturb it, the first time by adding or subtracting a pixel connected to the form before it starts; the next time doing the same but after 2 moves; the next time after 4 moves.... until you've seen all you want to see and made observations which match the principles of development listed below. You will need to begin at slow speed to be able to count the moves and to stop the game after the right one. You may have to choose a different initial form (other than a R-Pentomino) -- keep it simple -- to illustrate some of the principles.

Principles of embryological development
For each principle below make notes to yourself of the circumstances in the "Game of Development" which you observed that match. Imagine also that changes in the initial conditions correspond to mutations or recombinations and any changes after a run starts correspond to some environmental change, e.g., contact with a teratogen.

1. Local rules, here interactions between neighboring pixels, can lead to integrated, stable morphologies on a large scale. 2. Local rules can lead to order arising out of initial disorder. 3. Mutations or recombinations can sometimes have no effect, sometimes lead to obliteration of morphogenesis, and sometimes lead to novel, stable morphologies. 4. Changes in the environment can sometimes have no effect, sometimes lead to obliteration of morphogenesis, and sometime lead to novel, stable morphologies. 5. The effect of mutations/ recombinations can be quite unpredictable. 6. Perturbations early in development usually have a more severe effect than perturbations later in development. Find an exception in the game. 7. Interactions between cells can produce patterns of cells on a larger scale than the original cells that were interacting. 8. Simple starting shape leads to a range of final shapes (= differentiation during development). 9. Some shapes are way-stations that are obliterated by later developments.

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4. Synthesis and extensions

A. Sapp

• Precis TBA

B. The "Game of Development" variant of the Game of Life (involving cellular automata) asks students to find analogs to observations in embryology and developmental biology that render plausible an alternative picture to genes controlling development:

• The organism is a composite of coherent processes.
  • Changes, e.g. produced by mutations, can yield significant (or trivial) but still integrated change in the organism.
• Development is a complex process of structures arising out of structure, and so
  • a change in genes does not necessarily imply a change in some characters.
  • a change in genes can sometimes result in a discrete change in some characters.
• Although development is complex, this doesn't imply the need for a controlling center. Local rules of interaction can yield larger scale co-ordination.
  • Development of social characters will be similarly complex and difficult to tie down to genes, but even more so because
    • a) post-embryonic development involves more extensive interaction with the environment and
    • b) social characters involve interaction among individuals.

C. Notes on ways that metaphors can be analyzed in scientific writing: http://www.faculty.umb.edu/peter_taylor/metaphor.html

• “[W]hen we search for new concepts and metaphors, or more generally, use words and text to make arguments and seek to convince others, we privilege three related and persistent ‘meta-metaphors': ‘1) metaphors are root, fundamental, underlying things that shape the surface layers; 2) mental things—thoughts, expectations, what we see—shape our actions; and 3) culture or society get into these thoughts (and so we can be taught [or argued into] how to conceive/perceive the world’... These meta-metaphors discount our experience of thought being constructed in practical activity from diverse resources.” (Taylor 2001)

5. Connections and resources
Gilbert, S. F. and A. Fausto-Sterling (2003). "Educating for social responsibility: changing the syllabus of developmental biology." Int J Dev Biol 47(2-3): 237-44.

• Two different approaches to reworking a developmental biology course so as to address biology-in-society.

Oyama, S. (2001). Terms in tension: What do you do when all the good words are taken? Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. S. Oyama, P. Griffith and R. Gray. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 177-193.

• TBA

Taylor, P. J. (2001). Distributed agency within intersecting ecological, social, and scientific processes. Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution. S. Oyama, P. Griffiths and R. Gray. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press: 313-332.

• "In a ‘section of Susan Oyama's The Ontogeny of Information on ‘Subjects and Objects.’ Oyama describes our primary experience of ourselves as subjects maturing from dependence and passivity to independence and control—what I call ‘concentrated’ agency. We come to experience temporal continuity, casual potency, and are able to impart order according to prior knowledge and plan. This experience, however, ‘exaggerates our role as detached subjects and denies our object-like status' (Oyama 1985, 76). Accordingly, when we try to explain development, interaction, and perception, we tend to posit another subject inside ourselves—mental modules, optimizing or rational actors, or, most notably, genes. Similarly, to explain the order of the world people have traditionally posited a subject outside it, God, or, more recently, ‘the-forces-of-natural-selection.’
• In order to develop better explanations of development, interaction, and perception, we need, Oyama implies, metaphors and concepts that do not rely on the dynamic unity and coherency of agents, or on superintending agents within or outside those agents. And, to the extent that such patterns of thought persist because of their resonance with the experience agents have of their relations and actions in the material and social world, we need different experience. Or, better, we need to highlight submerged experience of ourselves as ‘object-like’ or ‘distributed,’ that is, as agents dependent on other people and many, diverse resources beyond the boundaries of our physical or mental selves. After all, the primary experience of becoming an autonomous subject is not ‘raw’ experience, let alone uniform and universal experience..., but experience mediated through particular social discourse.
• There are circles here to be wrestled with. New concepts and metaphors might emerge if we experienced ourselves differently, but what counts as our primary experience is mediated by prevailing conceptual schemes and shared metaphors. And in current Western social discourse, these highlight our autonomy as subjects. Conversely, when some of us seek to theorize Developmental Systems or, in my case, to highlight distributed agency, we foresake the facilitation afforded by prevailing concepts and metaphors of concentrated agency. To so distance ourselves from the dominant discourse, however, requires a strong sense of ‘independence’ and ‘causal potency’ in attempting to impose an order—on one's world and on one's audiences.”

5b. Add to this blog post to make contributions to the revision of the chapter above or to an annotated collection of readings and other resources related to the chapter.
5c. Adaptation of themes from the chapter to students' own projects of of engaging others in learning or critical thinking about biology in its social context: Suggestions for how to do that:

• i. Identify an idea that is central to your project area, e.g., balance of life, and invent an activity that leads your audience to explore the complexities of associations that the term might have once one starts probing it.
• ii. Identify a theory that is central to your project area, e.g., genetic coding, and invent an activity that leads your audience to explore its history, noting especially the contrasting theories that have been held.
• iii. Adapt an existing game so it illustrates ideas related to your project area that are difficult to visualize or to experience.