Stotz and Griffiths, Biohumanities
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we think of concepts as tool of research, as ways of classifying the experience shaped by
experimentalists to meet their specific needs. Necessarily these tools get reshaped as the
demands of scientific work change. In the study of conceptual evolution, the history of
genetics provides a `conceptual phylogeny' of the gene. The Representing Genes project
is an attempt at `conceptual ecology', that is, an attempt to determine some of the
pressures that caused the gene concept to diversify into a number of different epistemic
niches.
In this section we have given a brief description of some experimental philosophy of
biology. We hope that these concrete examples give some substance to our claim that the
humanities need not be confined to discussing the social or ethical consequences of
biology, but can also contribute to a better understanding of biology itself, to
understanding, for example, what genes are and what it is for something to be innate.
3. From Science Criticism to a New Vision of Postgenomic Biology
Biohumanities is a critical enterprise that reflects on the epistemic virtues and limitations
of current approaches. For example, an analysis of the gene concept should aim to shed
light on the investigative utility and biases of gene-centered explanations in molecular,
developmental and evolutionary biology (Waters, 2004).
As a result of the Representing Genes project we have come to embrace a version of the
widely accepted dichotomy between an abstract, statistical gene and a concrete,
mechanistic gene (Falk, 2000; Gilbert, 2000; Gilbert, 2003; Moss, 2003), but have felt the