How the Gene Got Its Groove: Figurative Language, Science, and the Rhetoric of the Real

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

Figurative Language, Science, and the Rhetoric of the Real

ELIZABETH PARTHENIA SHEA

S T AT E U N I V E R S I T Y O F N E W Y O R K P R E S S

Published by State University of New York Press, Albany © 2008 State University of New York All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY www.sunypress.edu Production and book design, Laurie Searl Marketing, Fran Keneston

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shea, Elizabeth Parthenia, 1966– How the gene got its groove : figurative language, science, and the rhetoric of the real / Elizabeth Parthenia Shea. p. ; cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7914-7425-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Genetics. 2. Communication in science—Philosophy. 3. Rhetoric—Philosophy. I. Title. [DNLM: 1. Genes. 2. Language Arts. 3. Persuasive Communication. 4. Science. QU 470 S539h 2008] QH430.S525 2008 576.5—dc22 2007030817 10

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

1

To my mother Mary M. Shea and late father Thomas D. Shea who generously passed on and nurtured the genes for enjoying the endless play of figurative language.

Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ix

1

INTRODUCTION

1

2

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

15

3

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK: GENETIC THEORIES, GEMMULES, AND GENES

29

4

GENES ON MAIN STREET

49

5

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

65

6

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING: GENES, SEXUALITY, AND THE AUTHORITY OF SCIENCE

81

7

GENOME: THE SECRET OF HOW TROPES WORK IN THE LIFE SCIENCES

105

NOTES

125

REFERENCES

129

INDEX

135

Acknowledgments

I first glimpsed the gemmule for this book while working on a dissertation under the direction of S. Michael Halloran. When Michael agreed to serve as the director of my dissertation committee, he “warned” me that he was not an overly directive director. The warning, it turned out, was less a comment about his work style and more a clue to the powers of persuasion that he would wield over my views of rhetoric. Just as Wilhelm Johannsen ushered the gene into language by offering it as a reality designed to resist the impediments of language, Michael Halloran imposed an appreciation of rhetoric by resisting the impediments of demonstration and direction. And though I certainly would not presume to persuade him of anything regarding the rhetoric of the real, I do express my wholehearted gratitude to him for persuading me to appreciate real rhetoric. A grant from Northeastern University’s Research and Scholarship Development Fund offered me valuable time to conduct research for this book. I am grateful to two research assistants: Brooke Wittenberg for her help in sifting through a century of representations of genes in the popular press and to Michele Braun for tracking down and translating early genetics texts. Thanks to Sarah Farris for help in keeping the research organized and to Erin Sunderland for eukaryotic management. Thank you to my friend and former colleague Eric Iversen for bringing me to the genome exhibit in Washington, D.C., and for analyzing it with me right there on the spot. Thanks to Ashley Williams and Allen for turning my attention to the grooves of DNA. Thanks also to Edward Schiffer for allowing me to benefit from his amazing memory of popular culture. Several colloquia series have provided me the opportunities to air earlier versions of my work and to receive lively, engaging, and extremely helpful feedback. Thanks to Wenda Bauchspies and the Science and Technology Studies Program at the Pennsylvania State University; Amy Propen, Bernadette Longo, Art Walzer, and the members of the Rhetoric Department at the University of Minnesota; and Sarah Jansen and the Harvard History of Life Sciences Studies Group.

ix

x

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am very grateful to Larin McLaughlin, Andrew Kenyon, and Laurie Searl of SUNY Press for all their hard work in bringing this book to press. I also thank the two anonymous scholars who reviewed the manuscript and provided me with generative comments for the manuscript. While writing and revising and writing and revising I have benefited tremendously from the support, encouragement, and realigning tendencies of friends, teachers, and colleagues near and far. I thank especially Kristin Bartok, Terese Guinsatao Monberg, John Monberg, Elizabeth DiSalvo, Wenda Bauchspies, Joe Maguire, Sal Restivo, Steven Katz, Cassandra Jackson, Rekha Rosha, Lourdes Rodriguez-Nogues, Bill and Anne Leahey, and Ron Decker. I have also had the great good fortune of having wonderful and supportive colleagues in the English department at Northeastern who have offered various combinations of encouragement, advice, and commiseration along the way; thanks to Guy Rotella, Susan Wall, Stuart Peterfreund, Tim Donovan, Patrick Mullen, Laura Green, and Patricia Sullivan. I could not possible have imagined—and fortunately never had to—writing without the font of wisdom, delight, and consultation of my dear friends and colleagues Kathleen Kelly and Marina Leslie. And as for Beth Britt, who has been such a delightful and inspiring presence throughout the entire process of conceptualizing, writing, revising, and editing, I am flummoxed as to how I could even begin to thank her. I’m thinking, though, of starting with a glass of champagne. Thanks in countless ways to Joe and Todd and Kristin.

1

Introduction

IN A MADE-FOR-TELEVISION courtroom, an attorney approaches the jury

and asks with sardonic smugness: “Is DNA really evidence?” Gesturing with her fingers, she places quotes around the word “evidence.” The members of the jury absorb the statement with blank expressions. Within the context of a closing statement in a court of law, the lawyer’s gestures call attention to the long-standing tension between a faith in reasoned argument and a fear of the slipperiness of rhetoric. In fiction, in television, in pop culture, the courtroom’s symbolic promise of reason and justice is often strained by the presence of a lawyer, long a figure of those who use language and argument to, as Socrates said of the sophists, make the worse case seem the stronger. From the brief snippet of the lawyer’s appeal to the jury—a rhetorical question casting doubt on the value of DNA—we can gather that she is indeed one of those slippery sophistic types, one who is building her case on the contingencies of language, meaning, and interpretive context. We don’t really need to know anything more about the context of her statement to see that she is being preposterous; she is challenging the reality and truth-value of DNA within a court of law. This is not a real courtroom scene. It is the opening scene of a television commercial. It is only five seconds long. The voiceover, a deep male voice reverberating with satirical severity, explains to the television audience: “For Jen, truth was relative.” The commercial has nothing to do with genetics or with law (we are left to our own devices to make any connections we may want to any infamous court cases involving DNA evidence). It is part of a series of sharply funny commercials portraying the honest and reliable practices of Washington Mutual Bank. Each commercial uses absurd little skits to represent a client’s transformation from anxiety to trust, from dishonesty to honesty, or from miserliness to generosity. In this one, Jen the relativist lawyer is dramatically transformed from extreme relativism to extreme truthfulness, all from her experience with a bank where free checking really is free. Before her transformation, Jen is willing to challenge the ultimate truth of DNA. After her

1

2

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

transformation, Jen is so committed to absolute truthfulness that she pulls her car off the road to tell a police officer that she just changed lanes without signaling and that her license plates are expired. Despite the virtues of post-transformation Jen and her newfound truthfulness, it is pre-transformation Jen who is of interest here. I borrow her courtroom, and her one-line skit, to introduce my own study of rhetoric and genetics. What better than a fictionalized courtroom (harking back to a scene so central to the texts of classical rhetorical theory), made for the ephemeral world of advertising, to dramatize the lessons we can learn about contemporary rhetoric if we pay attention to genetics. It is really the persistent and potent antithesis between rhetoric and genetics that can teach us. It can teach us not only about the way we communicate about genetics, and not only about the place of genetics in contemporary discourse, but also about the control and containment of rhetoric in contemporary culture. The commercial dramatizes the rhetoric–genetics antithesis in the bold relief of a caricature. The caricature owes its snappiness in part to the idealized courtroom space, complete with mahogany wood, an impressive jury box, and a gallery rail marking off the public seating area. But despite the quality of the set and the quality of the performance, the DNA is what really makes it work. DNA is a readily available and easily recognized icon of truth—perfect for just this kind of skit. Replace the DNA with any other kind of evidence—witness testimony, fingerprints, photographs, or telephone records— and the skit just isn’t as funny. Every other category of evidence comes with those prickly problems of context: what’s the relationship of the witness to the defendant? how many other fingerprints were found? how do you demonstrate the relevance of the fingerprints or the telephone record? In contrast, DNA readily stands on its own as a context-independent reliable truth. The commercial takes advantage of the pervasiveness and persuasiveness of DNA in contemporary culture, or what Dorothy Nelkin and M. Susan Lindee have dubbed the “DNA mystique” and the “gene as a cultural icon.” In Jen’s courtroom, the DNA as metonym of truth and reality acknowledges, with a big fat wink, the mystique and iconicity of genetic material. But it is not only the iconic status that is caricatured in the commercial that is worthy of critical attention. It is also the bold antithesis that is in play. The commercial plays on and enforces the sense of a binary universe, with lying, a lawyer’s rhetoric, and relativism on the one side and certainty, honesty, and genetics on the other. It is this rhetorical work—efficiently laying claim to an authoritative material reality while conjuring a boundary of immunity from the contingencies of language and rhetoric— that suggests that “genes” reside comfortably neither in the realm of rhetoric nor in the realm of rhetoric-free reality. Rather, “genes” are implicated in the boundary work of keeping the realms of rhetoric and reality in touch with, but still separate from, one another. In other words, it is the reiterative

INTRODUCTION

3

antithesis of rhetoric and genes that suggests that “genes” themselves are worthwhile objects of rhetorical study. Genes are biological objects: they are implicated in the biological processes of reproduction, development, disease, and cellular maintenance. Genes are scientific objects: they are objects (part material, part functional, part conceptual) that scientists use to study and comprehend genetic, biological, and evolutionary processes. Genes are economic objects: they are valuable commodities in agriculture, food production, medicine, and pharmaceuticals. Genes are political objects: they are sites of conflict of interests between privacy concerns and medical research, farming interests and corporate agriculture, cultural autonomy and population research; they are implicated in family law, criminal investigations, and international law. Genes are also rhetorical objects. As biological, scientific, economic, and political objects, genes belong in the realm of rhetoric; that is, they belong in the realm of deliberation and debate. But it is not only as objects of debate and deliberation that genes are rhetorical. Within individual texts, genes are often invoked to close debate, to forestall deliberation, to ward off alternative interpretations. A mere reference to a gene can itself be a powerful argument, an appeal to truth, or a claim on greater significance. Thus, by saying that genes are rhetorical objects, I do not mean simply that we ought to talk about them, or that we ought to sort through their meanings. Rather, by saying that genes are rhetorical objects I mean that they do rhetorical work. In this book, I examine the gene as a rhetorical object. That is, I examine the “gene” as a rhetorical invention and as a rhetorical figure. As a rhetorical invention, the “gene” was designed to do the same kind of work (laying claim to a reality and immunizing against unwieldy rhetoric) that DNA does in the courtroom skit of the commercial. As a rhetorical figure, the “gene” moves from context to context, adapting to a broad range of rhetorical exigencies (from the highly technical to the intensely political to the ephemeral and the absurd), carrying with it a capacity for rhetorical work and rhetorical consequences. As the examples in this book show, not unlike the DNA in the courtroom skit, the rhetorical consequences of the figure of the gene often include the assertion of boundaries, with authoritative knowledge on one side and playful language, stylistic devices, and rhetoric on the other. The texts that I examine in this book include peer-reviewed scientific texts and popular-press articles, or what some might consider serious texts and fluffy or ephemeral texts. The scientific texts are the ones that aspire to a certain kind of literalism while the popular-press texts are free to stretch around in a kind of playful figuralism. Unlike the scientific texts, the popular-press accounts of genes (especially the headlines) are not constrained by any need to avoid accusations of being too figurative. Still, in both kinds of texts—in the ostensibly literal and the openly figurative—we can see the work of the figure of the gene.

4

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

I should say upfront that the goal of this book is not to evaluate the scientific legitimacy of any literal or figurative use of genetic language. Though the scientific legitimacy of particular language usage is not irrelevant to the analysis, the primary focus of this book is the rhetorical work of both literal and figurative uses of genetic language. In this book I am most concerned with paying close attention to the figurative and rhetorical work of genes and with using genes to learn to pay closer attention to figurative work in general. As Jen’s skit with DNA in the courtroom suggests, this book is especially concerned with attending to the rhetorical work of fixing a sense of a reliable material truth and the rhetorical work of asserting boundaries between truth and rhetoric. SOME MATTERS OF DEFINITION

So far, I have slipped around a bit with references to DNA, genetic material, and genes. These terms are not synonymous. For the most part, this book is more concerned with the rhetorical work of the “gene” as a figure than it is concerned with the persuasiveness of deoxyribonucleic acid. This is not to say that “genes” and “DNA” are not related. They are related. Very closely related. But the relationship between the two terms, and between the referents of the two terms, is anything but fixed and static. DNA stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. As a name, it is fairly straightforward. It designates a distinct biochemical substance that is found in the nuclei of cells. Grammatically, in its literal form, DNA is a concrete noun. The “gene” is harder to define. It is semiotically tricky. In chapter three, I examine in detail the initial naming of the gene to show that when the gene was first named in 1909 it was not so much defined as it was established as a rhetorical figure—a figure for expressing a genetic concept as a material thing. After the name “gene” was introduced, geneticists grappled with its meaning and debated the nature of its signified (was it best to think of it as a material thing? a function? a concept? just a word?) (Vicedo). The material, functional, and conceptual associations have changed dramatically over the last century. But there has never been one singular precise definition or sense of what genes actually are. There is still no one sense of the term that really fixes it in a category of material thing, function, or concept. Ruth Hubbard and Elijah Wald, in their effort to demystify the power of genes in public discourse, summarize the different uses and definitions of the term: But what are genes? Different kinds of biologists have answered the question in different ways. To molecular biologists, a gene is a stretch of DNA that specifies the composition of a protein and may affect whether and at what rate that protein is synthesized, as well as sometimes affecting the syn-

INTRODUCTION

5

thesis of proteins specified by nearby genes. To geneticists, genes are parts of our chromosomes that mediate heritable characteristics or traits. To population biologists, genes are units of difference that can be used to distinguish various members of a population from each other. To evolutionary biologists, genes are historical records of the changes organisms have undergone over time. All these definitions overlap and complement each other, and which one a particular scientist focuses on simply depends on her or his interest. (11)

In other words, the meaning of the term depends on the context of its use. But the gene as a “stretch of DNA” and the gene as a “unit of difference” (and the gene as a persuasive cultural icon, for that matter) are not simply homonyms. As Hubbard and Wald say, the definitions “overlap and complement.” They need one another. It is important to each of the disciplinary domains that the gene of the molecular biologist is understood to be, on some level, the same thing as the gene of the evolutionary biologist. But, then again, it is important that the evolutionary biologists’ definition of the gene not be constrained by the definition of the molecular biologists. As Snustad et al. put it in their college-level textbook, Principles of Genetics: “The definition of the gene needs to remain somewhat pliable if it is to encompass all of the different structure/function relationships that occur in different organisms” (352). In chapter five, I consider the pliability of the term and the complementarity of definitions in terms of the theoretical concepts of boundary objects (Star and Griesemer) and epistemic things (Rheinberger). These two theoretical concepts, drawn from the fields of science studies and the history of science, help to account for the power of the gene in the social construction of scientific knowledge. Combined with focused analysis of the gene as a rhetorical figure (drawing on Jeanne Fahnestock’s analysis of figures in science), the concepts also contribute to an understanding of the rhetorical power of a scientific object in scientific and nonscientific arguments. RHETO RICAL FIGURES AND CULTURAL ICONS

Tracking the meanings of genes across disciplines, rhetorical contexts, and historic periods can be a fascinating and head-spinning adventure. It is not what this book does. A reader expecting an analysis of the relationships between meaning and context will likely be frustrated by my analysis. I am certainly not dismissing the importance of the interdependence of meaning and context, especially when it comes to scientific meaning. But the fluctuation of meanings of genes is the backdrop for this book, the backdrop that, I hope, helps to illuminate the work of rhetorical figurings. It’s not that genes are rhetorical because their meanings are contingent and context

6

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

dependent. Rather, it is because they have an uncanny ability to project a sense of being so undeniably real and so undeniably true that they appear to stand outside the influences of rhetoric, immune to the contingency of language, meaning, and interpretive context, that “genes” are worth paying attention to rhetorically. To pay attention to genes rhetorically, I examine the figurative work that they do within particular texts. Close readings show that while the specific meanings of genes may fluctuate and be difficult to get a grip on (and may require backgrounds in molecular biology, evolution, classical genetics, and pharmaceutical research), the figurative work of genes (claiming an authoritative material reality and suggesting immunity to the contingency of language and meaning) is consistent, predictable, and consequential. Just as the biological work of genes takes place at the molecular level, not in the background of its evolutionary context, the rhetorical work of genes takes place at the textual level, not in the background of its cultural and semiotic context. I share Carole Blair’s concern that rhetoric studies has tended to attribute the status of the real and the status of the material to a text’s context or to the setting of rhetoric, rather than to the text itself. In her essay “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality,” Blair takes public memorials as an opportunity to create openings for rethinking rhetoric as consequential and substantial. With memorials as exemplars, Blair argues for the importance of understanding the rhetorical work of texts. Instead of stopping at the plane of symbolism and meaning, she demonstrates the importance of asking what texts do and how they act. Blair argues that contemporary rhetoric studies has been hindered by the dominance of what she calls the “language of symbolicity.” While understanding texts as symbolic and meaningful is a major component of rhetoric studies, limiting rhetoricity to symbolicity amounts to shortchanging the potential of rhetoric studies. As Blair puts it: There are some things that rhetoric’s symbolicity simply cannot account for. One is its consequence. Even if we were to accomplish the impossible and catalogue the range of meanings referenced by a symbolic formulation, we would not therefore be in any better position than when we began to account for its consequence in use. And if rhetoric is, as I have suggested, defined in part by its potential for consequence, then there is a problem in understanding rhetoric as essentially symbolic. (19)

I am influenced by Blair’s initiative of turning to the text itself as rhetorical (i.e., substantial, consequential, meaningful, and partisan) in examining the gene as a rhetorical object. The symbolic vitality of the gene is the starting point, or the impetus, for examining the gene as itself rhetorical. Like Blair’s memorials, genes offer openings for rethinking rhetoric. A significant chunk of the “range of meanings” has been “catalogued” by geneticists, his-

INTRODUCTION

7

torians, rhetorical critics, and scholars in science studies and cultural studies.1 But, as Blair suggests, the catalogue of meaning is not an account of the consequences of its use. Still, understanding how the gene figure can traverse such a broad range of meaning while preserving its potential for asserting authoritative claims can lead to an understanding of how scientific objects function rhetorically. This study, examining genes as opportunities for rethinking rhetoric, can be seen as complementing semiotic studies of genes that have been produced by scholars in science studies, gender studies, and history, as well as in rhetoric since the early 1990s.2 I alluded to that complementarity earlier, when describing a commercial skit in terms of DNA as a cultural icon and in terms of the rhetorical work of DNA in staking out a claim on an authoritative reality as an antithesis to the contingencies of rhetoric. Because it lays the groundwork for rhetorical readings of genes in both popular and scientific contexts, it is worth recounting the details of Nelkin and Lindee’s landmark study, The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon. I consider it here, both for citing the insights that the study provides and for identifying where my own study of the rhetoric of genes branches off from a study of the meanings of genes. In their 1995 study (reissued in 2004), Nelkin and Lindee analyze the powerful symbolic life of “genes” in contemporary culture, characterizing that symbolic power as the “DNA mystique” and the “gene as a cultural icon.” Their study, examining DNA and genes in the texts of popular culture (including advertisements, cartoons, novels, and films, as well as news and public controversies), shows quite emphatically that genetic representations owe their symbolic vitality and cultural significance as much to the narratives, cultural tensions, and social values with which they converse as to the material qualities and biological significance of DNA. For Nelkin and Lindee, DNA “has become ‘an object to think with,’ a malleable idea by means of which different interpretive communities can express diverse, even contradictory concerns.’” Further, the gene is a powerful and convenient trope: The gene is . . . a symbol, a metaphor; a convenient way to define personhood, identity, and relationships in socially meaningful ways. The gene is used, of course, to explain health and disease. But it is also a way to talk about guilt and responsibility, power and privilege, intellectual or emotional status. It has become a supergene, used to judge the morality or rightness of social systems and to explore the forces that will shape the human future. (16)

Nelkin and Lindee’s study, initiated in the early 1990s, was both situated in and at least partially motivated by a growing wariness of genetic essentialism and an increasing concern about the allure of deterministic and essentializing arguments in popular culture. They note that the appeal of genetic

8

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

essentialism in American society “reflects the close relationships between prevailing theories of nature and cultural conceptions of social order. Perceptions of the natural order have often reproduced, and then justified, social arrangements” and the “status of the gene—as a deterministic agent, a blueprint, a basis for social relations, and a source of good and evil—promises a reassuring certainty, order, predictability, and control” (199–200). Nelkin and Lindee do not disregard authoritative definitions of genes (i.e., those that are officiated and controlled within scientific discourse communities), nor do they dismiss the biological (and economic) significance of the material functions of DNA. But, to Nelkin and Lindee, neither the scientific meaning nor the biological functions of genes determines the symbolic meaning of genes in popular culture.3 The cultural meanings, within this perspective, can be examined separately from the scientific meanings. Like Nelkin and Lindee, I am intrigued by the persuasiveness and cultural power of genes. I agree that the iconicity of the gene is not only an interesting cultural phenomenon but ought to stand as an open invitation for critical reading. But the “gene” is an authoritative figure, both within science and within popular culture, that resists critical readings of its meanings and can lend a sense of authority and significance to the arguments in which it appears. Though the meanings of genes change dramatically from context to context, the potential for the rhetorical work of genes is much more consistent across contexts. Thus, with an appreciation for the catalogue of range of meanings that Nelkin and Lindee have established, and with a shared concern for the persuasive powers of gene talk, I turn in this book to reconnect the iconic gene with the scientific gene. Rather than separating meanings in scientific and popular contexts, I follow the rhetorical work of the gene across rhetorical contexts, from its inception in an argument about language and knowledge, through scientific arguments, and to its work in the contemporary popular press. The word “gene” was first introduced by Danish scientist, Wilhelm Johannsen. He introduced the term in a 1906 textbook as part of a new set of terminology designed to clarify the study of heredity in plants and animals. In 1909, he prepared a speech for the American Society of Naturalists in which he made an extended argument for the gene and the related terms. The speech, ostensibly a case for Johannsen’s “genotype” conception of heredity, can also be read as an extended argument about the problems of language, figurative speech, and the control of knowledge. It is in the context of Johannsen’s speech that we can see that the gene was, first and foremost, a rhetorical invention, designed to lay claim to a material reality (without actually specifying that reality) and to dissociate that material reality from the problems of language, conjecture, and rhetorical uncertainty. Though he introduces genes to be treated as units of material reality, Johannsen emphatically avoids defining or positing any particular

INTRODUCTION

9

attributes of their materiality. In fact, the closest thing to a definition of genes in Johannsen’s text is an assertion of their reality and an admonition of any premature attempts to hypothesize about their physical nature. Johannsen prescribed for the gene the task of figuring a material reality immune to the uncertainties of language and rhetoric; it is this prescribed function that I trace in the book as the gene’s rhetorical work. The gene then becomes an “object to think with” for rhetoric studies, for examining persuasive scientific objects as not only meaningful but also as themselves rhetorical. Genes are rhetorical not only because they are meaningful and not only because they are invoked in arguments, but because they were designed to function rhetorically in a very particular way—a particular way in relation to categories of certainty, reality, contingency, and rhetoricity. The gene as a rhetorical object has consequences for how we understand the relationship between rhetoric and reality. That is, the gene, at work in specific texts and specific arguments, has consequences for the way rhetoric and reality are configured in relation to one another. As an object to think with for rhetoric studies, the work of the gene can show us that the boundary between rhetoric and reality is always up for rhetorical negotiation. DOES THE GENE REALLY HAVE A GROOVE?

I have a weakness for cutesy playful titles, especially those that do the figurative work of epitomizing an argument. The title of this book is no exception. It’s a bit cutesy. And a bit playful. And, it epitomizes an argument—an argument about the figurative relationships among the materiality of genes, the complex history of the gene as a scientific object, and the gene as an authoritative scientific and cultural icon. And an argument about the importance of paying attention to the play of language, especially in relation to scientific objects. The title changed its meaning while I was preparing the book. Early on, intrigued by the persuasiveness of the gene as a cultural icon and astounded by the complexity surrounding the simple question “what is a gene?,” I became attached to “How the Gene Got Its Groove” as a title figure. I had a hard time resisting an alliteration of ‘g’s that could join the scientific seriousness of the gene with the somewhat campy, pop-culture sense of a “groove.” But, it wasn’t long before I discovered that I had stumbled onto a pun. It turns out that there are physical grooves associated with genes. The structure of the double helix has two grooves spiraling around the outside of the DNA molecule: the major groove and the minor groove. It is in the grooves that proteins interact with the base pairs of DNA and effectively pick up the genetic information of genes, translating that information into protein action. So, the groove is a name for part of the shape of the molecule, a part of the shape that has consequences for understanding the biological work of DNA.

10

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

The groove of the double helix is not quite the kind of groove I was thinking about when I got seduced by the question of how the gene got its groove. But as a distinct physical characteristic of DNA, it provides a delightfully serendipitous pun. It is a pun with a purpose, a purpose relating to the role of rhetorical figuration in scientific realism. Kenneth Burke described scientific realism in terms of the figurative work of metonymy. “The basis ‘strategy’ in metonymy,” he expains, is “to convey some incorporeal or intangible state in terms of the corporeal or tangible . . . ‘Metonymy’ is a device of ‘poetic realism’—but its partner, ‘reduction,’ is a device of ‘scientific realism’” (506). Poetic realism relies on metonymy as an “idiom of expression,” or as a figure that calls attention to itself as a figure and is to be taken figuratively. In contrast, scientific realism relies on metonymy as a “substantial reduction,” or a figure that is not to be recognized as a figure and is to be taken literally. If there is ever a trope that works primarily to call attention to rhetorical play, it is a pun. Puns are often the most embarrassing of the tropes because they do not seem to have any communicative purpose; they have no capacity to convey the substance of a matter. Puns are a far cry from the master tropes that can slip unnoticed between the realm of the overtly figurative to the realm of the literal or realistic. The pun of the groove is intended to be cutesy (and maybe a bit embarrassing) but is also intended to call attention to the figurative play of scientific objects. The groove of the gene—that is, the persuasiveness of the gene as a scientific figure and as a cultural icon—is not unrelated to the groove of DNA—that is, the functional structure of the double helix. But the link between the two can not be explained in terms of a simple metonymic or causal relationship. The link is tangled up in figurations, narratives, and arguments. Thus, I hope that the bad pun of the title can serve to make us a little bit uncomfortable (in the ways that puns do) when we start feeling the pull of attributing the groove of the gene to the material structure of DNA. OVERVIEW OF CHAPTERS

Chapter Two. Genetic Origin Stories Many rhetorical studies of scientific texts begin with a historical context to make a case for the scientific and rhetorical significance of the texts (see, for example, Halloran and Bradford 1984, Gross 1990, Selzer 1993, Ceccarelli 2001). But because the naming of the gene is not often treated as a conceptual breakthrough in the history of genetics and because the text in which Johannsen names the gene upholds a historical view that diminishes the scientific and rhetorical significance of the naming, I begin by troubling the relationship between the origin of the gene and the commonly told origin

INTRODUCTION

11

narrative of genetics. Gregor Mendel is often cited as a founder of genetics and is sometimes cited as an originator of the concept of the gene. Indeed, Johannsen calls upon “Mendelism” as an argument for asserting the reality of his “gene.” In this chapter I review Mendel’s nineteenth-century work in light of the twentieth-century concept of the gene, which is often projected back onto it, and examine the making of the origin narrative that figures Mendel as the founder of genetics. Thus, rather than providing a context that illuminates the historical significance of the gene, I examine the history of the genetic origin narrative for insight into the gene’s resistance to history. Chapter Three. Prescribing Rhetorical Work: Genetic Theories, Gemmules, and Genes This chapter presents the analysis of Johannsen’s address to the American Society of Naturalists in which he makes an extended argument for his specialized vocabulary, figures the gene as a material thing, and prescribes the rhetorical work for the gene. In the address, Johannsen makes a case for separating scientific language from everyday language, managing the precision of specialized terminology, and protecting scientific language from the rhetorical contaminations of figurative language, dialectical reasoning, fiction, pretending, and speculations taken as fact. Johannsen’s articulation of the gene and the genotype theory is as much about controlling rhetoric as it is about shaping genetic theories. To illuminate the rhetorical work that Johannsen prescribed for the gene, I also examine Charles Darwin’s argument for his hypothesis of pangenesis. Darwin, in presenting his hypothesis, introduces his notion of “gemmules,” which in contrast to Johannsen’s genes are overtly hypothetical and rhetorical. As an instance of scientific rhetoric that emphasizes its own status as hypothetical and figures a conceptual unit as primarily rhetorical, Darwin’s pangenesis argument offers an illustrative point of contrast for seeing the rhetorical work of Johannsen’s gene. Chapter Four. Genes on Main Street This chapter takes its name from the title of an article published in Time in 1934. The article quotes Dr. Calvin Blackman Bridges as saying that genes would soon be “as easily located as the houses on Main Street.” Though geneticists’ perspectives on what a gene actually was (and perspectives on whether what a gene actually was even mattered) varied considerably, American popular-press articles of the 1930s and 1940s indicate that the “gene” was becoming part of an everyday vocabulary, often serving as a name for a scientific object that was on the verge of becoming a material reality. This chapter provides a brief overview of pre-1950s geneticists’ views on genes and then analyzes the rhetorical work of “genes” in magazine texts. The analysis

12

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

focuses primarily on two magazine articles published during the cold war period. The articles contrast breakthroughs in American genetics research with reports of “propaganda” regarding Soviet science, Soviet agriculture, and T. D. Lysenko’s denunciation of the gene concept. The articles are brief and rely on the gene figured as a material fact to assert an antithesis between Western society, grounded in the ethos of scientific rationality (with genes as foundational elements), and communism, grounded instead in propaganda and unreliable rhetoric (with genes declared to be “figments” of capitalist imaginations). With an understanding of the uncertainty and controversy surrounding the material reality of genes within the scientific community at the time, popular press claims of genes on the verge of discovery and on the verge of visibility (with the assistance of electron micrographs) seem, at best, outlandishly oversimplified and, at worst, irresponsible science reporting. But the “genes” in the popular press are also doing the work that was originally prescribed for the figure of the gene. That is, they are functioning as material facts and asserting a boundary between genetic reality and problematic unreliable rhetoric. Emphasizing the rhetorical work of genes in a rhetorical context removed from a specialized scientific discourse community, the chapter suggests that although the meanings of the gene in popular discourse may be removed from the meanings of the gene in scientific discourse, the rhetorical work of the gene figure is consistent across popular and scientific contexts. Further, this chapter suggests that understanding the work of genes as rhetorical figures contributes to an understanding of the cultural work of genes as authoritative figures. Chapter Five. Genes, Figures, Things, Objects This chapter draws on theories of rhetorical figures in science, boundary objects in the social production of knowledge, and epistemic things in the history of science in order to theorize the gene as a rhetorical object. The theoretical perspectives from rhetoric studies, social studies of science, and the history of science help to illuminate the knowledge-making significance of the gene as a figure within “social ecologies of knowledge” and provide a framework for examining the rhetorical work of a scientific object as it moves across texts and contexts. The chapter includes a reading of the rhetorical function of “genes” within James Watson and Francis Crick’s famous papers identifying the molecular structure of DNA. These papers are landmark texts in the midcentury transformation of the gene as a scientific object. By calling attention to the rhetorical work of the “gene” in such landmark texts, the analysis shows the inseparability of the rhetorical and epistemic functions of genes. With the previous chapters focusing on figurings of the gene and in preparation for examining the figurative work of genes in the chapters that

INTRODUCTION

13

follow, this chapter addresses the difficulty of answering the question of what a literal gene really is. Though the discovery of the structure of DNA solved many questions about how genes work to reproduce themselves, it also opened up many more questions about the nature and function of genes. Today, specific definitions of genes depend on disciplinary and discursive contexts. In other words, there is no singular definition of the “gene” that stands still as a literal counterpart to the figurative genes of popular culture. As an alternative to looking for a literal gene, and rather than trusting that literal genes exist elsewhere, I turn to theories of “boundary objects” and “epistemic things” which provide a handle for accounting for the extraordinary power of genes as both scientific things and rhetorical things. Chapter Six. Figuratively Speaking: Genes, Sexuality, and the Authority of Science This chapter examines examples of “gay genes” in the popular press and peerreviewed scientific texts from the 1990s. In the chapter, I bracket questions of the reality or scientific legitimacy of these popular and politically contentious genes. Instead I examine how the genes, or rather the “genes” (as they are most commonly introduced with scare quotes), are figured within the texts and how they in turn work to figure the authority of scientific and deterministic discourse. I pay close attention in this chapter to boundaries of literalism and figurative play. That is, I examine how such boundaries are assumed and asserted, how the boundaries figure “genes,” and, just as important, how genes work in the text to figure the boundaries. The bracketing of the question of the legitimacy and/or reality of particular genes is important to the work of this chapter. For, to evaluate these genes on whether or not they are real or stand up to scientific standards is to miss the persuasive rhetorical and cultural work that they do. And, again, the work that they do in straddling a boundary of literal and figurative discourse resonates with the rhetorical work that the gene was originally designed to do. Chapter Six. Genome: The Secret of How Tropes Work in the Life Sciences This chapter analyzes a museum exhibit, “Genome: The Secret of How Life Works,” that has been traveling to cities in the United States since 2003. The exhibit is a celebration of the science of genetics. It stages basic lessons of biology and genetics in an interactive atmosphere in which visitors are invited to engage with material forms of the metaphors and figures of the genome (e.g., the “book of life,” the cell as a manufacturing center, the “secret” of life). By inviting visitors to play with the figures, the exhibit offers a kind of training in the importance of stylistic devices in science. But it also imposes guidelines and displays the limits of rhetorical play. Analyzing the

14

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

figurative play and the boundaries of figurative play, this chapter extends the discussion of genes and the rhetorical work of genes in maintaining rhetorical boundaries. The exhibition is actually divided into two parts: one that showcases metaphors and figurative play and one that showcases the benefits of genetic engineering and the promise of genomic research for medicine and pharmaceutical development. These two parts occupy two separate spaces that are joined by a passageway labeled “Living on the Frontier.” In passing from the figurative play room to the “frontier,” visitors leave behind the playful metaphors and stylistic devices and enter a zone of literalism where scientific realism is asserted both implicitly and explicitly. I conclude the book at the constructed boundary of the genomic frontier. This constructed boundary, separating two parts of an exhibition on the genome, one part openly figurative the other appealing to literalism, offers a figure for the study of the rhetoric of science. That is, to address the authoritative claims of rhetoric in science and rhetoric about science, it is not enough to identify and analyze figurative devices; we also need to stay tuned to the boundary asserted between, on the one side, the figurative and the rhetorical and, on the other side, the literal and the real.

2

Genetic Origin Stories

IN HIS 1995 popular defense of a “Darwinian view of life,” Richard Dawkins presents the logic of natural selection with the vivid image of a river of genes. It is a river, Dawkins explains, that flows not through space but through time, linking us to “an unbroken line of successful ancestors” (2). In this river-ofgenes view of life and evolution, each generation (of humans, of animals, or of plants) is a sieve that allows the good genes, but not the bad genes, to pass through. The genes, for the most part, remain unchanged from generation to generation. Though the specific course is not fully predictable, the flow of genes is inevitable. The river of genes, or as Dawkins titles it the River Out of Eden, is a compelling origin narrative, a grand history of life that exploits a common sense of genes as material, as inevitable, and as the ultimate driving force of life. In this sense, genes are stubbornly ahistorical. Genes simply are and always have been. When genes are figured as undeniably real and undeniably material they can work beautifully in origin narratives. They work beautifully in human histories, like Dawkins’, as well is in histories of science. The genes can simply flow through time with histories unfolding around them. Genes, in this sense, are not subject to the influence of history; history is subject to the influence of genes. But this sense of genes as being so undeniably real that they can stand outside the influence of story telling, outside the influence of rhetoric, outside the influence of history actually has its own historical origin. Or at least its own rhetorical origin. The original configuring of the gene as a claim on the real is the subject of the next chapter. This chapter addresses the problem of situating the figuring of the gene in a historical context. I call this a problem of historical context, in part, because situating a rhetorical event is rather tricky when the rhetorical consequences of the event include a certain resistance to history. But I also call it a problem with reference to the enduring entanglement of history and rhetoric: accounts of the past and arguments from the past are so hopelessly entwined with one another that setting one

15

16

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

against the other, as if they could ever be separate enough for that, is always somewhat problematic. The entanglement of history and rhetoric is particularly gnarly within and around the original argument for and configuration of the gene. Wilhelm Johannsen’s powerful argument for the reality of the gene rests on both an elaborately constructed case for the control of rhetoric and on claims to a conceptual foundation that is suggestive of a particular version of the history of genetics. As we will see throughout the next chapter, the foundation that Johannsen appealed to for his claims that the gene is in fact a real thing, even though its particulars were not yet known, is Mendelism. For example, in his 1910 address to the American Society of Naturalists, he explains: “As to the nature of the ‘genes’ it is as yet of no value to propose any hypothesis; but that the notion ‘gene’ covers a reality is evident from Mendelism” (132–3). This appeal to Mendelism is sustained throughout the address. Johannsen is not making an explicit historical argument nor is he asserting a direct lineage from Gregor Mendel’s then forty-year old (and now legendary) experiments to his own proposed concept for the gene. Rather, he is citing the increasingly accepted foundation of “Mendelism” as support for both his theory and his proposed vocabulary. Still, it is tempting, when we read Johannsen’s address a century later, to see it as a window onto its own past, and to interpret the appeal to Mendelism as evidence of a fairly straightforward history of concepts that begins with the work of Mendel. Though Johannsen does not explicitly assert a historical narrative, when we look back at his text, it does seem to confirm one of the most commonly told origin narratives for the field of genetics. That is, it confirms the story, often told in textbooks and popular accounts, that goes something like this: In the 1860s Mendel, an Augustinian monk, was toiling away all alone in his monastery garden, pursuing the mysteries of heredity, when he discovered the principles of genetics. And though he did publish his results, it took almost forty years before the scientific community would appreciate Mendel’s work. In 1900, when Mendel’s work was “rediscovered,” the field of genetics was born. The telling of this origin narrative often gets rather creative around the issue of genes, especially around the relationship between what Mendel did and what genes are. In their 1997 textbook, Introduction to Genetic Analysis, Anthony J. F. Griffiths et al. introduce the study of genetics and provide a terrific example of a creative version of the familiar origin narrative: First we need to define what genetics is. . . . Genetics as a set of principles and analytical procedures did not begin until the 1860s when an Augustinian monk named Gregor Mendel performed a set of experiments that pointed to the existence of biological elements called genes. The word “genetics” comes from “genes,” and genes provide the focus for this subject.

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

17

Whether geneticists study at the molecular, cellular, organismal, family, population, or evolutionary level, genes are always central in their studies. Simply stated, genetics is about genes. (3)

Note that, just as in Dawkins’ account of the origins of life, in this account of the origins of genetics, genes are the fundamental elements of the story. And they are oddly ahistorical. If we read the above passage quickly enough we might be able to walk away with the impression that Mendel discovered genes. But it doesn’t actually say that. In the nuanced language of the passage, Mendel’s experiments are pointing to the existence of genes. Then, genes are transformed into the foundational elements of the study of genetics, by virtue of the word “gene” being the origin, or root, of the word “genetics.” The Oxford English Dictionary, though, cites the first use of the word “genetics”—in the sense of “the scientific study of heredity and variation” as occurring in 1905, four years before Johannsen introduced his term “gene.” Further, the word “genetic” was in circulation since at least 1831, defined primarily as “pertaining to, or having reference to origin.” The Oxford English Dictionary could be an authoritative stick useful for tripping any scientist who attempts to ground an origin narrative in an illegitimate etymological lineage. Or, it could simply provide an inertial frame for noticing genetic origin narratives and the place of genes in those narratives. The rather innocent etymological switch illuminates the metonymic function of genes—grounding abstract concepts in the “existence of biological elements”—and calls attention to the close interdependence (and sometimes confusion) of the narrative force of a history of genetics and the rhetorical work of genes. Actually, the scientist who named the field “genetics” is also the one who is most responsible for laying the ground for conflating the history of the gene with the history of Mendelism. William Bateson proposed the name genetics at a conference that he had organized around the theme of Mendelism. By the time of the conference, Bateson had been promoting the importance of Mendel’s work for several years. In part, he was captivated by the explanatory power of Mendel’s work. But Mendel’s work also gave Bateson a much-needed lever in what had become a rather contentious debate with the biometricians, a group of British scientists who embraced Darwinism as their foundation. Bateson was opposed to both the methods of the biometricians and the stronghold of Darwinism in the study of heredity. In what follows, I present a brief account of Mendel’s experiments. I focus specifically on the relationship between Mendel’s published account of his experiments and the twentieth-century developments of Mendelism and the gene. Next, I turn to the work that William Bateson did, while embroiled in scientific debate and institutional struggles, to install Mendel as the founding father of genetics. Finally, I end the chapter with a description of the conference,

18

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

dedicated to the theme of Mendelism, where the field of genetics acquired its name and its historically grounded identity. At that conference, presenting research that simultaneously supports Mendelism and carries on Bateson’s argument against the biometricians, is the namer of the gene, Wilhelm Johannsen. MENDEL’S EXPERIMENTS

In his experiments, Mendel focused on what he called differentiating characteristics. What he observed of differentiating characteristics can now be explained in terms of genes. But he did not present his results as if he had discovered differentiating characteristics. Rather, the differentiating characteristics were an integral part of his method. By observing the characteristics and tracking them through generations, he was able to make claims about patterns of heredity, the genetic stability of hybrids, and the possibilities about the transformation and change of a plant’s species. Mendel worked with populations of pea plants, which he initially sorted and segregated by pairs of differentiating characteristics. These characteristics were observable physical traits, such as flower color and seed shape, which had clear and distinct differences. That is, the flowers were either violet or white. The seeds were either smooth or wrinkled. The differentiating characteristics did not differ by matters of degree; they were not, as Mendel put it, differences of “more or less.” Rather, in order to be useful for the purposes of the experiments, the characteristics needed to be clearly differentiated; they needed to be either one form or another. The experiments consisted of crossbreeding the plants of differentiating characteristics with one another. Violet-flower plants were crossed with whiteflower plants. Smooth-seed plants were crossed with wrinkled-seed plants. What Mendel found was that the pairs of differentiated characteristics each followed a rule of dominance. In the offspring plants, one form occurred more frequently than the other. Violet flowers dominated over white; smooth seeds dominated over wrinkled. And, always with a ratio of about three to one.1 In hindsight, Mendel’s rule of dominance can be explained in terms of genes. Each plant has two genes—one from each parent plant—that together determine flower color. The gene for violet flowers is dominant and the gene for white flowers is recessive. That means that if a plant has inherited one of each, a violet-flower gene and a white-flower gene, the plant’s flowers will be violet. But Mendel did not describe his observations of the rule of dominance in terms of genes. Nor did he speculate about the internal mechanisms that could help account for the patterns of observable characteristics. In his paper, he carefully details the rules according to which the differentiating characteristics appeared in successive generations. The rules are consistent with what we now know as the logic of genes. Yet, Mendel’s notations and terminology do not allow for a distinction between observable traits (violet flow-

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

19

ers) and inherited factors (genes for violet flowers). Mendel’s analysis and discussion stay, quite literally, on the observable surface of the plants. The patterns are suggestive, especially in hindsight, that there may be something “beneath the surface” that could explain them. But Mendel does not attempt to address what may be beneath the surface; he focuses on the patterns and the consistencies, or rules, of the patterns. As Mendel explains it in his published results, “The object of the experiment was to observe these variations in the case of each pair of differentiating characters, and to deduce the law according to which they appear in the successive generations” (11). The twentieth-century terms for distinguishing between observable traits and inherited factors are phenotype and genotype. As we will see in the next chapter, it is Wilhelm Johannsen who established the phenotype–genotype distinction. He defines phenotype as “All ‘types’ of organisms, distinguishable by direct inspection or only by finer methods of measuring description, may be characterized as ‘phenotypes’” (134). The genotype, then, is the complement to the phenotype and is, as Johannsen puts it, “the sum total of all the “genes” in a gamete or in a zygote” (132–133). Mendel’s descriptions of the pea plants are all phenotypic: flower color, height, seed shape, and so on. Any genotypic explanation of Mendel’s experiments is a matter of projecting twentieth-century terms and concepts back onto the earlier work. Mendel’s published acount of his experiments is rather dense and complicated. It is tempting to read it as an elaborate work-around of a missing vocabulary. That is, it is tempting to say that because he does not have the terms that allow him to differentiate between the phenotype and the genotype, his explanation of the patterns of heredity is much more complicated than it could be. But historian Robert Olby shows that even such a reading, redescribing Mendel’s work in the vocabulary of the twentieth century, is grounded more in the myth of Mendel as foundational figure than in the actual project and conclusions of Mendel. “Mendel did not have a conception of pairs of factors or elements determining his pairs of contrasted characters” (67). In fact, Mendel expressed no concern for determining factors, causal agents, or mechanisms of heredity. “Mendel’s overriding concern was with the role of hybrids in the genesis of new species. Are hybrids variable or constant?—for if constant they might mark the first stage in the genesis of new species” (67). Thus, as Olby shows, if we hold Mendel up to the test of articulating a twentieth-century conception of Mendelism, based on his published paper, it appears that he missed some of the central tenets of Mendelism. In An Introduction to the Historiography of Science, Helge Kragh suggests that to fully appreciate the origins of the field of genetics and Mendel’s contributions, we need to recognize two Mendels—Mendel of the twentieth century and Mendel of his own time (106–107).2 The twentieth-century Mendel (or the Mendel viewed anachronically) provides valuable insights into the history of the principles of genes (106–107). The nineteenth-century Mendel

20

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

(the Mendel viewed diachronically), however, presents valuable insights into the history of plant breeding, hybridization experiments, and the study of the stability of species. In describing Mendel’s contribution in a diachronical context, Kragh identifies it as a “rather orthodox contribution to the plant improvement tradition in botanical research” (106). We can see Mendel’s rather conventional approach to contributing to a scientific conversation in his publication “Experiments in Plant Hybridisation.” In the paper, Mendel articulates the significance of his experimental work by situating it amid nineteenth-century research on plant fertilization, hybridization, and the transformation of plant species. The research that Mendel references is primarily the work of botanists who had also experimented with large numbers of plants and had addressed questions of species stability, transformation (or evolution) of forms, hybridization, and the recurrence of forms generations after they seemed to have “disappeared.”3 The significance of Mendel’s work in the context of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century practices of experimental plant breeding is addressed by L. C. Dunn in A Short History of Genetics. Dunn argues that the experimental botanists, in pursuing questions concerning the nature of species in plants, the variation of forms in hybrids and sequential generations of hybrids, and the extent to which hybrid plant offspring could revert to the forms of the parent generation in later generations, were building a broad understanding of the phenomena that Mendel characterized. Several botanists had observed patterns of dominant forms and recessive forms and the “recovery” of forms from earlier generations. What set Mendel’s work apart, according to Dunn, was the “precise framing of questions,” the “systematic interpretation” of results, and the emphasis on rules and ratios (27–33). While Mendel’s precision, systematic approach, and emphasis on rules may have distinguished him from other experimental botanists of his day, what really sets Mendel apart as a historical figure are the historical narratives that were formed in the first decade of the 1900s. Or, in Kragh’s terms, viewing Mendel diachronically we can find evidence that Mendel did indeed make a valuable contribution to the study of heredity. But understanding that contribution does not lead to a strong understanding of the importance of the figure of Mendel in the rise of genetics in the twentieth century. The emergence of Mendelism was central to the development of twentieth-century genetics. But Mendelism did not spring forth, fully formed, from Mendel’s experiments nor from Mendel’s texts. THE MAKING OF AN ICON

In March 1900, Hugo de Vries, a professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam, published a paper citing the work of Gregor Mendel. De Vries

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

21

had been experimenting with maize and peas and had observed a segregation of characters in the offspring of hybrids. His recognition of the importance of the patterns of segregation led him to conduct a literature review which in turn led him to the earlier work of Mendel. According to Dunn, the publication of de Vries’s research encouraged the publication of similar research, confirming similar patterns of segregation, by two other experimental botanists: Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak-Seysenegg (3–5). The reported findings of de Vries, Correns, and Tschermak, though they had conducted their studies independently, confirmed one another and verified the findings that Mendel had reported in 1866. The convergence of these three papers is often referred to as the rediscovery of Mendel’s principles. But they did not make Mendel into an instant historical icon. It was William Bateson, who also worked closely with breeding and hybrid studies, who promoted Mendel as a foundational and iconic figure. Bateson had received a copy of Mendel’s paper from de Vries and was apparently immediately moved by it and worked to promote the significance of its findings to the scientific community. Dunn cites Beatrice Bateson’s memoir of her husband and her account of Bateson reading Mendel’s paper while traveling to London, in the spring of 1900, to deliver his paper “Problems of Heredity as a Subject for Horticultural Investigation” to the Royal Horticultural Society: On his way to town to deliver it he read Mendel’s actual paper on peas for the first time. As a lecturer he was always cautious, suggesting rather than affirming his own convictions. So ready was he however for the simple Mendelian law that he at once incorporated it into his lecture. (Dunn 63)

Dunn extends this narrative, writing “From that day on, Bateson devoted all his enthusiasm and literary gifts, which were considerable, to promulgating what he soon came to call ‘Mendelism’” (64). Bateson arranged to have the paper translated and published in The Journal of the Royal Horticulture Society that year. Two years later, Bateson published a book-length defense of Mendel’s principles, explaining the significance of the findings to the experimental study of heredity and including a translation of Mendel’s original paper. The title of the work—Mendel’s Principles of Heredity: A Defense—marks the primary transformation from Mendel’s experiments with plant breeding and differentiating characteristics to an originary text on the principles of heredity. Bateson opens the preface of the book with a powerful narrative of Mendel as a foundational figure: In the Study of Evolution progress had well-nigh stopped. The more vigorous, perhaps also the more prudent, had left this field of science to labour in others where the harvest is less precarious or the yield more immediate. Of

22

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE those who remained some still struggled to push toward truth through the jungle of phenomena: most were content supinely to rest on the great clearing Darwin made long since. Such was our state when two years ago it was suddenly discovered that an unknown man, Gregor Johann Mendel, had, alone, and unheeded, broken off from the rest—in the moment that Darwin was at work—and cut a way through. (v)

Here we can see the early roots of the story of Mendel working all alone in his monastery garden, committed to pursuing the principles of heredity. Bateson has effectively plucked Mendel from the scientific context in which he worked, and for which he articulated his contribution, and figured him as courageously breaking away from the soporific herd, boldly going it alone on the quest for the truth. Bateson continues, with cues—of the sort that are familiar in ghost stories and fairy tales—that he is consciously engaging in myth making: This is no mere metaphor, it is simple fact. Each of us who now looks at his own patch of work sees Mendel’s clue running through it: whither that clue will lend, we dare not yet surmise. It was a moment of rejoicing, and they who had heard the news hastened to spread them and take the instant way. In this work I am proud to have borne my little part. (v–vi)

This is rather dramatic writing, even for a committed scientist who has been profoundly moved by the explanatory power of some newly uncovered research from the previous century. As the “defense” of the title indicates, some context is needed to appreciate the motivation for both Bateson’s commitment to promoting Mendel’s work and his incentive to create such a powerful origin narrative, installing Mendel as the historic figure whose rediscovery could invigorate what Bateson had cast as an otherwise stagnant field of inquiry. Mendelism Versus Darwinism The “defense” of the title refers to Bateson’s point-by-point response to a critique of the significance of Mendel’s work published by Raphael Weldon in the first issue of the journal Biometrika. Neither Weldon nor his critique was new or surprising to Bateson. In fact, Weldon and Bateson had been embroiled in such intense theoretical and personal conflict that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine who was on the offense and who was on the defense. It is also difficult to tell, especially in textually framed hindsight, whether the fuel of the conflict was primarily theoretical, primarily personal, or as MacKensie and Barnes have suggested, primarily ideological. But the conflict was certainly heated and it expanded to become much more than a

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

23

debate between two individual researchers. The conflict, often referred to as the biometric-Mendelian controversy, has been a primary focus of several historical and sociological studies of science.4 Weldon and Bateson had known each other for at least twenty years before the height of their conflict over the significance of Mendel’s work. According to Lyndsay Farrall, Weldon had been Bateson’s junior teacher at St. John’s College, Cambridge, where they both had studied biology. And, as Farrall puts it, the two “began their professional careers accepting the paradigm of post-Darwinian evolutionary morphology to which they had been introduced by their teachers” (Farrall 273–274). As Farrall’s account suggests, the conflict over the significance of Mendel was also a conflict over the centrality of Darwinism. Just as a discussion of Mendelism calls for a review of Mendel and his work, a discussion of Darwinism deserves a review of Darwin. Charles Darwin is celebrated and remembered most for his theory of natural selection, which he articulated in The Origin of Species in 1859, six years before Mendel first presented his paper. In contrast to the work of Mendel and the other experimental botanists of the 1800s, Darwin’s outline of natural selection is a macroanalysis of the transformation of species. That is, his focus is primarily on the major changes of species in their natural environments and the survival of some forms of life over others. But Darwin was also concerned with the comparatively microanalytic questions of the experimental botanists. In fact, he begins The Origin of Species with a chapter on variation of species under domestication. The studies of “domesticated animals and cultivated plants” provide the necessary foundation, Darwin tells us, for examining the transformations of species. In the introduction, Darwin refers to The Origin of Species as an “abstract,” explaining that he was setting out to present a general sketch of his conclusions about the transformation of species. He announces that he does not include “references and authorities for my several statements” but promises future publication of “all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded” (3–4). In 1868, Darwin published The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, a two-volume compilation of observations regarding variations within particular species and patterns of inheritance, articulations of laws of inheritance, and methods of manipulating heredity. Though he mentions, in a footnote, that the volumes offer the promised supporting evidence for natural selection, he also positions his work as a contribution to the ongoing questions of stability of and changes within species. In other words, he positions himself in the same research context that Mendel does. At the end of the book, Darwin proposes his hypothesis of “pangenesis,” which he offers as a preliminary attempt to build a theory that would explain the biological mechanisms of heredity. The tradition of Darwinism, as expressed in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century life science studies, focused on Darwin’s theory of natural

24

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

selection and not his studies of animals and plants under domestication. When Weldon and his colleague Karl Pearson established biometrics as a distinct field of study, devoted to the development of the statistical methods for analyzing evolution and questions of variation within species, they claimed a direct historical lineage to Darwin. As Weldon wrote in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, “The questions raised by the Darwinian hypothesis are purely statistical, and the statistical method is the only one at present obvious by which that hypothesis can be currently checked” (1894–1895: 381). The Darwinian hypothesis here is not the hypothesis of pangenesis. Weldon is not referring to Darwin’s attempt to build theory of the biological mechanisms of heredity, but to his theory of natural selection. Weldon is not simply referring back to the work of Darwin; he is establishing a very particular historical lineage. While Weldon was developing his studies of the statistical analysis of evolutionary change, Bateson was busy developing his own commitment to the study of discontinous variation. In 1883 and 1884, Bateson had spent summers researching in Virginia with Professor W. K. Brooks of Johns Hopkins University. Through his work with Brooks, Bateson became convinced of the importance of discontinuous variation and experimental hybridization to the study of heredity (Dunn 62). The focus on discontinuous variation is a focus, much like Mendel’s, on differentiated characteristics. In other words, Bateson was convinced by studies that examined variations that were defined not along a continuum but rather as distinct points of difference that could be tracked from one generation to the next. Bateson continued to develop an experimental focus and to examine the significance of discontinuous variation. In 1894, he published Materials for the Study of Variation: treated with especial regard to discontinuity in the origin of the species. In it, he compiled research studies of a broad range of individual species and, as the subtitle suggests, made the case for the importance of studying discontinuous variation. Dunn characterizes Bateson’s Materials for the Study of Variation as “a bold and original attack on that part of the theory of natural selection which assumed that it operated primarily on small continuous variations” (58). Dunn also characterizes Bateson’s commitment to discontinuous variation as the source of his conflict with Weldon (63). Elof Axel Carlson also identifies Bateson’s commitment to discontinuous variation as the source of conflict, but he goes a little further in describing Bateson as a brash and outspoken maverick whose “militant attitude against Darwin’s interpretation of variation made his superiors hesitate; it antagonized those who would have been his friends” (11). In Carlson’s account, Weldon is the established insider to Bateson’s unorthodox and challenging ways. In describing one of their most heated debates, Carlson explains, “Bateson was never one to decline a debate. However, Weldon was his benefactor and his senior. Bateson was now forty years old; he had not yet received a teaching position with Cambridge University. . . .

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

25

He was, in effect, a postgraduate on fellowship for almost twenty years” (11). But in Farrall’s account, Bateson is characterized as the more powerful one. Within the Royal Society, Bateson successfully casts Weldon’s commitment to statistical methods as unorthodox and inappropriate for the study of variation. In fact, the study of biometrics was eventually so effectively censured within the Royal Society that Weldon and Pearson found it necessary to strike out on their own and establish their own journal Biometrika (Farrall 287–289). In the first issue of Biometrika, Weldon, Pearson, and a third editor, C. B. Davenport, define the purpose of the journal as: to serve as a means not only of collecting under one title data of a kind not systematically collected or published in any other periodical, but also of spreading a knowledge of such statistical theory as may be requisite for their scientific treatment. (1)

The opening editorial “The Scope of Biometrika” continues by asserting the primacy of Darwin and his theory of natural selection. The starting point of Darwin’s theory of evolution is precisely the existence of those differences between individual members of a race or species which morphologists for the most part rightly neglect. The first condition necessary, in order that any process of Natural Selection may begin among a race, or species, is the existence of differences among its members; and the fist step in an enquiry into the possible effect of a selective process upon any character of a race must be an estimate of the frequency with which individuals, exhibiting any given degree of abnormality with respect to that character, occur. (1)

The foundational role for Darwin is affirmed on the inside front cover of the journal where a picture of a saint-like statue of Darwin appears. It is in this first issue of Biometrika that Weldon publishes the critique of Mendel that I mentioned earlier as the prompt for Bateson’s defense. In his critique, he advocates his own view of the effect of ancestral populations on heredity: Now it is well known to all breeders, and it is clearly shown in a number of cases by Galton and Pearson, that the condition of an animal does not as a rule depend upon the conditions of any one pair of ancestors alone, but in varying degrees upon the condition of all its ancestors in every past generation, the condition in each of the half dozen nearest generations having a quite sensible effect. (229)

This view of ancestral heredity is, as we will see in the following chapter, a view that, seven years later, Johannsen pounces on as an example of a flawed use of metaphors in the study of heredity, thus making a case for the purification of language and terminology in the genotype conception of heredity.

26

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

To sum up, the establishment of biometrics as a distinct discipline with its own journal was at least in part instigated by William Bateson’s agitation in the Royal Society. The inaugural issue of Biometrika reveals the fusion of a commitment to Darwinism, a rejection of Mendelism, and a promotion of statistical methods in the study of heredity in populations. Bateson’s defense of Mendelism stands in antithesis with its rejection of Darwinism and its own integration of scientific method and historical narrative. The First Conference on Genetics Four years after the publication of his defense of Mendel’s principles, in the summer of 1906, Bateson rearticulated his heroic story of Mendel. This time the context was less antagonistic and his rhetorical style was decidedly genteel. He was delivering an inaugural address to the Third Conference on Hibridisation and Plant-Breeding. The conference was hosted by the Royal Horticultural Society and organized by and presided over by Bateson. The opening remarks at the conference by the chairman Sir John Llewelyn, the society president Sir Trevor Lawrence, and Bateson as conference president all emphasize the shared goal of celebrating and promoting an alliance between practice and science. Practice here is the activity of plant breeding and the work of horticulturalists and science is primarily associated with Mendelism, along with the activity of working with “those mysterious symbols written on the blackboard” (55–59). Bateson opens his inaugural address by looking back on the first conference of hybridization and plant breeding: “The predominant note of our deliberations in 1899 was mystery. In 1906 we speak less of mystery than of order” (91). Not surprisingly, what allows for the move from mystery to order, Bateson tells us, is the rediscovery of Mendel. First he characterizes the mystery: When formerly we looked at a series of plants produced by hybridization we perceived little but bewildering complexity. We knew well enough that behind that complexity order and system were concealed. Glimpses indeed of pervading order were from time to time obtained, but they were transient and uncertain. As casual prospectors we picked up occasional stray nuggets in the sand, but we had not located the reef, nor had we any machinery for working it if discovered. (91)

We might recall that during the time that he is characterizing as the great dark mystery before the light, Bateson was busy promoting the importance of continuous variation and arguing against the biometricians in the Royal Society. But he is not here in the business of self-promotion as much as he is in the business of Mendel promotion. Thus, Bateson moves on to cast Mendel as the great beacon of hope:

GENETIC ORIGIN STORIES

27

Then came the revelation of Mendel’s clue, with all the manifold advances in knowledge to which it has led. The most Protean assemblage of hybrid derivatives no longer menaces us as a hopeless enigma. We are sure that even the multitudinous shapes of the cucurbits, or the polychromatic hues of orchids—would yield to our analysis. Methods for grappling even with these higher problems have been devised. The immediate difficulties are chiefly of extension and application. Thus the study of hybridization and plant-breeding, from being a speculative pastime to be pursued without apparatus or technical equipment in the hope that something would turn up, has become a developed science, destined, as we believe, not merely to add new regions to man’s knowledge and power, but also to absorb and modify profoundly large tracts of the older sciences. (91, emphasis mine)

Mendel here is figured as the one who allowed plant breeding and the study of hybrids to become a science. First there was groping in the mysterious dark. Then Mendel’s experiments were rediscovered. And the dark became light. After making a case that the pursuit of order through the study of hybridization and plant breeding is indeed a science, and a very promising science at that, Bateson proposes naming this new science: the science itself is still nameless, and we can only describe our pursuit by cumbrous and often misleading periphrasis. To meet this difficulty I suggest for the consideration of this Congress the term Genetics, which sufficiently indicates that our labours are devoted to the elucidation of the phenomena of heredity and variation; in other words, to the physiology of Descent, with implied bearing on the theoretical problems of the evolutionist and the systematist, and application to the practical problems of animals or plants. After more or less undirected wanderings we have thus a definite aim in view. (91)

When the conference proceedings were published, they were published not as a report on the third conference on hybridization and plant breeding but as The Report of the Conference on Genetics and Allied Sciences. In a gesture mirroring the biometricians’ journal, a portrait of Mendel graces the inside front cover and the proceedings include an explanation of Mendel’s work. The papers published in the proceedings affirm the applicability of Mendel’s laws and the importance of the ongoing pursuit of Mendelian research. The first paper in the proceedings, though it was not the first to be presented at the conference, is a paper by Wilhelm Johannsen. The paper “Does Hybridisation Increase Fluctuating Variability?” is framed as a defense of Mendelism and a rejection of the biometrical approach, which Johannsen casts as “dangerous and uncertain” (98). Though Bateson had not mentioned the biometricians in his opening address, Johannsen here carries on the tradition of promoting Mendel in conjunction with denouncing the biometricians.

28

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE CONCLUSION

Johannsen’s rhetorical strategies in the naming of the gene are the subject of the next chapter. His participation in the “First Conference on Genetics” and his paper defending Mendelism while rejecting biometrics help to identify his theoretical and institutional allegiances. Further study of Johannsen’s papers might aid us in assessing the extent to which Johannsen was influenced by Bateson, by Bateson’s history telling, and by Bateson’s commitment to making genetics into an authoritative field of study distinct from the biometricians and their commitment to Darwin. But, in preparation for the chapters that follow, my aim here is not to establish or assert lines of causality and lines of influences that may have shaped Johannsen’s theoretical and rhetorical commitments. Rather, my purpose is to suggest strategies for reading Johannsen’s text as participating in the telling and retelling of an origin narrative of genetics. The texts of Bateson and his scientific adversary Weldon offer more than a sense of historical context for examining the writings of Johannsen. They also serve as rhetorical models that highlight the importance of history in the formation of scientific disciplines. Bateson and Weldon were powerful influences in the history of genetics. That is, both influenced the course of research that would follow them and both shaped the stories that would be told about the origins of that research. Those stories are reflected in Johannsen’s text as is the technique of history-making rhetoric. The text in which Johannsen makes an extended case for the gene confirms the story of Mendel as the foundational figure of genetics and presumes a broad acceptance of Mendelism as real and true. Johannsen’s text also calls upon the biometricians as a powerful antithesis of the real and true approach to genetics. Bateson’s insistence on this same story line should serve as a guide for preparing us to read Johannsen’s naming of the gene not only as part of the history of science but also as participating in the writing of the history of genetics. In Johannsen’s account, the reality of the gene is established by Mendel. Johannsen casts himself as simply providing a new name for that reality. This story line corroborates the origin narrative that Bateson established for the field of genetics and helps to establish the gene as material, real, inevitable, and ahistorical.

3

Prescribing Rhetorical Work: Genetic Theories, Gemmules, and Genes

Let me give you just one instance of Maude’s inhuman sagacity. Maude named the tools . . . Maude named the rasp. Think of it. What else could a rasp be but a rasp? Maude in her wisdom went right to the point, and called it rasp. . . . The tools came to Maude, tool by tool in a long respectful line, she gave them their names. The vise. The gimlet. The cold chisel. The reamer, the router, the gouge. The plumb bob. How could she have thought up the rough justice of these wonderful cognomens? Looking languidly at a pair of tin snips, and then deciding to call them tin snips—what a burst of glory! —Donald Barthelme, “The End of the Mechanical Age”

IN 1909, WILHELM JOHANNSEN introduced the name gen—translated into English as gene—in his Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre, a textbook detailing methods of genetic analysis and defining, with great precision, technical terminology. In 1910, in an address to the American Society of Naturalists, he made a case for the name gene, defining it by detailing the rhetorical work it was to do. In this chapter I examine Johannsen’s argument for the name. Though the gene would become an extraordinarily useful knowledgemaking tool, its initiation in language was more than a moment of sagacious recognition, more than going right to the point and assigning a new tool a new name. In the case of the gene, as with much technical and theoretical terminology, the name was the tool. And the justification for the new tool was also the prescription for its work. My focus in this chapter is on the rhetorical work that Johannsen prescribed for the gene and the “genotype conception” as he presented his new theoretical terminology to a community of scientists and made a case for their necessity. For an illustrative point of contrast, I also examine the rhetorical work that Charles Darwin outlined for his pangenesis theory and its components forty years prior to Johannsen’s publications. 29

30

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

An oft-cited passage from Johannsen’s textbook provides a preview—a preview both of the more detailed prescription that Johannsen presents in his 1910 address and a preview of what I mean by saying Johannsen prescribed rhetorical work. In the passage, Johannsen introduces the gene as an extraction from the then broadly circulating term “pangene,” which he suggests had become too crowded with distracting associations: Therefore it appears simplest to isolate the last syllable, ‘gene,’ which alone is of interest to us, from Darwin’s well known word, and thereby replace the lessdesirable, ambiguous word ‘disposition.’ Consequently, we will simply speak of ‘the gene’ and ‘the genes’ instead of ‘the pangene’ and ‘the pangenes.’ (Johannsen, Elemente 46)1

“Pangene” was not actually a word that Darwin used. It was, however, a name for a concept that had a lineage that could be traced back to Darwin’s writing. It was also part of the shared vocabulary of evolutionary and hereditary theorists of the late 1800s and early 1900s, including those who, as described in the previous chapter, disagreed about the centrality of Darwinian thought. Aligned with William Bateson, who worked to promote Mendelian principles and displace the primacy of Darwin, Johannsen offered his new term and an enduring form of geneaological reasoning: extricating both a syllable and a concept from an existing concept, he revised its conceptual lineage and redefined the conceptual contours. Elof Axel Carlson, in his The Gene: A Critical History, uses this genealogical reasoning to present the gene in the context of a history of concepts: Johannsen sought to replace the unit-character and the earlier particulate units of Spencer, Darwin, Nageli, Weismann, Roux, and de Vries. The closest unit to what he had in mind was the pangen of Darwin and de Vries. To avoid the historical connotations associated with this term, Johannsen offered an abbreviation. (20)

But Johannsen did not simply revise a concept; he also advocated the use of a specialized term over a nonspecialized—a “less desirable, ambiguous”— term. His approach to defining the new term is not simply a matter of revising and refining an existing conceptualization but also a matter of working the boundary between specialized and nonspecialized language. This boundary work becomes a central theme in his address to the American Society of Naturalists, which I turn to later in this chapter. In the brief textbook passage, the boundary work, together with the partial disassociation from existing conceptualizations, helps to clear a new rhetorical space for what Johannsen casts as an evident fact: The word “gene” is completely free from any hypotheses; it expresses only the evident fact that, in any case, many characteristics of the organism are

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

31

specified in the gametes by means of special conditions, foundations, and dispositions which are present in unique, separate, and thereby independent ways—in short, precisely what we wish to call genes. (Elemente 46)

While the epistemic status of the “gene” is clearly being amplified, the “evident fact” that is captured by the name is neither new nor controversial. That characteristics are specified in the gametes is commonplace among the range of researchers studying biology, evolution, and heredity at the time. That special conditions, foundations, and dispositions are involved in this process of specification is hardly new and certainly not challenging or antithetical to any theoretical commitment of the time. What is new here is the encapsulation of these ideas into a single word that is to function as an incontrovertible fact. The passage excerpted from the textbook provides a sense of the rhetorical work that Johannsen prescribed for the gene. The gene was to be linked to previous conceptualizations, but revised and reconfigured. It was to function in a separate sphere of discourse from its more common, everyday, and ambiguous cousin, the “disposition.” The gene was to remain free of hypothesis regarding its material definition and was to function rhetorically as a hard fact. A year after the publication of Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre, Johannsen prepared his speech for the American Society of Naturalists outlining his genotype conception of heredity. In it Johannsen carefully constructs an argument for his genotype conception and explicitly figures the gene. As in the textbook, he urges the separation of scientific and everyday language and advocates the importance of managing the precision of terminology. He works the edges of the “gene,” demarcating it from existing conceptions of hereditary units and maintaining the importance of a hypothesesfree status. In the speech, Johannsen makes a series of declarations about language, metaphors, uncertain knowledge, and reality. These declarations are interesting in themselves, especially as they endorse specific attitudes about rhetoric and science. But the declarations are also integral components of his argument for the genotype conception, an argument that, like the gene, is an argument about the control of language and rhetoric. Before examining Johannsen’s speech, I take a detour to Charles Darwin’s “Pangenesis” argument. Though, historically, Darwin’s theory preceded Johannsen’s, I am not examining it here as a predecessor of genes or gene theories, but rather as an instance of scientific rhetoric that, in emphasizing its status as a hypothetical explanation attempting to make intelligible a large class of facts, offers an illuminating point of contrast for seeing the rhetorical work of Johannsen’s gene. Forty years separate the publications of Darwin’s and Johannsen’s arguments. They are constructed in very different scientific

32

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

and rhetorical contexts and they occupy very different positions in relation to the commonly told origin narratives of the science of genetics. My intention here is not to connect or draw any new lines of causality between these two moments. Rather, I extract Darwin’s argument from its context to serve as a rhetorical device, a foil, for Johannsen’s argument. Whereas Darwin is accumulating and synthesizing, Johannsen is clearing and demarcating. Whereas Darwin’s hypothesizing affirms the authoritative status of constructed knowledge, Johannsen’s disavowal of hypotheses establishes an authoritative status for his own theory and for the gene. DARWIN’S RHETO RIC AS ANTITHESIS FO R THE GENE

In urging his readers to displace the term pangene, Johannsen links the inadequate term to the work of Charles Darwin. It was actually Hugo de Vries who brought the “pangene” into circulation in his Intracellulare Pangenesis (published in 1889, seven years after Darwin’s death). Darwin, though, had introduced the name “pangenesis” in 1868 as a label for his attempt to account for how organisms are reproduced in their entirety. As suggested by the Greek root pan, Darwin’s hypothesis holds that all units of the organism are involved in reproduction: “I venture to advance the hypothesis of Pangenesis, which implies that every separate part of the whole organization reproduces itself ” (350). It is the rhetorical venture of advancing a hypothesis, rather than the pangenes (which Darwin did not name), that provides the rhetorical antithesis for the gene. Darwin did articulate a concept of hereditary units, called gemmules, which he introduced as part of his “chief assumption” of pangenesis. In contrast with de Vries’ concept of a pangene, which is relatively close to a twentieth-century gene concept, Darwin’s gemmule has more in common with concepts articulated by Hippocrates and Aristotle than with twentieth-century gene concepts (Sturtevant 1–3). The gemmules are configured as tiny granules that are “thrown off from each separate part or unit” of an organism during every stage of development and gather in the germ cells at reproduction, to be passed on (complete with environmental changes) and grown into new parts. Viewed as precursors to genes, or viewed amid a conceptual history of hereditary units, the gemmules appear embarrassingly hokey. They are, after all, little granular reductions of all parts of an organism that accumulate in the right place at the right time to form a whole being. But viewed in the context of Darwin’s argument, the gemmules appear unabashedly, and purposefully, contrived. They are offered as overtly hypothetical figures. Darwin does not set out to defend the reality of his gemmules. Instead, he sets his gemmules up to defend the reality and urgency of established facts regarding variation and reproduction. Ironically, it is a dismissal of the scien-

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

33

tific and historical significance of pangenesis that points to the rhetorical significance of Darwin’s explanation. In her foreword to a 1998 edition of Darwin’s two-volume work on animal and plant variation, Harriet Ritvo writes: It has doubtless been fortunate for Darwin’s reputation that his theory of pangenesis is not as well remembered as his theory of evolution by natural selection. As vague in detail as it was ambitious and comprehensive in scope, it was unpersuasive at the time and has since been proven completely wrong. (8)

The hypothesis may have been unpersuasive in its particulars, but it is the vagueness of detail and the comprehensiveness of scope that is of interest here for examining Darwin’s explanation in relation to his own stated rhetorical goals. A comprehensiveness of scope is Darwin’s starting place, his proclaimed exigence for the articulation of pangenesis. He outlines his hypothesis in the penultimate chapter of The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication, the two-volume compilation of studies of variation, breeding, and heredity that I mentioned in chapter two. In the two volumes, Darwin weaves overviews of others’ work and his own observations, all addressing questions of variation and transformation in domesticated species, leading finally to a provisional hypothesis of pangenesis. He begins the pangenesis chapter by announcing the rhetorical task for his hypothesis, namely, to synthesize large groups of facts: In the previous chapters large classes of facts, such as those bearing on budvariation, the various forms of inheritance, the causes and laws of variation, have been discussed; and it is obvious that these subjects, as well as the several modes of reproduction, stand in some sort of relation to one another. I have been led, or rather forced, to form a view which to a certain extent connects these facts by a tangible method. (349)

It is unclear what the nature of the force is, perhaps, the seismic force of many facts accumulating in one place, or the momentous force of science itself, or the rhetorical force of approaching a conclusion. Regardless, with all forces aligned, the biological facts have been amassed and are now requiring a single explanation. Note here (in preparation for a contrast with Johannsen’s gene) that it is not the explanation but the need for the explanation, the exigence, that Darwin positions as emanating from the biological facts themselves. Still, despite the imperative bulk of the previous twenty-six chapters, Darwin sets out in the first part of the chapter to “enumerate as briefly as I can the groups of facts which seem to demand connection” (350). The enumeration of the explanation-demanding facts occupies over a third of the pangenesis chapter. It takes the form of a heavily footnoted bibliographic

34

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

essay, summarizing an extensive range of examples of reproduction, generation, and regrowth from individual species of plants and animals, published in books and journals such as The Annals and Magazine of Natural History, Annales des Sciences Nat. Zool., Nature, Euvres d’Hist Nat., Monthly Journal of Medical Science, and The American Naturalist. The examples are arranged to suggest similarities or series of fine gradations of differences across species and categorical lines, with subsections punctuated by such notes as “we may conclude that the several forms of budding, fissiparous generation, the repair of injuries, and development, are all essentially the results of one and the same power” (353) and “Sexual and asexual reproduction are thus seen not to differ essentially; and we have already shown that asexual reproduction, the power of re-growth and development are all parts of one and the same great law” (357). The bulk of examples continues to justify the need for an integrating theory, with the selection and arrangement continuing to define the contours of the exigence of the hypothesis to come.2 With the enumeration of facts completed, the hypothetical explanation is put forth to respond to the inexorable exigence that has been established: “I have now enumerated the chief facts which every one would desire to see connected by some intelligible bond. This can be done, if we make the following assumptions, and much may be advanced in favour of the chief one” (369). Note that the hypothesis takes the form of a set of assumptions. The description of the assumptions, including the “chief assumption” of the gemmules, is short in comparison to the enumeration of facts that forced its existence. It occupies less than a page. And, unlike the previous chapters and the previous section, which present observations, facts, laws, and principles in an objective tone (with the passive voice endorsing the authority of established knowledge), this set of assumptions forming the hypothesis relies heavily on the first-person pronoun and the hedging moves that convey knowledge-inthe-making:3 I assume that the units throw off minute granules which are dispersed throughout the whole system; that these, when supplied with proper nutriment, multiply by self-division, and are ultimately developed into units like those from which they were originally derived. These granules may be called gemmules. . . . Gemmules are supposed to be thrown off by every unit. . . . Lastly, I assume that the gemmules in their dormant state have a mutual affinity for each other. . . . These assumptions constitute the provisional hypothesis which I have called Pangenesis. (370)

Everything about the hypothesis is provisional and temporary. The firstperson pronoun keeps the assumptions close to the author’s point of view and, thus, farther from the realm of objective observations or objective claims. Also, the hypothesis is offered as an attempt to explain, something to think with; it is not something that is to immediately acquire the status of estab-

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

35

lished facts and principles. Further, Darwin reinforces the rhetorical-epistemic status of his hypothesis by making a case for the scientific value of speculation and hypothesis and by citing a theoretical prescription: I am aware that my view is merely a provisional hypothesis or speculation; but until a better one be advanced, it will serve to bring together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient cause. As Whewell, the historian of the inductive sciences, remarks:—“Hypotheses may often be of service to science, when they involve a certain portion of incompleteness, and even of error.” (349–350)

Darwin offers his explanation as provisional. He attends more to prescribing what the explanation needs to do than he does to defending the legitimacy or permanence of the explanation.4 He suggests that his explanation is intended to do some rhetorical work to hold some configurations of knowledge in place until something better comes along, or until somebody reconfigures his explanation. It is as if he is offering his hypothesis as a string figure in a game of cat’s cradle, to be handed off to others to be reconfigured and reimagined. I am borrowing the metaphor of cat’s cradle from Donna Haraway, who, in her article “A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies,” sets up the game of passing string figures as a model for theory making, or rather, for engaged knowledge making. In the game, “one person can build up a large repertoire of string figures on a single pair of hands; but the cat’s cradle figures can be passed back and forth on the hands of several players, who add new moves in the building of complex patterns” (69). As a trope for rhetoric and epistemology, cat’s cradle offers advantages over the agonistic tropes of war and argumentation, in which one theory, explanation, or paradigm wins and reigns supreme, dominating the field until its power is usurped by another explanation that overthrows it. Instead, “cat’s cradle invites a sense of collective work, of one person not being able to make all the patterns alone. One does not ‘win’ at cat’s cradle; the goal is much more interesting and open-ended than that” (70). Apparently, the theory of pangenesis did get passed around and reconfigured in the scientific community. As mentioned earlier, de Vries presented his own configuration of pangenesis in which he articulated a role for what he called pangenes. In 1892, hereditary theorist J. A. Thomson explained, “This hypothesis has been repeatedly modified, but, except in the general sense that the body may influence its reproductive cells, ‘pangenesis’ is discredited by most biologists.” Still, in 1909, Thomson continues to treat Darwin’s hypothesis seriously as “the best known theory of its class” and as an emphatically provisional hypothesis that still had all the “merits of a warrantable scientific hypothesis, and had the marks of the insight of genius” (406–407).

36

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

For Haraway, cat’s cradle string figures are more than powerful explanatory models, more than useful devices for standing back and examining rhetoric and epistemology. Cat’s cradle is a game for engaging in scholarship as refiguration; it is “a game for inquiring into all the oddly configured categories clumsily called things like science, gender, race, class, nation, or discipline” (69). While Darwin, in presenting his hypothesis as provisional and temporary, invites revision and refiguration, he may not be engaging in a Haraway game of reconfiguring categories of authoritative knowledge, techno-science power, gender, race, and class. But Darwin’s hypothesis is still worthy of Haraway’s serious gaming metaphor because it is both an example of offering an explanation while inviting refiguration and an example of explicating what kind of knowledge-making game it is intended for. But there is another reason why it is worth tying Darwin’s hypothesis with Haraway’s string figure game. Haraway’s game of cat’s cradle is intended to neutralize the “poison of metaphor-free facticity”; it is an antidote and an antithesis to the rhetoric of scientific realism, in which, as she puts it, “Expunging metaphoricity from the sacred realm of facticity depends on the conjuring trick of establishing the categorical purity of nature and society, nonhuman and human” (69). Darwin’s hypothesis may not be terribly potent as an antidote to the persuasive powers of the gene as a trope of realism, but it does serve as an important antithesis, valuable for illuminating the rhetorical work that was prescribed for the gene, work that is intricately tangled up in the purification of a very small, and very pervasive, realm of facticity. JOHANNSEN’S RHETO RICAL CLEARING

In contrast to Darwin’s hypothesis as provisional figuration, Johannsen presents his genotype theory and his gene concept as epistemic spaces clear of hypothetical speculations, decidedly not provisional, and certainly not openly figurative. His 1910 address to the American Society of Naturalists, “The Genotype Conception of Heredity,” is a well-crafted argument for his genetic research methodology, emphasizing the fundamental value of Mendelian methods, the importance of the paired concepts of phenotype and genotype, and the need for “genes.” He appeals to pragmatic values and the importance of experimental observation, complimenting American science (which has provided a “true home” for the “stringent analytic tendencies of modern genetics”), and staking out a clearing for scientific realism by exorcising formidable rhetorical foes, including figurative language, dialectical reasoning, fiction, pretending, and speculations taken as fact.

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

37

The Tropic Boundary of Genetic Reality Johannsen’s address begins with an assumed distinction between biology and “every-day language.” It is a distinction that allows for the identification of a problem of a tropic transfer, or movement of a term from one realm to another: Biology has evidently borrowed the terms “heredity” and “inheritance” from every-day language, in which the meaning of these words is the “transmission” of money, or things, rights or duties . . . from one person to another or to some others. . . . The view of natural inheritance as realized by an act of transmission, viz., the transmission of the parent’s (or ancestor’s) personal qualities to the progeny, is the most naïve and oldest conception of heredity (“Genotype” 129).

Here, the problem of conceptualizing biological inheritance in terms of the inheritance of property is the problem of using a trope without recognizing or acknowledging it as a trope. As if to prevent a trope from ossifying into an accepted representation of a biological reality, Johannsen emphasizes its status as a trope, casting the biological use of “heredity” as a catachresis (though he does not call it that) where the proper context is the everyday and the context to which the usage of the term is stretched, or moved, is the biological. Though he expresses concern over language hardening into truth, his point in this opening passage has less to do with preserving the vitality of a trope and more to do with establishing a context for real representations. With the focus on the tropic movement of terms from one context to another, the distinction between the two contexts appears fixed and real; biology becomes unquestionably removed from everyday language. With the separation of biology and everyday language fixed, the “transmission conception” becomes the label for the faulty collision of language and specialized knowledge. “Transmission” is the problem with the heredity trope; anybody who interprets everyday language literally, without recognizing the tropic boundary it has crossed when it is brought into the realm of biology, is guilty of the “transmission conception.” But the problem is not just that of a trope being used as if it were literal. The problem is also with the entailments of this particular trope. The trope places too much emphasis on the conception of heredity as transmission. Transmission is, for Johannsen, the flawed aspect of the catachresis of heredity; it is the “naïve” move of thinking of biological heredity as if it were a matter of transmitting things, as if personal qualities were just like things or money handed down from one generation to the next. To confirm the dismissible status of “transmission,” Johannsen quickly aligns it with Lamarck’s notion of acquired characteristics, Darwin’s pangenesis

38

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

hypothesis, and the biometricians’ approach. For the audience of American naturalists in 1910, each of these concepts is already poised to serve the epideictic function of a dismissible or unworthy figure. Johannsen bundles them together with the identifying label of transmission: In all these cases we meet with the conception that the personal qualities of any individual organism are the true heritable elements or traits! This may be characterized as the ‘transmission-conception’ of heredity or as the view of apparent heredity . . . no profound insight into the biological problem of heredity can be gained on this basis, for the transmission-conception of heredity represents exactly the reverse of the real facts. (130)

What was introduced as a problematic tropic entailment is now serving as an antithesis for the real. To return to the language of Donna Haraway, the transmission conception is being expunged from a “sacred realm of facticity.” For Haraway, the expunging of metaphoricity depends on the “conjuring trick of establishing the categorical purity of nature and society, nonhuman and human” (69). But Johannsen’s address is not in the business of a conjuring trick. Such tricks are the work of culture. Rather, the address is an instance of rhetorical praxis, a relatively straightforward instance of establishing categorical purity by expunging inappropriate troping and ineffectual theories that share the name “transmission.” This expunging of tropes becomes an integral part of the gene. The introductory separation of biology and everyday language had initiated a series of contraries, contraries that throughout the address continue to fix and refine the boundary between specialized knowledge and the instability of language and uncontrolled tropes. Expunging transmission, with all its tropic entailments, Johannsen also refines and claims the zone of specialized knowledge that is being cleared. He identifies the clearing as the “modern view of heredity,” the space of “all true analytical experiments,” and “the science of genetics [which] is in a transition period, becoming an exact science.” The boundary of a genetic reality is becoming fixed, assuring the authority of genetic knowledge. The centerpiece of the reality that is being reinforced throughout the address is the genotype conception. But the genotype conception is not only introduced as the fulcrum of all that is not entangled in the flawed theories and flawed tropes. It is not simply the right approach in antithesis to the wrong approach; it must also do the work of undoing the wrong approach. The genotype is introduced to undo, or upset, the consequences and entailments of transmission: The main result of all true analytical experiments in questions concerning genetics is the upsetting of the transmission-conception of heredity, and the two different ways of genetic research: pure line breeding as well as

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

39

hybridization after Mendel’s model, have in that respect led to the same point of view, the “genotype conception” as we may call the conception of heredity just now sketched. (131)

As in William Bateson’s arguments that I discussed in the previous chapter, Mendel’s model and experimental studies provide stabilizing roots for the legitimacy of genetics and the genotype conception. The roots help fix the genotype’s claim on the “real facts” and, together with the goal of upsetting the illegitimate, help to affirm the antithesis of the genotype and transmission conceptions. More Boundary Work The genotype is set in contrast to the transmission conception, which has been firmly situated as outside the real. Throughout the address, the “transmission conception” serves as a marker of that which is flawed. A theory or approach is labeled as “transmission conception,” which places it outside the space of legitimate biology and outside the context of the real, thereby helping to create a clearing for the legitimate. But the superiority of the genotype conception over other competing methods and theories of the time is not quite so simple and clear cut. The studies of heredity and genetics of the day do not fit neatly into categories of two competing camps. To secure the validity of the genotype conception and denounce the legitimacy of existing approaches, even existing approaches that still have currency within the community represented by the American Society of Naturalists, Johannsen refines the boundary that has been set between genotype and transmission. Requiring special attention in Johannsen’s address are Francis Galton and August Weismann, who Johannsen acknowledges as groundbreakers, but not necessarily predecessors to his own genotype conception. Galton and Weismann were also recognized as the predecessors of the study of biometrics, whose proponents, as described in the previous chapter, were critical of the value of Mendelism. Johannsen, thus, brings them into his address to recognize their influence but to ultimately disassociate his own views from those who claimed them as predecessors. He begins by identifying Galton and Weismann as having worked to rid the world of “transmission” conceptions: The “genotype-conception,” as I have called the modern view of heredity, differs not only from the old “transmission-conception” as above mentioned, but it differs also from the related hypothetical views of Galton, Weismann and others, who with more or less effectiveness tried to expel the transmission-idea, having thus the great merit of breaking the ground for the setting in of more unprejudiced inquiries. (132)

Here, acknowledging the value of hypothesis, Johannsen is able to align himself with the efforts of Galton and Weismann before demarcating his own

40

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

ideas from theirs. Galton and Weismann are portrayed as having fought the good fight of ridding the emerging science of “transmission,” even though they left behind some rubble that would need to be cleared. From their “admirable” and “fascinating” works, Johannsen identifies two pieces of rubble: the ideas “that ‘elements’ in the zygote correspond to special organs, and that discrete particles of the chromosome are ‘bearers’ of special parts of the whole inheritance in question” (132). Though valuable steps in a process of inquiry, the ideas are now to be dismissed: Those special ideas may have some interest as expressions of the searching mind, but they have no support in experience; the first of them is evidently erroneous, the second a purely speculative morphological view of heredity without any suggestive value. (132)

Signaling the unworthiness of these ideas are the identifiers of error and speculation. Thus, though their efforts had been valuable, Galton and Weismann now provide the opportunity to demarcate the genotype conception from the less certain and less reliable efforts of speculation. The Weismann speculations are pushed a bit more forcefully out of the realm of specialized and reliable knowledge, as they are hyphenated with “phantasms:” The genotype-conception of the present day, initiated by Galton and Weismann, but now revised as an expression of the insight won by pure line breeding and Mendelism, is in the least possible degree a speculative conception . . . The Mendelian workers have the great merit of being prudent in their speculations. In full accordance with this restraint—a quite natural reaction against the morphologico-phantastical speculations of the Weismann school. (132–133)

The genotype conception that is being circumscribed is not only strengthened by the removal of the now valueless contributions of Galton and Weismann; its status as real and certain (once again tied to Mendelism) has also been reiterated by its demarcation from speculation and phantastical ideas. Later in the address, Johannsen returns to claiming the status of the real for the genotype while contrasting it with the tenets and methods of the biometricians. For example, he claims that Francis Galton’s law of regression and Pearson’s elaboration on it “pretend to have established the laws of ‘ancestral influences’ in mathematical terms” and that “such interesting products of mathematical genius may be social statistics in optima forma, but they have nothing at all to do with genetics or general biology!” (138). Having associated the notion of “ancestral influence” with the flawed statistical methods of the biometricians, Johannsen secures its place outside the realm of real genetics, associating it with fictions and ghosts:

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

41

Ancestral influence! As to heredity, it is a mystical expression for a fiction. The ancestral influences are the ‘ghosts’ of genetics, but generally the belief in ghosts is still powerful. (138)

Finally, having been associated with pretending, fiction, and ghosts, the concept is placed outside the clearest boundary: “Ancestral influence in heredity is, plainly speaking, a term of the ‘transmission-conception’ and nothing else” (138). With the ancestral influence associated with the “transmission-conception,” Johannsen returns to enforcing the tropic boundaries and managing true meanings: As to the evolution of human civilization we meet with true ancestral influences, viz., the tradition (comprising literature, monuments of art, etc., and all forms of teaching). Tradition is playing a very great role, but tradition is quite different from heredity. (139)

Recall here that heredity was the problematic term on which the speech began, with cautions against borrowing the term, moving it from its realm of proper meaning to the realm of biology, without recognizing the implications of the term’s movement. Now, heredity is closer to the legitimate area of the discussion; it has changed sides but is still ensnarled in the problems of tropes. Nevertheless there may often be danger of confusion, and here the use of false analogs is not harmless. So an obscure metaphor is involved in archaeologists’ reference to Greek temples as ‘ancestors’ of some types of Christian churches, or in their speaking of the descent of violins from more primitive ‘ancestors.’ Certainly, evolution of types of tools, instruments and implements of all kinds is—at least partially—going on by means of selective factors combined with tradition, the latter not only conserving the valuable types but actively stimulating their improvement. But all this has nothing at all to do with the biological notion of heredity. (139–140)

Clearly, the biological notion of heredity needs to be maintained. In the next sentence, Johannsen points to the metaphorical use of “evolution” in “archaeology, sociology, etc.” and claims that “this involves nothing as to genetics” (140). The problems presented by terms moving from one context to another and the problems of “false analogs” and “metaphors” all call for guarding the tropic boundaries of genetics. This is not necessarily a claim that only literal language is allowed within the bounds of genetics. Rather it is a claim that the unwieldy movement and turning of phrases belongs outside and are to be guarded against at the perimeters. Casting Off the Artifice of Words: Defining the Gene Unlike Darwin’s pangenesis theory, which was not intended to be real, the status of the real for the genotype conception of heredity is of central

42

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

importance in Johannsen’s address. Much attention is devoted to worrying the boundaries of the real and shuttling competing conceptions to the outside of real genetics by identifying them with the misuse of figurative language, appearances, pretending researchers and other charades of reality, including ghosts and phantasms. And unlike the contrived and figurative status of Darwin’s gemmules, a claim on reality is a defining feature of the gene. This claim on reality is introduced by an explication of a relationship between language and knowledge. With the genotype occupying the rhetorical clearing that has been created by the boundary work of demarcating competing theories, Johannsen fixes a role for the gene by making explicit his theoretical stance on language and knowledge: It is a well-established fact that language is not only our servant, when we wish to express—or even to conceal—our thoughts, but that it may also be our master, overpowering us by means of the notions attached to the current words. This fact is the reason why it is desirable to create a new terminology in all cases where new or revised conceptions are being developed. Old terms are mostly comprised by their application in antiquated or erroneous theories and systems, from which they carry splinters of inadequate ideas, not always harmless to the developing insight. (132)

As a commentary on rhetoric and knowledge, Johannsen’s statement is reminiscent of the enlightenment ideal, perhaps best expressed by John Locke, of knowledge that can and should be preserved from the impurities of language and the contaminations of rhetoric. In arguing against the rhetoric of Scholasticism, Locke suggests that “we should cast off all the artifice and fallacy of words” and claims that “pretending to the knowledge of things, [we] hinder as much as we can the discovery of truth, by perplexing one another all we can by a perverse use of those signs which we may make use of to convey truth to one another” (131). With a similar supposition that knowledge and truth can thrive in a rhetorical space cleared of perverse or unwieldy language, Johannsen asserts the need for a Locke-like vigilance against the contamination of language that has been used in the service of old, erroneous, or inadequate ideas. Having now argued explicitly for the general virtues of rhetorical clearings—or spaces in language designed to avoid the problems of language— Johannsen moves on to present the “gene” and some other fresh starts that will, at least temporarily, hold at bay the rush of old and inadequate ideas. Therefore I have proposed the terms “gene” and “genotype” and some further terms, as “phenotype” and “biotype,” to be used in the science of genetics. The “gene” is nothing but a very applicable little word, easily combined with others, and hence it may be useful as an expression for the “unit-fac-

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

43

tors,” “elements” or “allelomorphs” in the gametes, demonstrated by modern Mendelian researches. A “genotype” is the sum total of all the “genes” in a gamete or in a zygote. (133)

Taken out of context, the comment that the gene is “nothing but a very applicable little word” seems an earnest and humble beginning for what we now know to be a powerful scientific construct, a precious economic unit, and a persuasive cultural icon. Indeed the spirit of humility is captured by many historians who cite this passage while examining early conceptions of the gene. But in the context of Johannsen’s speech, the approach to establishing a new term by first minimizing it to mere applicability takes on the feel of a deliberate meiosis—in the rhetorical rather than biological sense of meiosis—even if the audience may not be openly invited to partake in the irony of magnifying by way of minimizing. Johannsen does anything but minimize or trivialize the gene as he ushers the term into a powerful and controlled rhetorical space, warning of the tendency of words to “overpower us” and circumscribing the term’s uses and applicability. In setting limits on how the new term is to function, Johannsen defines the gene. He does not define it in the sense of declaring the signification of the word or by stating any essential nature or properties. In fact, he declares the “gene” free of such denotative definition: “As to the nature of the ‘genes’ it is as yet of no value to propose any hypothesis; but that the notion ‘gene’ covers a reality is evident from Mendelism” (132–133). Historian Frederick Churchill, commenting on this statement, writes, “Poor child of science! He was wrong in believing he could avoid hypotheses” (14). But I do not see Johannsen as a poor child who so desperately wanted to please the forces of science. Johannsen figures the gene to function as a label for a material reality. Though the particular reality is not to be identified or hypothesized, it is set up to ground an otherwise abstract constellation of functions—that is, “many characteristics of the organism are specified in the gametes by means of special conditions, foundations, and dispositions which are present in unique, separate, and thereby independent ways.” Johannsen’s move to figure the gene exemplifies what Kenneth Burke refers to as the “realistic” application of metonymy. This use of metonymy is, for Burke, the primary figurative strategy of scientific realism: “to convey some incorporeal or intangible state in terms of the corporeal or tangible” (506). Johannsen has cleared a space for the gene, placed it in the center of the true genetics, and assigned it the metonymic function of scientific realism. He puts that metonymic function to work right away, placing the gene in opposition to phantasms, ghosts, and fictions. Appearances versus Realities The figure of the gene is introduced squarely within the space that Johannsen has established for true genetics, established by cordoning it off from everyday

44

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

language and unwieldy tropes. Before the gene is introduced, the genotype conception is aligned with true genetics and the “modern view of heredity.” Once genes are configured to function as real-but-undefined things, they can become building blocks; the genotype gets defined as “the sum total of all the ‘genes’ in the gametes or in a zygote” (132–133). The genotype is not only the true and legitimate theoretical approach; it is a sum total of the fundamental units that have just been secured as realities. The genotype-phenotype distinction is cited by many historians of science as extremely important to the development of genetics in the early century; it is more often cited as Johannsen’s valuable contribution than is his naming of the gene. But in his speech, Johannsen is not advancing the importance of the genotype-phenotype distinction as much as he is calling upon it to reinforce the rhetorical work of demarcating an epistemic space for pure knowledge and genetic truth. The genotype-phenotype distinction, in the address, serves as a trope of epistemology. After defining the genotype and distinguishing it from the “transmission conception” and other problematic and hypothetical views, Johannsen defines the phenotype: “All ‘types’ of organisms, distinguishable by direct inspection or only by finer methods of measuring description, may be characterized as ‘phenotypes’” (134). With both defined, the genotype and phenotype are now prepared to function as another binary, reinforcing the distinction between the real study of genetics and illegitimate studies. It is not that phenotypes are not real. In fact, they are the available observable objects: Certainly phenotypes are real things; the appearing (not only apparent) “types” or “sorts” of organisms are again and again the objects for scientific research. All typical phenomena in the organic world are eo ipso phenotypical, and the description of the myriads of phenotypes as to forms, structures, sizes, colors and other characters of the living organisms has been the chief aim of natural history, which was ever a science of essentially morphological-descriptive character. (134)

The problem that Johannsen associates with phenotypes comes when they are mistaken as the true source of genetics knowledge and when they are ascribed causality, amounting to confusing appearances with realities. Not surprisingly, this brings us back to the sin of the transmission conception: For the descriptive-morphological view the manifestations of the phenotypes in different generations are the main point, and here the transmissionconception immediately announces itself. Hence we may adequately define this conception as a “phenotype conception” in opposition to the genotype conception. (135)

This problem of confusing appearances with reality has not only led biologists to posit theories of “continuous variation,” it is also at the root of the biome-

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

45

tricians’ misguided, and evil, ways: “[T]he wide-spread confusion of ‘resemblance’ with ‘genealogical relation’ is the root of much evil—of which the statistics of biometricians have given us some instances” (137). Once he has established the problems, and evils, of confusing appearances and resemblances with reality, Johannsen can call upon the term “phenotype conception,” teaming it up with “transmission” to refer to concepts and methods operating outside the realm of legitimate understandings of genetic reality and genetic truth. To reiterate, Johannsen is not dismissing the value of observing and analyzing phenotypes. He is, though, calling attention to the problem of stopping at the observable screen of phenotypes and assuming that it is a total picture of reality. Those who are caught up in the phenotype conception of heredity are like the prisoners in Plato’s myth of the cave, prisoners who have been chained since birth to only face a wall of shadows, which they take to be reality itself. Just as the prisoner who breaks free from the chains is, after much trouble and hard work, able then to see the sunlight as the real source of truth, the true geneticist in Johannsen’s vision is able, through the correct methodologies, to “see” the real source of genetics knowledge. The correct methodologies are, as Johannsen points out, Mendelian analyses, pure-line breeding, and hybridization experiments. From working with the legitimate methodologies, Johannsen’s true geneticists are able to move beyond the phenotypic screen of appearances to “see” the genotype as that which causes the phenotypic effects. The genotype is the source of true meaning. But the genotype is not simply an abstraction in Johannsen’s argument, nor is it only a conception. The genotype is the sum total of the genes, those “applicable little words” that Johannsen configured to function as real things. Johannsen prescribed for genes the rhetorical work of functioning as material facts, grounding an epistemology, deflecting hypothesis and speculation, standing apart from the world of everyday language, and serving as the true source of genetic meaning behind the world of appearances. Unlike the sun in Plato’s myth, which was a metaphorical representation of abstract truth, the source of true meaning in this genetics world-view is a realm of reality that has been purged of metaphor. CONCLUSION

In this chapter, I have set Darwin’s pangenesis and Johannsen’s genotype in antithesis. The purpose of this antithesizing has been to illuminate the rhetorical differences between a theory that was offered as provisional and hypothetical and a theory that was introduced as laying claim to the real. Both theories attempt to explain the means of biological heredity. But to read each theory only in terms of what it explains not only restricts reading to a form of evaluating whether the scientists got it right, but also eclipses the

46

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

rhetorical goals that are written into the theories. Darwin inscribed in his theory the tasks of synthesizing and of connecting facts with an “intelligible bond,” a temporary intelligible bond that was not intended to acquire the epistemic status of the facts it was connecting. Johannsen, on the other hand, inscribed in his theory the task of clearing a rhetorical-epistemic space of temporary intelligible bonds, hypotheses, and speculations, as well as unreliable everyday language and the artifice and fallacy of words. He set up his genotype theory to “upset” the multiple “antiquated and erroneous theories and systems” and to lay claim to the real. Within the context of each argument, that for the theory of pangenesis and that for the genotype conception of heredity, the rhetorical work prescribed for gemmules and genes, respectively, becomes strikingly apparent. Gemmules were to serve as temporary figures, almost figments, to help imagine the possibilities for a synthesizing theory. They were introduced as a kind of rhetorical widget; one needn’t take them seriously (or literally) to grasp the conceptual framework they were constructing. In contrast, genes were introduced as fundamental units grounding a conceptual framework in an ultimate reality. Though they were to remain undefined in their particulars, genes were not to be as flimsy and disposable as the widget-like gemmules. Genes were to resist hypothesis and speculation and to root a developing epistemology in a material reality. They were to convey an abstract theoretical concept in terms of the corporeal or tangible. It’s not that genes were to function as if they were real; genes were to function rhetorically as real things. As illuminating as it may be, the antithesis of Darwin and Johannsen may also (with its figurative influence) overshadow the similarities of these two instances of scientific rhetoric. Darwin, in the culmination of a two-volume work on animal and plant variation, and Johannsen, in an address prepared for the American Society of Naturalists, describe methodologies for approaching the study of biological heredity. Each attends, with great care, to explicating an exigence of his theory. Each explicates a rhetorical stance for his methodology. And each includes metacommentary on the particular claim on the tentativeness or certainty of their methodologies. Each attends to prescribing the kind of rhetorical work that his theory and its components are to do. Because both Darwin and Johannsen express a self-consciousness about their own rhetorical moves and both articulate theories of knowledge and rhetoric, their texts offer opportunities for examining rhetorical theorizing as a form of rhetorical praxis. Charles Bazerman, in Shaping Written Knowledge: The Genre and Activity of the Experimental Article in Science, argues for, and demonstrates the importance of, studying the history of rhetorical praxis. Focusing on the history of the experimental article, and pursuing an understanding of the relationship among language, rhetoric, and the production of knowledge, Bazerman emphasizes a study of rhetorical praxis over a study of

PRESCRIBING RHETORICAL WORK

47

theory or metacommentary about rhetoric and knowledge. As he puts it, “Too often the history of rhetoric has meant the history of prescriptions and theories; the actual living practice has seemed less real than the prevailing theories” (15). Darwin and Johannsen’s texts are both: they are each instances of prescriptions for and theories of rhetoric and science; they are also instances of “actual living practice” of scientific rhetoric. In each case—that of Darwin, the case he makes for the need for gemmules and the rhetorical work prescribed for the gemmules, and that of Johannsen, the case he makes for the need for genes and the rhetorical work prescribed for genes—the argument for the new term and the rhetorical function of the new term are inseparable. The arguments, or justifications, for the new terms are not merely the rhetorical context for the introductions, but are rather part of the design of the new term. Darwin’s gemmules were designed to figure a relationship between themselves and existing facts. Johannsen’s genes were designed to stand apart from, and undo, existing theories. Johannsen constructed an elaborate argument for a fresh new term that could lay claim to a reality, ground an epistemology (or at the very least a methodology) in that reality, and assert a boundary between itself and other theories and problematic uses of rhetoric.

4

Genes on Main Street

There is no consensus of opinion among geneticists as to what genes are—whether they are real or purely fictitious—because at the level at which the genetic experiments lie, it does not make the slightest difference whether the gene is a hypothetical unit, or whether the gene is a material particle. —T. H. Morgan, 1934

IN CHAPTER THREE, I examined the rhetorical work that the gene was com-

missioned to do. Johannsen introduced the term in 1909, not so much defining it as establishing it to work as a rhetorical figure—a figure that grounds a scientific concept in a material reality (without actually specifying that material reality) and asserts a boundary between, on the one hand, that yet-to-bedefined material reality and, on the other hand, the perversities of language, conjecture, and rhetorical play. The figurative work that Johannsen prescribed for the gene resonates with the figurative work of genes in contemporary popular culture. In advertisements, cartoons, and popular magazines, we can see “genes” figuring an authoritative and undeniable reality, operating (even in the most playfully figurative sense) as a source of meaning, without getting bogged down in the specifics of what a gene actually is. When genes are enlisted in deterministic discourse—about gender, race, or intelligence—we can see the same figurative function of claiming a real material source of meaning in opposition to arguments about the contingency of meaning. There is some irony here in recognizing the figurative and iconic work of “genes” in popular culture. For, though Johannsen prescribed for the gene the figurative work of claiming an authoritative material reality, he also figured the gene as part of an argument about the importance of establishing a specialized terminology, separate from everyday language. In this chapter, I turn to the popular press of the 1930s and 1940s to consider some early indications of “genes” moving from the sphere of specialized

49

50

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

and controlled terminology and taking hold in everyday language. Though “genes” were apparently becoming familiar terms in the 1930s, the earliest instances that I have found of “genes” doing the work of a cultural icon are a set of articles that position the gene as a persuasive antithesis to the threat of communist propaganda during the cold war. I read these genes-versus-communism articles, paying close attention to the figurative work of “genes.” I view the texts as primarily serving the epideictic function of affirming Western cultural values (with science at the center) and disavowing the culture of communism (with propaganda serving as the object of blame). My purpose here is not to sort through what genes mean during the cold war, nor how cold war politics and genetics influence one another, but rather to call attention to the figurative work of genes in a rhetorical context far removed from the one in which Johannsen named the gene and far removed from the contexts that we normally associate with the control of scientific objects. THE NATURE AND MEANING OF GENES ARE UNSETTLED

Before getting to the rhetorical work of “genes” in the popular press in the first half of the twentieth century, it is worth noting the unsettled reality/meaning of genes among biologists and geneticists. In the first few decades of the twentieth century, though research had been moving steadily toward identifying genes with chromosomes, a discordant array of theories and hypotheses regarding the nature and function of genes emerged and flourished. Geneticist Elof Axel Carlson, in his The Gene: A Critical History, notes the historical and scientific significance of Johannsen’s introduction of the “gene” as having the flexibility to accommodate a broad range of attributes and definitions: Johannsen’s gene was undefined. If to some geneticists he gave a concept that appeared to lack a material reality, for others he freed the concept from any one theory of action, specificity, or composition. It gave the gene concept an opportunity to evolve and to take on, or discard definition. (22)

Not all researchers who worked with the concept were interested in identifying the material form or specific nature of the gene. The flexibility of the gene concept accommodated the broad range of perspectives, disciplinary goals, and research agendas that characterized the life sciences in the first half of the twentieth century. While some researchers worked to identify the nature of the gene, others utilized the concept of the gene, needing no more specificity than that provided by Johannsen (a useful little term that covers a reality) in order to carry on their genetics research. In 1934, T. H. Morgan, known for his studies of fruit flies and his major contributions to the chromosome theory of genes, articulated his indifference about what genes actually are:

GENES ON MAIN STREET

51

Now that we locate [genes] in the chromosomes are we justified in regarding them as material units; as chemical bodies of a higher order than molecules? . . . There is no consensus of opinion among geneticists as to what genes are—whether they are real or purely fictitious—because at the level at which the genetic experiments lie, it does not make the slightest difference whether the gene is a hypothetical unit, or whether the gene is a material particle. In either case the unit is associated with a specific chromosome, and can be localized there by purely genetic analysis. Hence, if the gene is a material unit, it is a piece of a chromosome; if it is a fictitious unit, it must be referred to a definite location in a chromosome—the same place as on the other hypothesis. Therefore, it makes no difference in the actual work in genetics which point of view is taken. (qtd. in Olby, Path 103)

I am tempted to read Morgan’s statement as a reaffirmation of the figurative function of genes, as an argument for preserving the gene’s capacity for rhetorical work. Having seen Johannsen’s elaborate argument about the control of language and rhetoric and in preparation for seeing the rhetorical work of genes in other contexts, I am tempted to find in Morgan’s statement a claim about the importance of rhetorical and figurative work in the service of the production of scientific knowledge. But a more reliable reading is to see Morgan as not concerning himself with the work of a rhetorical figure but rather as strategically avoiding the complex question of the meaning of genes so as to get on with what he saw as the important work of genetics. It is important to recognize that Morgan’s sense that it mattered little if the gene was material or fiction was not representative of all geneticists of his time. Historian Raphael Falk characterizes the “genetic landscape” prior to the 1950s as dominated by a “dialectic between the instrumentalist and the realist treatments of the gene” (321). The instrumentalists were those who, like Morgan, found the gene most useful as a notational device for “capturing the facts recorded in breeding and hybridization studies” (321). The realists were those who were committed to the material existence of genes and worked to specify genes’ physicochemical properties. A primary example of a realist in this instrumentalist–realist dialectic was Herman J. Muller, who focused his research on “specifying the genes’ physicochemical properties,” or capturing the material reality of genes. This was not a straightforward task; he approached it by narrowing down the functional properties of genes, limiting the possibilities of what a gene could be. He attributed to genes three central properties: “1. Autonomous self-replication; 2. Initiation of specific products that effect the development and performance of organisms’ properties; and 3. The faculty to mutate” (Falk 323). Though his approach was extremely influential and his definition of central properties widely accepted, Muller expressed by 1950 the difficulty of nailing down the materiality of the gene:

52

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE [T]he real core of gene theory still appears to lie in the deep unknown. That is, we have as yet no actual knowledge of the mechanism underlying that unique property which makes a gene a gene—its ability to cause the synthesis of another structure like itself . . . in which even the mutations of the original gene are copied. . . . We do not know of such things yet in chemistry. (Rheinberger 220)

The different approaches to the gene represented by Morgan and Muller, along with Muller’s statement about the unknown mechanism and properties of the gene, can provide us with a sense of the elusive thingness (or material reality) of the gene within the field of genetics at the middle of the century. Even for those who considered the specific material properties of the gene important and the reality of the gene worth delimiting in material terms, there was not a stable sense of what that material reality was. GENES BECOME PART OF AN EVERYDAY VO CABULARY

During the time period for which Falk identifies a dialectic between instrumentalist and realist views dominating the genetic landscape, “genes” began to make their appearances in American weekly news magazines. In 1925, “genes” became for the first time an index heading in the Readers’ Guide to Periodical Literature, indicating that the term was becoming, if not an everyday term, enough of a generally recognized term for cataloguing publications. For the first few years that “genes” served as an index heading, they point only to articles at the more specialized and technical end of the spectrum of the popular press (e.g., to reports in the journals Science and Scientific American). Until the 1930s, articles intended for more general audiences are indexed under the heading “heredity,” and sometimes “genetics.” In 1934, Time published a brief article titled “Genes on Main Street.” The article introduced the gene as an elusive object that scientists were pursuing: Like the electron, the gene has eluded the eye of Science while manifesting itself in its works. “Gene” is the name by which geneticists agreed to call the mysterious heredity-transmitting agents strung along the length of the chromosome. As minute streaks in body cells, the chromosomes were visible under the microscope; their component parts were not. Last week a long step toward visual study of genes seemed to have been taken by Dr. Calvin Blackman Bridges. (26)

Here, the gene is figured as a material thing that has simply been very difficult for scientists to see, presumably because it is so tiny. Toward the end of the article, the language gets a little bit looser around the visibility of genes: “Dr. Bridges did not identify either bands or cylinders with the genes themselves, but by last week three known and one unknown gene had been traced

GENES ON MAIN STREET

53

to a set of four bands.” The article then ends on the upbeat note of Dr. Bridges, who says that other genes would soon be “as easily located as the houses on Main Street” (24). By the late 1930s, more general articles start showing up in American popular magazines and are indexed under the heading “genes” in the Readers’ Guide. During the 1930s and 1940s, Time and Newsweek published a handful of articles that report on genetics research and that use the term “gene.” Each article provides some definition or introduction of the term. The definitions range from the stable and certain—“the units that pass along family traits from generation to generation” (Newsweek 1939)—to the more qualified expressions of knowledge-in-the-making: “but no man can swear he has ever seen a gene. . . . It is generally assumed that the genes are single big protein molecules, but that is not certain either. And the mechanism of the genes’ heredity control remains obscure” (Time 1940). Despite the definitions and introductions to the concept of genes, the headlines of the articles—“Genes Seen?,” “Man’s Mysterious Genes,” “Lottery of Genes”—suggest that “genes” had by that time acquired enough popular currency to reach a lay audience, at least as a representation of scientific research that can draw public attention. The playfulness of the titles also suggests that “genes” were creeping into a zone of what John Locke would identify with the “perverse use of” words (131). By the late 1940s, the frequency of gene-focused articles for a lay audience was rising. “Genes” were beginning to do some iconographic cultural work. If we can take the Readers’ Guide, together with Time and Newsweek, as a barometer, it appears that by the middle of the twentieth century, the term “gene” had made its way into the arena of what Johannsen had termed “every-day language.” Though “genes” were acquiring popular currency and were being recognized, at least by the compilers of the Readers’ Guide, as a topic of public discourse, the meaning of “genes” was no more settled in public or popular discourse than it was in scientific discourse. Celeste Condit’s analysis The Meanings of the Gene: Public Debates About Human Heredity maps the terrain of public meanings of genetics, emphasizing the historical flux of meaning and the influence of the topoi of determination, discrimination, and perfectionism. Actually, the “gene” of Condit’s title is a synecdoche, a part-for-the-whole representation of genetic discourse. She is not as concerned with the nuances of the particular meanings of the term “gene” as she is with the topoi that characterize twentieth-century public debate about genetics. But her analysis, including her own figurative use of the “gene” in her title, suggests that the “gene” was as flexible and plastic a term in public and popular discourse as it was in the disciplines of the life sciences. In the following analysis, I am less concerned with the particular meanings of the “gene” than with the effect of the plasticity of the term to accommodate a range of meanings. With the background

54

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

of the fluctuations of meanings of genes, I turn now to examine the figurative work of the term in the context of a popular press article doing the epideictic work of pitting communist values against Western values. COMMUNIST PROPAGANDA VERSUS GENES

On January 17, 1949, Time published a brief article that enlists genes to work against the international threat of communism—more specifically, against what is characterized as the forces of propaganda pushing outward from the Soviet presses. The Time article reports on a series of claims being made— some in the Soviet newspaper Pravda, some in “official Communist publications,” and some simply made by “the Russians.” Time characterizes the Soviet claims as propaganda and, because of the potential to sway people around the world toward communism, as an international threat. In opposition to the shady work of propaganda, the article presents the “gene” as a foundational object that epitomizes the Western claim on truth, the value of science, and the promise of technological progress rooted in science. The article is called “Cut to Pattern.” It appears in the science section, a regular feature of the weekly magazine, usually consisting of two or three announcements of scientific research results or technological developments described in celebratory prose, framed as breakthroughs from within a scientific community, and explicitly linked, usually in the closing paragraph, to a public benefit. In contrast to the generic format, this genetics-versus-communism article is not poised to celebrate a breakthrough or the publication of research results, but rather sets out to characterize a rhetorical threat, rising up on the outside of legitimate science. The article begins: “For months a torrent of science propaganda has sluiced from Moscow’s presses. Murky with Marxist doubletalk, it praises Soviet science, denounces Western science as the tool of capitalism and the slave of doctrinal errors, such as ‘idealism’ and ‘formalism’” (40). With the clarifying support of intensifying modifiers, the “science propaganda” is introduced as more than the antithesis of the value of Western science; it is the opponent, if not yet enemy, of our scientific values. The oxymoron of “science propaganda” is the starting point for the article, a strong articulation of that which is outside legitimacy, an introduction to, rather than a justification for, disparagement. With “propaganda” one of the key organizing tropes for demarcating a boundary of freedom in American post–World War II media, the amalgam “science propaganda” lays the groundwork for the sardonic tone to get to work on making outlandish any suggestion that science could be a tool of capitalism or aligned with any “idealism” or “formalism.” The opening paragraph establishes the style, the structure, and the epideictic agenda of the article. The remainder of the article is dedicated to denouncing propaganda and communism, affirming Western science and

GENES ON MAIN STREET

55

Western values, and maintaining a clear, bold boundary between them. In other words, “Cut to Pattern” is not an instance of forensic rhetoric; it is not sorting through the legitimacy of truth claims, nor is it setting out to prove that the Soviet claims are wrong or that the Western approach is right. Instead, this is a crisply executed blame-and-praise scenario. It follows a pattern of using powerful examples to create a sense of an outside, or illegitimacy, and then laying claim to a center of legitimacy. Not wholly unlike the address in which Johannsen introduced his terminology, at the center of legitimate science is the prize figure of the “gene.” In the second paragraph of the “Cut to Pattern” article, the boundary between “science propaganda” and “Western science” is efficiently affirmed with the extraction of specific claims from the Soviet press: Last week mighty Pravda (which claims 2,000,000 copies daily) gave three of its 24 columns to a claim that the principle of conservation of matter, attributed by Westerners to Lavoisier (1775), was really discovered by an 18th Century Russian poet-scientist-philosopher named Mikhail Lomonosov. This week the Russians claimed again that a Russian flew the first power-driven heavier-than-air machine 21 years before the Wright brothers got around to their 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C. (40)

Here, the pairings of the Soviet Russian claims and Western counterpoints are pithy examples for efficiently intensifying the boundary between “science propaganda” and “Western science.” Lavoisier and the Wright brothers are introduced as such incontrovertible figures that any denial of their importance is not even worthy of our consideration; they are simply landmarks for locating blame. In the sentence that follows, the examples give way to a longer list of Western claims that are then able to align the Soviet–Western boundary with the boundary between fantasy and truth: In recent years, official Communist publications have claimed that the incandescent lamp, the radio, the steam engine, penicillin, and many basic discoveries in theoretical sciences were Russian products. A few of these claims have shreds of truth to them; most are the wildest fantasy. (40)

With the additional condemnation of “wildest fantasy,” the Soviet claims are now all the more dismissible. But again, the purpose of the article is not to simply dismiss or discredit the Soviet claims. Rather the Soviet claims are being presented as representative of communist propaganda. As propaganda, the claims warrant more attention than simply fantasies masquerading as truth; they are to be seen as threats: Light from Russia. Foreigners who keep track of the claims, and the prodigal expenditure of newspaper space on them, are inclined to doubt that they are

56

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE signs of nationalism. These days Communism is an internationalist mood and the claims of the Russian propagandists are widely pushed abroad. The purpose may be to convince prospective foreign proselytes that Russia, through the years, has been a source of scientific light and not (as was generally the case) a dismal swamp of scientific darkness. From this premise it is easy to argue that the U.S.S.R. is still a source of scientific light, and thus a sort of shrine of wisdom for the world. (40)

Within the span of three paragraphs, Soviet claims of scientific knowledge have been apprehended, identified as rogue science stories, and classified as a significant international political threat. With the fast-paced style typical of Time, propaganda of the Soviet presses has been given a sense of momentum and exigency.1 This is where the potency of the gene comes in. Hope for the Backward. Genetics probably offers the Soviet authorities one of their trickiest methods of posing as a source of scientific light and hope. Western genetics, following Mendel and Morgan, teaches that the inherited characteristics of living organisms are largely controlled by genes passed down from parents to offspring. During sexual reproduction the genes are shuffled, but except in the case of accidental mutations they are not changed. Lysenko teaches that the form of an organism is determined by the environment in which it develops. He claims to have modified plant species merely by moving them around Russia. (Western geneticists have tried & tried, with no success, to repeat his experiments.) (40)

There are two opposing viewpoints represented here: Western genetics teaches that inheritance is largely controlled by genes and Lysenko teaches that an organism is determined by the environment. The Western view gets more nuanced language—“largely controlled by”—while the Soviet view gets the overly forceful language of determination. There is a bit of a sneer running through the sentences about Lysenko, his teaching, his claims, and his irreproducible experiments. He was a sneerworthy guy. But before turning to Lysenko, I would like to emphasize the antithesis of environmental determinism and the control of genes. Note that the “genes” are not presented as a hypothesis, a concept, or a teaching or a perspective; they are things that control, get passed down, get shuffled, and do not change. Here, within this brief passage of the popular press, we do not need to know much about Lysenko (except that he was Russian and on the other side of the ideological divide), and we do not need to know much about what Muller called the “real core of gene theory,” to see that it is the thingness of “genes” that enables them to do the rhetorical work of opposing the view of the environment as deterministic and deprecating Soviet claims. In an argument that is almost a parody of Johannsen’s genotype argument (asserting the gene as the fundamental material in opposition to the illegiti-

GENES ON MAIN STREET

57

mate theories and unruly plays of language), the “gene” is presented as the most powerful argument against the propaganda of Soviets “posing as a source of scientific light and hope.” THE SOVIET WHO DENIED THE EXISTENCE OF GENES

In the Time article of 1949, Trofim Lysenko is a convenient antihero helping to dramatize the reality and importance of genes. In contemporary genetics textbooks, Lysenko is still cited for emphasizing, by way of negative example, the value of the scientific method and the value of genes. Because of his antithetical role in genetics, he is worth considering as a historical figure and again (as in the example I’ll discuss in the next section) as a rhetorical figure. He is a representative figure, abridging the much larger and far more complex story of the clash between Soviet politics and genetics research. Lysenkoism is a common name for the trend, extending from the 1930s through the 1950s, of Soviet political forces overpowering and eventually banning the study of genetics. Lysenko was an agronomist, with very little formal education, who rose to power and acquired positions of scientific and agricultural leadership within the Stalinist regime of Soviet Russia. On his rise to power, he published bogus experimental research, denounced genetic theories that contradicted communist doctrine, and articulated views of heredity and biology that supported, by way of emphasizing environmental influences, views of communist party values.2 Historian of science Loren R. Graham characterizes Lysenko as: a simple agronomist who developed ideas about plants not very different from those of many practical selectionists of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, but who was able to promote those ideas to an unheralded prominence because of the political and social situation in which he found himself. An extremely shrewd but basically uneducated man, he learned how to capitalize on the opportunities that the centralized bureaucracy and ideologically charged intellectual atmosphere presented. Seeing that his ideas would fare better if they were dressed in the garb of dialectical materialism, with the help of a young ideologist he recast his arguments in Marxist terms. (Graham 124)

Lysenko’s power pinnacled at the meeting of the Soviet Union’s Academy of Agricultural Sciences in July–August of 1948 (five months before the Time article previously described). Though many members of the agricultural academy had been opposed to Lysenko and his views, just prior to the conference, Stalin appointed Lysenko and several of Lysenko’s supporters to the academy. Stalin also announced that the meeting “will be devoted to the discussion of a report by Academician T. D. Lysenko, ‘On the Situation in

58

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

Soviet Biological Science’” (Soyfer 181–182). The speech was evidently edited by Stalin. “The central part of Lysenko’s report bore the heading, ‘The Two Worlds [i.e., socialist and capitalist]—Two Ideologies in Biology’” (Soyfer 184). Reports of the speeches and discussions that were published in the Moscow paper Pravda congealed the support of Lysenko’s position and support of controlling biological science in favor of Stalinist values. The meeting ended with an official ban on genetics research and genetics teachings that did not expressly support the values of the Stalin regime. According to geneticist Valery Soyfer’s account of the meeting, much of the discussion in support of Lysenko’s position hinged on denying the material reality of genes. One participant expressed that “no special hereditybearing substance exists, any more than phlogiston, the fire-bearing substance, or the caloric, the heat substance.” Another explained, “Only a scientist determined to commit scientific suicide could conceive of the gene as an organ, a gland, with a developed morphology and a very specific structure” (Soyfer 184). According to Graham, Lysenko’s writings on the gene were very confused. Several years before the 1948 meeting, he had written, “we deny that the geneticists and cytologists will see genes under the microscope.” In light of understandings of genes in the middle of the century outside of the Soviet Union, as well as contemporary understandings of genes, Lysenko was not completely off the mark to deny that genes could be seen under a microscope. And, in comparison with the view expressed earlier by T. H. Morgan that it mattered little to genetics research if the gene was material or fiction, calling the gene a figment of imagination is not as outlandish as it may appear on the surface of a Time article. My point here is certainly not to resurrect Lysenko and his flawed research. Instead I want, first, to note that the flexibility of the gene concept made it a likely target for those who, working within the “situation of Soviet biological science,” were compelled to denounce “foreign ideas.” And, second, to note that, during a time when the nature of the gene was still unsettled among geneticists, in the “every-day language” of the American popular press, the gene could be an effective figure for establishing anyone who denied its existence as a villain and for concisely drawing lines of ideological conflict. In the next section, I turn to another example that uses Lysenko’s position to make the possibility of seeing the gene significant and worthy of media attention. FIGURING WHAT MAY BE GENES

Less than a week after the publication of the Time article, Newsweek published its own communism-versus-genetics article. I turn to the Newsweek article here not only because it offers another articulation of the antithesis of

GENES ON MAIN STREET

59

Soviet values and genes but also because this article goes a step further in figuring the gene as an iconic material reality. This article, entitled “Genes: Sliced and Pictured,” is more closely aligned with the popular-press genre of a report on recently published scientific research. It reports on a study at the University of California that used an extremely powerful microscope to examine chromosomes, revealing “what may be genes.” The main topic is the gene—or at least the pursuit to see genes—with the antithesis of Soviet and Western science serving as the framework, establishing the public significance of the research. Here, the Soviet-Western antithesis that was articulated in the Time article is expressed more forcefully as an antithesis between Lysenko’s denial of genes and the reality of genes. The article opens: It is the view of Trofim Lysenko, president of the Lenin Academy of Agricultural Sciences and leader of the current purge of Russian geneticists who agree with Western geneticists, that the gene which controls heredity is “just a figment of their [bourgeois scientists’] imagination.” The official Communist doctrine supports Lysenko’s idea that plants and animals are instead molded by their environment. (44)

As described in the previous section, Lysenko was a master at articulating views of heredity and agriculture that supported communist doctrine. Here, his denial of the reality of genes becomes an epitomizing figure of communist doctrine. With the denial of the gene articulated, the article then swiftly turns to assert the foundational status of the gene: West of the Iron Curtain the entire science of genetics rests on the concept of the gene. It is the unit carrier of hereditary characteristics, such as the blueness of the eye or the pattern of kernels in a corn cob. The gene is transmitted to the offspring through sperm and ovum, and nothing that happens to the parents during their lifetime (short of an atomic ray that gets right through to the gene itself) can affect the inheritance of the next generation. (44)

A foundational status is first assigned to the concept of the gene. In three sentences, the gene incrementally moves from being a concept to a unit carrier of characteristics and finally to being a thing in itself. In the final sentence, as something that can be transmitted unaltered, unless a ray gets to the thing itself, the expression of the gene takes advantage of the term’s metonymic tendency. (Recall that it was the flawed sense of heredity as transmission that Johannsen used as part of his call for the specialized terminology of genes.) Within two brief paragraphs, a controversy over the reality of the gene has been figured as an East-West conflict, with those east of the “Iron Curtain” represented by Lysekno’s view of the gene as a figment and those west of the curtain understanding the gene’s scientific value and its reality.

60

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

Lysenko and the figure of the gene do the figurative work of grounding the antithesis and making the contrast stand out in stark relief for a popular audience. Again, as in the Time article, a reference to the “gene” is doing more than referring to a scientific concept or a biological entity; it is performing the rhetorical work of laying claim to a material reality and opposing the ideological arguments of others. Though genes are fundamental to the science of genetics and though they stand in stark contrast to communist ideology, they have been, the article goes on to explain, invisible and elusive. The elusiveness of genes completes the exigency; the article can then move on to presenting a report of research that seems to harden the gene, or make it more undeniably real. The work of Daniel Pease, Richard Baker, and an electron microscope is framed as a potential scientific breakthrough with, the article suggests, the serendipitous effect of affirming the reality that the Soviets deny. In the end, the article makes a move to downgrade its own engagement in ideological warfare, using the conclusion to suggest that proving the Marxists wrong is really not as important as our own progress after all: If further research shows that these are beyond any doubt the actual genes of heredity, the California discovery will mean much more than settling any Marxist allegations about a “figment of the imagination.” It will enable geneticists to work more directly in the control of plant and animal evolution to provide better food supplies for the world. (44)

The body of the article explains, in fairly accessible terms, the preliminary research that Pease and Baker published the same week in the journal Science. Pease and Baker’s investigations involved using an electron microscope and analyzing electron micrographs—two-dimensional visual images profiling the densities of molecular materials. Electron micrography was, at the time, a rising field, supported largely by private and public research funds that were increasingly being redirected from physics research to biology and genetics research (Rasmussen). In other words, the images of electron micrographs held promise not only on the pages of Newsweek, but also for those influencing the institutional momentum of research at the time. Though Pease and Baker do not show up in most histories of genetics, the influence of electron micrographs certainly does. In the text of their Science article, titled “Preliminary Investigations of Chromosomes and Genes with the Electron Microscope,” Pease and Baker adopt a speculative and suggestive tone, interpreting areas of dense matter that appear on the micrographs as particles that may be identifiable, with further research, as genes. The Newsweek text is a bit more assertive, although not necessarily within the body of the article. Following the bold introduction establishing the ideological significance of Pease and Baker’s work, the connection between the genes of the opening paragraphs and the observations of

GENES ON MAIN STREET

61

the electron micrographs is expressed in a direct quote from Pease and Baker: “ ‘In view of these conclusions, it seems reasonable to believe that the discrete particles we have seen are genes’” (Newsweek 44; Pease and Baker 22). In the Newsweek article, the combination of the ideological introduction and the scientists’ suggestion powerfully presents the possibility that “West of the Iron Curtain,” the science of genetics was on the verge of seeing real genes. Three years later, researchers would benefit from electron micrography to identify the structure of DNA. The structure of DNA would cast light on how genes work, and indeed open up vast new fields of research. But it would also make the notion that one could see genes if they simply had a powerful enough microscope seem rather simplistic and naïve. In the next chapter I address the consequences of the structure of DNA on understandings of genes. Here, my point is to note how, within the text of the article, the gene is figured as a powerful cultural icon and as an icon that was on the verge of coming into view. The text is persuasive in figuring the gene. More persuasive, though, is the photograph accompanying the text (Figure 1). It shows Pease and Baker

FIGURE 1 Photo accompanying “Genes: Sliced and Pictured” (Newsweek, January 24, 1949, 44) (©University of Southern California University Archives)

62

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

posing in a research posture with an unidentified woman looking on. The photograph has the look of many cold-war era media photos, with a large piece of technological equipment (the “super-microscope”) occupying the center of the picture. The caption confirms the technological promise visible in the snapshot: “Through a super-microscope, Pease and Baker caught what may be genes.” One of the researchers in the photograph poses as if he is examining the equipment or the output of the equipment. A small inset picture suggests itself as what we might see if we looked through the super-microscope: an image of fuzzy elements (presumably chromosomes) in a circular frame (as if we are seeing it through the lens of a microscope) with a smaller dark circle calling attention to a little dark dot. The inset picture in the Newsweek article does not really look like the images of electron micrographs in Pease and Baker’s report in Science. But the picture does do the representative work of providing a suggestive and legible depiction of a technologically produced image of biological particles that may indeed be genes. In contrast to the speculative and suggestive tone of Pease and Baker, the bold circle on the picture makes a very strong claim. Though the connection is left unarticulated, this little dark dot is presumably a gene that may have been “caught” by the researchers using the microscope. The caption, photograph, and little dark dot on the micrograph together form a strongly suggestive argument about the material reality of the gene. From a contemporary perspective, the Newsweek photograph has the overly staged look of many media photographs of the cold war era. The neatand-tidy style of dress, the postures of scientists at work with a supportive woman looking on, and the prominence and promise of technology all appear rather quaint in retrospect. The figurative display of “what may be genes” strikes me as almost sweet, with its naïve and earnest embrace of modernistic hope and technological idealism. Read against a scientific context in which, as Herman Muller would put it a year later, “the real core of gene theory still appears to lie in the deep unknown,” the representation of the gene as on the verge of visibility seems a bold (and perhaps irresponsible) simplification for a popular audience. But the picture is not simply quaint or sweet, nor is it simplistic. A visual representation of scientific research, appearing in the popular press, antithesizing communist ideology, the picture is historically and culturally rich. It is legible as a site in the pre-digital hypertext of technoscience in the middle of the twentieth century. Following Donna Haraway’s figurative use of the Internet for mapping “the wealth of connections that constitute a specific, finite, material-semiotic universe called technoscience” (Modest 3), we can read the picture as a representative node amid cultural, historical, and narrative trends. Among the trends running through the picture are the importance of the promise of technology in the cold war era, the public disillusionment with physics after the atomic bomb driving a shift to the promise of genetics, the funding of big science in response to the cold war,

GENES ON MAIN STREET

63

the role of the popular media in affirming research directions, the troubling of gender in science and public institutions, and the influence of propaganda wars on the growing importance of being able to see genes. Borrowing Haraway’s Internet metaphor encourages me to see possibilities for reading both culturally and rhetorically. For a cultural reading, I take the picture as a starting point, reading outward to read/map the context of social, historical, and technoscientific forces. For a rhetorical reading, I see those hypertextual forces as holding the picture steady, providing a stable site for reading the rhetorical work, inside the text, of the figuring of the genes. The little circle in the picture is a figurative representation of “what may be genes,” and a visual metonymy of the cultural importance of materializing the gene. The figuring renders the gene as within reach of the scientists. Within the text, the figuring of the gene does the work of affirming a material foundation of truth, affirming a stable knowledge-making enterprise in opposition to the ideological foes represented by Lysenko. Though depicting what may be genes is a heavy-handed figurative move, it coincides with the figurative inclinations of the gene as an applicable little word that undeniably “covers a reality.” CONCLUSION

Though Johannsen established the “gene” to function as a specialized term apart from everyday language, by the late 1940s, before the concept had become affixed to the material of DNA, the “gene” had not only become part of the everyday vocabulary of popular media but was beginning to serve as an icon of material reality grounding an ideology of scientific progress. The Time and Newsweek articles call upon the gene to lay claim to the values of Western science and to oppose the ideological threat of communism and communist propaganda. In the Newsweek article, the gene is figured as a heretofore elusive entity, undeniably a reality, but a reality which has not yet been visible. The presentation of the gene is reinforcing the promise that genes are soon to be “as easily located as the houses on Main Street.” Clearly the impending visibility and impending reality of genes had become important outside the specialized research circles of geneticists, outside the dialectic between the instrumentalist and realist treatments of the gene. Though the material reality of genes had not been identified, both the Time and Newsweek articles rely on the thingness of genes to do the rhetorical work of opposing Soviet ideology. It is the metonymic function that Johannsen prescribed for genes, the function of claiming a material reality without having to define it, that allows the gene figure to work as a powerful rhetorical agent in the everyday language of the popular-press texts. In the discussion of the Time “Cut to Pattern” article, I alluded to the boundary work of antithesizing Western scientific realism and communist

64

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

propaganda as being analogous to the boundary work in Johannsen’s argument for the name “gene.” In Johannsen’s argument, the gene is introduced as the central foundational element grounding the genotype theory of heredity, introduced in part to “upset” the transmission conceptions of heredity and to disrupt the unreliable play of language and rhetoric. Similarly, in the Time article, the gene is presented as a centerpiece, or rather a foundational element, grounding the legitimacy of Western science. This foundational element opposes the illegitimate rhetorical forces of Soviet propaganda. The gene is not presented as a Western theory or viewpoint in opposition to a Soviet theory or viewpoint. Instead, the gene, in all its impending reality, is ushered in to undo the Soviet views and to disrupt the most insidious form of rhetoric. The analogy here is suggestive of the rhetorical boundary work that genes can do. In the next chapter I pursue this suggestiveness further by considering genes doing a different kind of boundary work—not boundary work that is merely analogous to boundary work within Johannsen’s text but boundary work that is an integral part of genes as scientific and rhetorical objects.

5

Genes, Figures, Things, Objects

The more molecular biologists learn about genes, the less sure they seem to become of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but also, the gene has become curiously intangible . . . genes begin to look like hardly definable temporary products of a cell’s physiology. Often they have become amorphous entities of unclear existence ready to vanish into the genomic or developmental background at any time. —Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger

IN CHAPTER FOUR, I considered examples of “genes” in the popular press.

At a time when the nature and materiality of genes were unsettled among geneticists, the gene started to function in the “every-day” setting of the popular press as a “useful little word” that “covers a reality.” The genes in the popular press articles do work that is analogous to the work that Johannsen set up his “genes” to do four decades earlier. Johannsen’s genes, figured as material realities, were introduced to upset competing theories and untrustworthy tropes. Similarly, the examples of the cold war popular-press articles show that the metonymic function of genes lends well to the ideological work of asserting and affirming the values of Western science, especially in opposition to the most iniquitous forms of rhetoric: propaganda. In this chapter, instead of seeing everyday genes as analogous to scientific genes, I seek to connect them by theorizing genes as rhetorical objects— objects that move from scientific to everyday contexts and back again. To do so, I consider genes in light of theories, from multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, of rhetorical figures, boundary objects, and epistemic things. After calling upon these theories, I turn to the mid-century scientific papers of James Watson and Francis Crick. Wastson and Crick’s analysis of the structure of DNA is often cited as a watershed moment in shifting understandings of genes. Though their work had profound implications for the understandings of genes (and for the way histories of genes are

65

66

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

told), in their papers Watson and Crick do not address the gene as an object of scientific inquiry as much as they call upon the persuasive rhetorical functions of the gene to make claims for the importance of their research. Watson and Crick’s papers then provides an opportunity for linking theories of epistemic things—especially useful in the historical and social analysis of science—with theories of rhetorical figures. GENES AS RHETO RICAL FIGURES

In establishing the name “gene,” Johannsen figured it to function as a material reality whose nature was to be left undefined. In making a case for his new terminology, Johannsen suggested: “the ‘gene’ is nothing but a very applicable little word” (132–133, emphasis added). But the twentieth-century history of the gene as a scientific concept, genes as material things, and genes as cultural icons invite us to recognize that the “gene” has all the power of a very applicable little word. Even within the context of his extended argument for a new vocabulary in support of the genotype conception of history, we saw that Johannsen invested in “genes” a powerful argument about how to reason about genes and about relationships among biological material, knowledge, and language. Johannsen introduced the “gene” as an epitome of his larger argument, or set of arguments, that he outlined in “The Genotype Conception of Heredity.” In figuring it to function as a metonymy, he made the gene a very applicable little summary of an argument for talking about genetic factors in terms of material realities and affirming the reality underlying Mendelian research. In outlining the guidelines and limits for its usage, particularly the need to resist hypotheses as to its nature, Johannsen was also summarizing his more extended arguments about separating scientific and everyday language, managing hypotheses, and using language to manage the known and unknown of genetics. Saying that it epitomizes a more extended argument, I am describing the gene in terms of Jeanne Fahnstock’s sense of rhetorical figures in science. In her extensive analysis, Rhetorical Figures in Science, Fahnestock demonstrates the work of rhetorical figures in shaping and stabilizing knowledge within scientific contexts. The rhetorical figures (e.g., antimetabole, antithesis, gradatio, incrementum, etc.) function as “technologies of reasoning” in that they epitomize lines of reasoning. Just as a metaphor epitomizes an analogy, the figures epitomize patterns of reasoning. Fahnestock explains the notion of epitomizing a line of reasoning as similar to abstracting: What does it mean to say that a verbal figure epitomizes a line of reasoning? An epitome, from the Greek verb meaning “to cut short or cut upon,” is in one sense a summary, an abstract containing all the essential parts of a larger

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

67

work or text, and in a slightly different sense, it is a representative or exemplary selection from and then substitution for something longer. The figure, then, is a verbal summary that epitomizes a line of reasoning. It is a condensed or even diagram-like rendering of the relationship among a set of terms, a relationship that constitutes the argument and that could be expressed at a greater length. (Figures 24)

It is in the stylistic concision of a recognizable figure that a pattern of reasoning or scientific argument can gain great force. Fahnestock examines a range of scientific arguments, contemporary and historical, to show that, by epitomizing lines of argument, rhetorical figures are integral to the construction of scientific thought. She shows, for example, the work of antitheses pushing concepts apart, especially forceful in anatomy and physiology studies of males and females in which observable differences become the material for “constructing the male/female antithesis as an either/or cut rather than as a difference in degree on a connected scale” (80). Other examples demonstrate the work of incremental figures (incrementum and gradatio) giving shape to arguments in paleontology and evolutionary studies. In her discussion of incremental figures, Fahnestock notes the work that the figures can do in making a case for the existence of something that is not yet known. “In addition to forming a series to support a claim, an arguer can also present an incomplete series along with a principle of series formation, implicit or explicit, and argue a new member or members into place” (102). For example, the periodic table of elements, which was initially an incomplete series arranging the chemical elements into an ordered and overlapping series, was both an argument for a natural system of elements and an argument for the existence of unknown elements (103). The periodic table is a strong example for calling attention to the force of incremental reasoning and the power of figures in harnessing the force of reasoning in the construction of scientific knowledge. By focusing on how antithesis, antimetabole, and incrementum and gradatio work to epitomize lines of reasoning, Fahnestock shows how rhetorical figures can work to direct inquiry. In some cases, as with the periodic table, figures lead researchers in productive directions. In other cases, as with gendered antitheses, figures can keep researchers from seeing competing explanations and other relationships. Much like the classical figures that Fahnestock examines, Johannsen’s gene epitomizes an argument or line of reasoning. But, although the name was established before the thing, and therefore held open a place for the new knowledge to emerge, the “gene” was not a placeholder in the same sense as that of an element missing from the periodic table. In figuring the gene to function as a yet-to-be-specified material reality that is “evident from Mendelism” and that is the fundamental unit of a “genotype” (“A ‘genotype’

68

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

is the sum total of all the ‘genes’ in a gamete or in a zygote”), Johannsen introduced a term to work as a condensed rendering of the relationships among a set of terms, a shorthand for “the relationship that could be expressed at greater length.” The gene was introduced as, to use Fahnestock’s language, a “verbal summary that epitomizes a line of reasoning.” Fahnestock’s insights into the work of rhetorical figures in the development of scientific knowledge illuminate the significance of Johannsen’s figuring of the “gene.” As an epitome of Johannsen’s extended argument, the gene did become a “very applicable little word,” with all the force of a rhetorical figure. But the “gene” is not a rhetorical figure like an antithesis, or a gradation, is a rhetorical figure. It is not a generic rhetorical device. It does not get catalogued in handbooks of rhetoric; it is not something that students learn to use in a general writing class. Its primary identity is in the life sciences. Yet, even though the gene’s authoritative home, or the place where its literal definitions are managed, is in the life sciences, its rhetorical and cultural work extends far beyond the life sciences. The articles examined in the previous chapter provide an early example of genes doing rhetorical work in a nonscientific context. The cultural vitality of the “gene” prompts me to extend the significance that Fahnestock identifies for her insights into the work of figures. To explain what I mean, I turn to Fahnestock’s articulation of the significance of studying the work of rhetorical figures in science. Ironically, she calls upon “genes” as metaphors to make her case: The difference between the sciences and other disciplines is a real difference then, but it does not occur in the basic tactics of argument; these are used by everyone. What Richard Dawkins has written of selfish genes could be said as well of these verbal and conceptual devices, that they leap “like immortal chamois from body to body,” or from text to text and mind to mind, “down the ages.” They are continuous across centuries, texts, and disciplines in a far richer way than the well-advertised metaphoric nature of some scientific cases. The extent of continuity demonstrated in the following study in the tactics of using opposites, series, reversals, and repetitions is intended as an illustration of the common stuff of human reasoning. (44)

For Fahnestock, genes are not rhetorical figures; they are biological things that provide a convenient metaphor for articulating how figures of speech, as the common stuff of human reasoning, show up in all contexts and continue to do the work that they have always done. It is a great metaphor. But it also opens another door, perhaps inadvertently, for considering not just the role of rhetorical figures in guiding scientific reasoning but also the role of rhetorical figurings in extending the life of scientific objects as they move from text to text and context to context. In Johannsen’s text, we saw that the figuring became part of the “gene” construct. As “genes” move across disciplinary contexts and into public con-

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

69

texts, they bring with them at least some of the rhetorical figuring that was part of their initial design. Thus, it is not only the “common stuff of human reasoning” that leaps and jumps from text to text and context to context, but it is also the specialized stuff of Johannsen’s reasoning that moves with the figure of the gene. GENES AS BOUNDARY OBJECTS

To get a sense of the knowledge-making work and rhetorical work of the “gene” as it moves from text to text and context to context, I turn here to consider the gene in the theoretical terms of boundary objects and epistemic things. In the previous chapter, I mentioned that, in the first half of the century, not all researchers working with the gene concept shared a common perspective regarding what kind of scientific object the gene was. To some, the gene was an applicable little word, useful in the study of genetics. To others, it was an object of research—an unknown that research purposed to bring into the known. In 1953, with the publication of Watson and Crick’s famous papers on the structure and function of DNA, many questions about the function of genes—especially how they were duplicated and how they maintained stability—were settled. The double-helix model of DNA was able to provide mechanistic explanations for functions ascribed to the concept of the gene. But the identification of DNA did not stop the gene from being different things, or having different meanings, in different research contexts. In fact, the model of DNA did more to open up new research perspectives than it did to create any consensus on how best to view genes and talk about them. Following the identification of DNA, genes became objects of research in cellular development; they continued to be objects of research in molecular biology; they became units of communication and units of information (Kay); and they continued to function as useful terms (regardless of the specificity they were acquiring elsewhere) in classical genetics research and population studies. As historian of science Hans-Jorg Rheinberger puts it in his discussion of the meanings of genes across the life sciences, “if we screen the pertinent literature, there appears to be no singular, unique, and rigidly determined usage of the term. What we find is context dependence” (223). To trace the history of genes within and across the disciplines of the life sciences is to see that genes are exemplary boundary objects. That is, in the words of Susan Leigh Star and James Griesemer, they are “both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them” (387). Star and Griesemer develop the concept of boundary objects to help account for how knowledge is made in practice by diverse groups of actors with diverse viewpoints. Boundary objects are those things (sometimes material, sometimes abstract, sometimes both) that allow for cooperation among

70

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

diverse groups without necessitating consensus about meanings, viewpoints, or goals. The notion of boundary objects (along with similar theoretical concepts in social studies of science, such as Haraway’s material-semiotic objects [1997], Bruno Latour’s immutable mobiles [1990], and Rheinberger’s epistemic things) has become very important and influential in social and cultural studies of science, for it allows for understanding the production of knowledge without assuming a community of homogeneous interests. For understanding the rhetorical work of genes, the concept of boundary objects is helpful because it illuminates the knowledge-making significance of the gene as a flexibly defined thing. It can prepare us for reading genes (and other authoritative scientific objects) rhetorically, keeping our attention on the rhetorical work that they do. Reading with the notion of boundary objects close to the fore means that we need not defer the ultimate meaning of genes to an authoritative space that may or may not hold a singular and precise definition. Rheinberger examines the gene as a boundary object within molecular biology. In “Gene Concepts: Fragments from the Perspective of Molecular Biology,” he characterizes “the historical and disciplinary trajectory of gene representations as the trajectory of an exemplar of a boundary object.” With this characterization, he argues for recognizing the epistemological significance of imprecise concepts. Rheinberger urges historians and science studies scholars not to see the flexibility and apparent imprecision of the gene concept as an invitation to find the precision: “it is not the task of the epistemologist either to criticize or try to specify vague concepts in the hope of helping scientists clarify their convoluted minds and do better science with them.” Rather, Rheinberger sees the gene as a call for a better understanding for the importance of understanding “how and why fuzzy concepts work in science.” Or, as he continues: “Instead of trying to codify precision of meaning we need an epistemology of the vague and the exuberant” (222). Rheinberger emphasizes that the imprecision, or what others have termed the “uncertainty” (Hedgecoe), surrounding the concept of the gene is not anomalous to the production of scientific knowledge but rather epitomizes an important component of knowledge making as a process of moving from what is not known to what is known. In support of his view of knowledge making, Rheinberger has introduced the notion of epistemic things. I quote at length from his study The History of Epistemic Things for a general sense of epistemic things: They are material entities or processes—physical structures, chemical reactions, biological functions—that constitute the objects of inquiry. As epistemic objects, they present themselves in a characteristic, irreducible vagueness. This vagueness is inevitable because, paradoxically, epistemic things embody what one does not yet know. Scientific objects have the precarious

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

71

status of being absent in their experimental presence; they are not simply hidden things to be brought to light through sophisticated manipulations. A mixture of hard and soft, like Serres’s vails, they are “object, still, sign, already; sign, still, object, already.” With Bruno Latour, we can claim it to be characteristic for the sciences in action that “the new object, at the time of its inception, is still undefined. [At] the time of its emergence, you cannot do better than explain what the new object is by repeating the list of its constitutive actions. [The] proof is that if you add an item to the list you redefine the object, that is, you give it a new shape.” (History 28–29)

I refer interested readers to Rheinberger’s essay, and the volume in which it appears (Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger), for a thorough analysis of the gene as an epistemic thing and for details regarding definitions, redefinitions, and changes in shape of the gene in the history of the life sciences. Here, it is the perspective of the gene as an epistemic thing, as productive in the sciences because of its imprecision and lack of specificity, that is of interest. The perspective of the gene as an epistemic thing enables us— when examining a scientific text or a not-so-scientific text—to focus on the rhetorical work of the “gene,” without getting caught in the entanglement of what genes really are outside of the text. Or, not getting caught in thinking of genes, or any other scientific objects, as hidden things “to be brought to light through sophisticated manipulations” or visible only to scientists. For Rheinberger, “epistemic things” and “boundary objects” are overlapping terms. Both terms are instructive for getting a grip on how the “gene”—as a fusion of an argument, a material thing, a useful concept, and an object of inquiry—moves from one disciplinary context to another, from one context of inquiry to another, and from one rhetorical context to another. When Rheinberger labels the things that “constitute the objects of inquiry” as epistemic things, the label emphasizes his concerns with building a theory of scientific epistemology. But I’d like to return to Star and Griesemer’s account of boundary objects to emphasize the social work that such plastic objects do in maintaining disciplinary, social, and institutional boundaries. Star and Griesemer develop the concept of “boundary objects” as a necessary companion for methods of standardization in their case study of the formation of a research museum in the early 1900s. Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, as an instance in which diverse (and sometimes competing) interests and practices successfully came together to form a scientific institution, provides a model for what Star and Griesemer call “institutional ecology.” The combination of standardized methods (where precision and consistency reside) and boundary objects (which allow for translation and multiplicity of meaning) of the research museum offer a model of scientific knowledge making that accounts for coherency amid an institutional ecology.

72

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

In the case of the Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, the first director, Joseph Grinnell, expressed the goal of founding the institution as “to establish a center of authority” (Star and Griesemer 398). To achieve this goal, Grinnell set out to standardize the methods of collecting and storing specimens, as well as the methods of collecting and storing information about the specimens. He devised a detailed cataloguing scheme and mandated consistency and accuracy. In his words, “Any facts, specimen, or record left out of order is lost. It had, perhaps, better not exist, for it is taking space somewhere; and space is the chief cost initially and currently in any museum.” The precise set of procedures that Grissell and his staff developed for collecting and curating specimens allowed these specimens to be transformed into a reliable information resource and knowledge-making technology. But as Star and Griesemer point out, “standardizing methods is different from standardizing theory” (407). And we might add: standardizing methods is different from standardizing meaning. The boundary objects are the things that, in their flexibility and nonstandardized ways, work in conjunction with the standardized methods. “In natural history work, boundary objects are produced when sponsors, theorists and amateurs collaborate to produce representations of nature. Among these objects are specimens, field notes, museums and maps of particular territories” (407). A natural history “specimen” goes through multiple translations on its way to the museum; it gets translated from its place in an ecosystem, to a trapper’s goal, to a unit of economic exchange between a trapper and a collector, to a representation of a species, to a resource for data, and so on. It passes through social worlds, economic systems, and data processing, taking on new shapes and relationships in each domain. But the meaning of the specimen never becomes fixed to any one of those worlds. As boundary objects, the specimens “have different meanings in different social worlds but their structure is common enough to more than one world to make them recognizable, a means of translation. The creation and management of boundary objects is a key process in developing and maintaining coherence across intersecting social worlds” (Star and Griesemer 393). The extent to which the boundary object can take on and discard different meanings, without demanding a consensus of meaning, is the extent to which the boundaries between worlds can be maintained. The boundary work articulated by Star and Griesemer is a social phenomenon. From a perspective of rhetorical criticism, it may appear as a passive boundary work. If an object is flexible, it does not demand consensus. If it does not demand consensus, differences can coexist and boundaries can be maintained. We can see this with the gene; as a boundary object it contributes to the maintenance of disciplinary boundaries. The evolutionary biologist, the molecular biologist, and the pharmaceutical researcher can each call upon their own concept of the gene, benefiting from the different

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

73

definitions and uses of genes, without ever having to reconcile those differences, and thus without ever having to challenge the disciplinary boundaries that separate their work. This social boundary work is a bit different from the rhetorical boundary work that Johannsen engages in when he asserts a place for the gene inside the boundary of the specialized language of science. Or the rhetorical boundary work of the popular press examples of the previous chapter in which the gene figures in the assertion of boundaries between communism and Western science. In the section that follows I consider the work of the gene as both a boundary object and rhetorical figure in a landmark text in the history of gene studies. WATSON AND CRICK, THE GENE, AND DNA

The gene as a boundary object, or as an epistemic thing, has accommodated a range of articulations and uses across a range of disciplines. I have left aside the particularities of the different articulations and uses. Here, though, I consider a moment that is widely recognized as a watershed moment in its effects on the range of epistemic functions of genes. When James Watson and Francis Crick proposed the double-helix structure as a model of DNA, they provided a mechanistic explanation for the self-copying capacity of genetic material. It is this explanation that is often credited with fixing the connection between genes and DNA. The DNA model provided the gene with the most material definition it had yet to acquire. The DNA model altered the genetic landscape for good, but it did not stop the gene from thriving as a vital epistemic thing. It did not take away the capacity of the “gene” to be both flexible and robust. In James Watson’s autobiographical account The Double Helix, the “gene” is a driving force; the quest to find the gene provided both the initiative and the momentum for identifying the structure of DNA. The narrative function of the gene in Watson’s account drives a great discovery but has the effect of downplaying the epistemic changes that were brought about by the model that he constructed with Francis Crick. Below, I juxtapose the narrative work of the “gene” in Watson’s account with other historical accounts of the consequences of the DNA model for the study of genes. In the section that follows, I turn to Watson and Crick’s scientific papers to examine how the gene figures in their arguments. The story of the “race to the double helix,” or the drive to identify and lay claim to the structure of DNA, is one of the most publicized dramas of scientific research of the twentieth century. The story—starring James Watson and Francis Crick and co-starring Maurice Wilkins, A. R. Stokes, H. R. Wilson, Rosalind Franklin, and R. G. Gosling—tells of powerful personalities, gender dynamics, the play between cooperation and competition, the production of knowledge at the intersections of specialized disciplines, and

74

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

shrewd rhetorical strategizing. It is also a story of a “discovery” whose importance and significance preceded it. That importance and significance can conveniently (though somewhat figuratively) be summarized as the pursuit of the gene. Watson, in his scientific memoir, accounts for his own interest in DNA: Then it was 1951, before I knew of Francis Crick’s existence. Already I was much involved with DNA, since I was in Europe on a postdoctoral fellowship to learn its biochemistry. My interest in DNA had grown out of a desire, first picked up while a senior in college, to learn what the gene was. (22)

The importance of the gene figures prominently in Watson’s tale of how he got to the Cavendish Lab at Cambridge University, where he worked with Crick modeling DNA. In graduate school he is driven by the quest for the gene, but bored by the prospect of studying chemistry (“it was my hope that the gene might be solved without my learning any chemistry”). As a postdoctoral fellow, he first travels to Copenhagen, where he is assigned to work with the biochemist Herman Kalckar. The work, however, does not interest him because he could not see how it would “lead to anything of immediate interest to genetics” (24). He is happy to leave because “it was equally obvious that I had not done anything which was going to tell us what a gene was or how it reproduced” (25). And on he goes, disappointed by all research that does not focus on the gene until he gets to the Cavendish Lab, of which he writes, “From my first day in the lab I knew I would not leave Cambridge for a long time. Departing would be idiocy, for I had immediately discovered the fun of talking to Francis Crick. . . . Our lunch conversations quickly centered on how genes were put together” (37). The quest to find out “what a gene was or how it reproduced” provides a narrative drive for Watson’s story of how he and Crick came to study DNA. It is especially effective within the rhetorical context of a scientist’s memoir written for a general audience. The quest for the gene provides a compelling and coherent story of how and why Watson and Crick worked so doggedly to identify the structure of DNA. But Watson does not go into any details about functional properties of genes nor does he describe his own theoretical stance on genes and their biological significance. The most striking characteristic of genes, or the constraining definition, within Watson’s story is its self-replication, “that is, the ability of a gene to be exactly copied when the chromosome number doubles during cell division” (84). More important though, within the story, the gene functions as if it is a name for a placeholder, like a place on the periodic table, for a still-unknown element or as if is one of those “hidden things to be brought to light through sophisticated manipulations” (Rheinberger 28). In other words, the “genes” in the story are compelling, but they do not necessarily do justice to the life of the gene as an epistemic thing.

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

75

This is not to say that the link that Watson and Crick established between genes and DNA is not a compelling moment in the history of genes and genetics. As Evelyn Fox Keller puts it, “Watson and Crick’s achievement stands unrivaled in the annals of twentieth century biology” (23). That achievement is founded on the model’s ability to account for the self-replication of genes, thus affixing for good the concept of the gene to the material of DNA. But it did not settle, once and for all, what a gene really is and how it really works. The DNA model provided an explanation for how genes “could be exactly copied when the chromosome number doubles during cell division,” but it did not reconcile all the different perspectives on genes or the different uses of the term. Far from settling the issue of what a gene is, the research that focused on DNA made the understandings of genes all the more complex. Keller, in The Century of the Gene, shows that molecular biology research that followed the breakthrough of the double helix proceeded to disrupt prior understandings of the gene, especially prior understandings that held the gene as a discrete, self-stabilizing, self-replicating, and autonomous biological unit. Keller argues that the biological work that had come to be associated with the concept of the gene prior to Watson and Crick’s announcement progressively came to be seen as part of “a highly orchestrated dynamic process requiring the participation of a large number of enzymes organized into complex metabolic networks that regulate and ensure both the stability of the DNA molecule and its fidelity in replication” (31). Or, as Robert Haynes put it, “The stability of genes is now seen to be more a matter of biochemical dynamics, than of the molecular ‘statics’ of DNA structure. The genetic machinery of the cell provides the most striking example known of a highly reliable, dynamic system built from vulnerable and unreliable parts” (Keller 31). Even the “essential operation required of genetic material, that of selfduplication” could no longer be attributed wholly to DNA (and, thus, not to the gene itself): In fact, left to its own devices, DNA cannot even copy itself: DNA replication will simply not proceed in the absence of the enzymes required to carry out the process. Moreover, DNA is not intrinsically stable: its integrity is maintained by a panoply of proteins involved in forestalling or repairing copying mistakes, spontaneous breakage, and other kinds of damage incurred in the process of replication. (Keller 26)

In other words, the unstated premise of Watson and Crick’s claim to the significance of DNA was, in fact, disrupted and dissolved by the work that followed their work. Raphael Falk uses the term “hardening of the gene” to refer to the trend in the 1930s and 1940s of the growing commitment among a growing number of geneticists to the idea that the gene was indeed a material thing (and

76

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

that it mattered that it was a material thing). But Falk’s analysis also suggests, along with Keller’s, that if the first half of the century of gene studies can be characterized as the hardening of the gene, then the second half could be characterized as the dissolution (if not the disillusion) of the gene. The growing understanding of the complex network of systems that emerged in the second half of the twentieth century is what leads to the Alice-in-Wonderland type of explanation of genes with which I opened this chapter. For a closer look, I repeat it here: The more molecular biologists learn about genes, the less sure they seem to become of what a gene really is. Knowledge about the structure and functioning of genes abounds, but also, the gene has become curiously intangible . . . genes begin to look like hardly definable temporary products of a cell’s physiology. Often they have become amorphous entities of unclear existence ready to vanish into the genomic or developmental background at any time. (Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger x)

What this means is not that the gene is some otherworldly entity of science fiction but that the actions, attributes, functions, and explanatory power of genes are not to be found in a single thing or a single process but in a network of processes. What this also means, especially for a rhetorical study of genes, is that the difference between figurative genes and literal genes (or between popular gene references and scientific gene references) is not the difference between imprecise language and precise language. Rather, both scientific arguments and cultural arguments rely on the rhetorical flexibility of the term. THE GENE IN THE ARGUMENT FO R DNA

Above, I considered Watson’s account of the gene in his memoir. In an account written to be accessible to a range of readers who do not necessarily have a background in the specialized terms of genetics research, it makes sense that the writer would call upon the figurative uses of genes to provide coherence for a story. But Watson and Crick’s use of “genes” in establishing the significance of their model within their scientific papers is surprisingly similar to Watson’s use in his memoir. In this section, I consider the rhetorical work of “genes” in Watson and Crick’s papers. The rhetorical work of genes in these landmark texts suggests that the gene’s ability to function as a potent claim to significance is not an antecedent to the materiality of genes, but rather an integral part of the history of the materiality of genes. If you read through Watson and Crick’s published papers on the double helix you will get a good sense of the model and how it works. And you’ll get a really satisfying explanation of how the base pairs of DNA can be copied. But you will be left with the question of what a gene actually is. Just as in

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

77

Johannsen’s 1909 address, the “gene” in Watson and Crick’s papers is undeniably real, but its specificity remains undefined, out of reach of the paper. Watson and Crick published the first report of their model—“A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid”—in the journal Nature. It was a strategic move to place their first announcement in Nature, a journal that publishes relatively quickly and reaches a broad and general scientific audience (Halloran 40). The paper was brief, only one page long, presenting the key features of the model. It was followed, one month later, by their more detailed report “Genetic Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” also published in Nature, and a year later by “The Complementary Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. In the first paper, Watson and Crick do not use the term “gene.” There is, however, one shrewdly placed reference to “genetic material.” At the very end of the paper, they coyly suggest the significance of their model, stating, “It has not escaped our notice that the specific pairing we have postulated immediately suggests a possible copying mechanism for the genetic material” (“Structure” 737). This statement S. Michael Halloran cites as a prime example of the self-consciously genteel tone contributing to Watson and Crick’s rhetorical effect of communicating “a sense of supreme confidence” (“Birth” 42). Watson, in his memoir, comments on the line: “For a while Francis wanted to expand our note to write at length about the biological implications. But finally he saw the point to a short remark and constructed the sentence” (139). The short remark was indeed effective in affixing the notion of genetic material to the molecule of DNA, for securing notoriety, as well as for gesturing toward the papers to follow, in which Watson and Crick detail that “possible copying mechanism.” In the second paper, they make the claim about the significance of DNA for materializing genes more explicit. They open their paper, “Genetic Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid,” with this paragraph: The importance of deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) within living cells is undisputed. It is found in all dividing cells, largely if not entirely in the nucleus, where it is an essential constituent of the chromosomes. Many lines of evidence indicate that it is the carrier of a part of (if not all) the genetic specificity of the chromosomes and thus of the gene itself. Until now, however, no evidence has been presented to show how it might carry out the essential operation required of a genetic material, that of exact self-duplication. (964–965, emphasis added)

As a paper published in Nature, the text adheres to the guidelines of the genre of the scientific article. The opening paragraph is where the authors position the research in a larger scientific context and make a case for the significance

78

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

of the work. The reference to the “gene” is an important component in establishing the claim for significance. As the paragraph moves toward the significance of the findings, it moves from DNA to genetic specificity, to genes, to the “essential operation of genetic material.” First, DNA is important because it is located in all living cells, “where it is an essential constituent of the chromosomes.” Then, this importance is extended to the suggestion that DNA is the carrier of the “gene itself.” The notion that the gene is there, right there on the DNA, seems to be supported by “lines of evidence.” But the evidence is not complete. In the next sentence we see that Watson and Crick are presenting their explanation of the DNA model as the necessary evidence, the smoking gun, for proving that DNA is the carrier of genes. In establishing a claim to significance, Watson and Crick have relied on the claim to significance of the “gene itself.” At the same time they have configured the gene, reducing it to an essential operation of self-duplication. The term “gene” is not used again until the last line of the final paragraph of the article—a position in the genre of the scientific article that allows for more speculative and less empirically constrained claims. In the closing section of scientific papers, the authors reinforce claims about the significance of their work and gesture toward research that ought to follow. True to the genre, Watson and Crick adopt a more speculative tone here: For the moment, the general scheme we have proposed for the reproduction of deoxyribonucleic acid must be regarded as speculative. . . . Despite these uncertainties we feel that our proposed structure for deoxyribonucleic acid may help to solve one of the fundamental biological problems—the molecular basis of the template needed for genetic replication. The hypothesis we are suggesting is that the template is the pattern of bases formed by one chain of the deoxyribonucleic acid and that the gene contains a complementary pair of such templates. (“Implications” 171)

Just as the paper began with the “gene” as a link to the greater significance of the research, the paper ends with the “gene.” The “gene” does not show up in body of the article. The gene does not figure into the research results. It does, however, figure in the appeal to a sense of importance for the research. The paper does not really provide us with a grip on what genes are and what genes do (except replicate themselves). But it does confirm the way the gene works as an argument for significance. As in Watson’s memoir, the questions of what a gene is and what it does create a narrative drive for the Nature article. But the text does not necessarily provide a final answer to these questions; the text does not remove the “gene” from the contingencies of language, rhetoric, and epistemic perspectives. In a text that had profound effects on the study of genes, the most palpable sense of genes is that they are real and very significant.

GENES, FIGURES, THINGS, OBJECTS

79

Watson and Crick’s paper was the scientific paper that is widely cited as having firmly affixed the concept of genes to the material of DNA. That newfound materiality permanently and profoundly altered what Raphael Falk calls the genetic landscape. But it did not reduce the genetic landscape to the study of DNA. Rather, the material of DNA opened up new possibilities for studies of genes as components of complex biological processes. The association with DNA did not curb the life of the gene as an epistemic thing; it did not take away the flexibility of the term or of the concept. At such a key moment in the history of the gene as an epistemic thing, Watson’s and Crick’s use of the “gene” to make a claim for the significance of their work brings together the epistemic value of the gene as “adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them” and the rhetorical work of the gene figured as an authoritative claim on a material (though unspecified) reality. Though their findings and their texts had such a profound effect on scientific understandings of genes, Watson and Crick do not address the gene as an object of inquiry but rather call upon the gene as a persuasive rhetorical figure, a figure that epitomizes an argument about the materiality, reality, and centrality of genes.

6

Figuratively Speaking: Genes, Sexuality, and the Authority of Science

IN WOMAN: AN INTIMATE GEOGRAPHY, science writer Natalie Angier references the “gay gene” not as worthy of serious attention, nor even as deserving critique, but rather as an example of a dubious phrase. It is, to Angier, a quintessential example of bogus science talk. It is a phrase that, along with similar constructions like the “I.Q. gene,” epitomizes the specious fusion of cultural tensions and biological references. Angier’s “intimate geography” is an exploration of the semiotic possibilities and explanatory powers of anatomy, physiology, and biological systems of females and males across species. Her study is designed to work against biological determinism. Her text counteracts the strong currents in popular science writing that use examples of biological research to posit an undeniable source of meaning and to normalize gender differences, sexuality, and class differences. Instead, Angier examines a wide range of biology studies, using them to disrupt stereotypical narratives, to open up new possibilities for the cultural meanings of biology and the meanings of gender. Angier’s territory includes contemporary research from all areas of the life sciences, including medical research, primate studies, evolutionary biology, animal behavior studies, and molecular biology. But the territory is not boundless. It has its limits. Angier calls attention to those limits in a discussion of the peptide hormone oxytocin. She does so by relying on the constructions of “gay genes” and “intelligence genes” as recognizable markers of the end of the territory of meaningful discussions of biology: “Oxytocin has been called the love hormone. It’s a dopy, wishful phrase, so patently reductionist that, like the terms the gay gene and the intelligence gene, it hardly deserves being gainsaid. Still, oxytocin may be a player in the sensation of love” (339). The “gay gene” is a useful marker for identifying the edge of reasonable and meaningful discourse. It is precisely because it can mark the edge of the territory of a book like Angier’s, the edge of productive and meaningful discourse

81

82

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

about biology and genetics, that I find the dopy, patently reductionist “gay gene” worthy of attention as a rhetorical object. In this chapter I examine the figuring of gay genes in the popular press. I share a sense that these figures mark the edge of reasonable discourse about biology and sexuality. I have no intention of reviving them or of trying to move them back into the territory of productive topoi for rethinking cultural narratives of sexuality or gender. I do, however, see them as doing interesting work on the borders, not just marking the boundaries between legitimate science and the figurative play of popular culture, but actually reinforcing those boundaries. Though, in the 1990s, a number of studies at reputable research institutes were designed to examine the possibilities of biological explanations of sexuality, the term “gay gene” was largely a construction of the popular press. “Gay genes” are pronounced most forcefully on the covers of popular newsmagazines, somewhat more cautiously within the texts of magazine articles, and rather elusively within the texts of peer-reviewed science journals. In this chapter, I examine the rhetorical work of “gay genes” on the covers and within the texts of magazine articles. I pay attention to the figuring of the gene as a material reality. I am less concerned, here, with the possibilities of the gene as a material reality than I am with the figurative play of the gene when it is working simultaneously as an overtly figurative gesture and as a reference to a material reality. I am more concerned with what the figuring does to confirm boundaries of legitimate and authoritative discourse. In this chapter, in addition to examining how the gay gene is figured in the popular press, I also track the gay gene as a boundary object moving across boundaries within texts and between texts. In chapter five, I considered Star and Griesemer’s theory of boundary objects as a means for appreciating the importance of the flexibility of the meaning of the gene and for theorizing the gene as a rhetorical object. Recall that boundary objects—“both adaptable to different viewpoints and robust enough to maintain identity across them”— allow for cooperation among social groups or institutions without necessitating consensus about meaning, viewpoints, or goals (184). When a boundary object moves from one context to another its meaning is translated; the contexts themselves do not have to change or come to a consensus of viewpoints or goals. In this chapter, I draw on Star and Griesemer’s theory of boundary objects as a strategy for reading the rhetorical work of genes within articles in the popular press. I examine how popular-press reports on genes represent a translation from one context to another. The representation of translations of gene from a scientific context to a public context allows for the image of a boundary to be maintained between scientific contexts and public contexts. But the boundary between scientific discourse and public discourse is not only an image of a boundary. The translation is not merely represented within texts. It is also a process that we can see taking place across texts and across

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

83

genres. In the final section of this chapter I examine the movement, or in Star and Griesemer’s terms the translation, of a gene from within a peerreviewed scientific text to a popular-press text. In the peer-reviewed scientific text, the gene is the white gene (w), a familiar object of study in drosophila research; in the popular press it is the “gay gene.” Tracking this particular gene as a boundary object within and across texts allows us to consider the kinds of boundaries that the genes in general help to maintain. A PREVIEW

One of the earliest popular press articles to publicize research of homosexuality and genes was an article titled “Born or Bred: The Origins of Homosexuality,” published as the cover story of Newsweek on February 24, 1992. Two research projects—one examining the hypothalamus of gay and straight men, another surveying sexuality among twin brothers—had recently been published in scientific journals. The “Born or Bred” article is a six-page review of responses and critiques that followed the two publications. The promotional material for the article—that is, the magazine cover and the preview that appears on the contents page of the magazine—offers a convenient entry point for examining the figuring of the gay gene in the popular press of the 1990s. As the cover story, the prime layout space and font size accorded the article is significant. It is promoted on the magazine cover with a picture of a baby and the provocation: “Is This Child Gay? Born or Bred: The Origins of Homosexuality.” The contents page figures an answer to the question. The origin of the answer, if not the origins of homosexuality, is figured as emerging from somewhere inside the credentialed space of science. Visually commanding the contents page is a picture of one of the researchers examining a model of a DNA molecule (Figure 2). The caption reads: “B.U.’s Dr. Richard Pillard suspects that heredity drives sexuality.” Thus, before we see the text, we are faced with the image of a credentialed expert pondering the material representation of biological heredity. Below this picture is an abstract or promotional representation of the article: Two new studies seem to find the origins of homosexuality in genetics, not parenting. But the research has only intensified, not resolved, the age-old debate. If it turns out that gays are born that way, it could undercut the animosity they face and win them civil-rights protections as a “natural” minority. Yet the prospect of a “gay gene” raises the specter of eugenics.

The promotional abstract focuses on the possibility of finding origins and links this possible finding with an “age-old” debate. The debate is limited to the reception of an impending reality. Incidentally, the synopsis of a public debate between those who view genetics as a source for undoing discrimination and

84

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

FIGURE 2 Picture accompanying the preview of “Born or Bred” (Newsweek, January 24, 1992; photograph by Richard Howard)

those who view genetics as a threat of institutionalizing discrimination is an effective summary of much of the discussion of “gay genes” in the popular press. It shows up, in expanded form, in the articles I examine later in the chapter. Note the figuring of the “gay gene” in the abstract. The subject of the first sentence is “two new studies.” The action ascribed to these two studies is the tentative epistemological action of seeming to find. In the second sentence, the “two new studies” become “the research,” a more general noun which, in the grammar of the sentence, is an agent that takes on the action of intensifying debate (an “age-old” debate, presumably not a technical debate within the specialized research domain of genetics). The third sentence identifies the incendiary feature of the research in a clause: “if it turns out that gays are born that way”—or, the possible reality that sexuality is fixed and determined. This possible reality is the “it” of the paragraph; it is the “it” of the research that is intensifying debate; it is the “it” of the third sentence that could possibly lead to civil rights protections. In the fourth and final sentence, it gets renamed: it is the “prospect of a ‘gay gene.’” The quotation marks accompanying the “gay gene” suggest it should be read as a purposeful contrivance, or a figure. Within the short paragraph, the “gay

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

85

gene” is figured to function metonymically, that is, to stabilize the idea of a possible reality (if it turns out gays are born that way) by talking about it as if it were a material thing. This figuring, along with the scare-quote gesture, stands as a preview of the figuring of the gay gene in the popular press of the 1990s. The “gay gene” of the preview text is hovering on the boundary of figurative and literal genes. Whether we take it as an intentionally figurative “gene” or a tease of a literal gene, we can see that it is calling upon the metonymic work of the gene to ground the possibilities of a genetic understanding as if it were a material thing or an established fact. In other words, the “gene” reference here is calling upon the work of the gene to stand in, as Wilhelm Johannsen put it, as something that “covers a reality.” Recall from chapter three that when Johannsen introduced the term “gene” in 1909, he offered the term as “nothing but a very applicable little word, easily combined with others.” Rather than defining the gene by physical or functional attributes, he prescribed its figurative work—namely, to function metonymically both as a convenient name for an evident fact (“the evident fact that, in any case, many characteristics of the organism are specified in the gametes by means of special conditions, foundations, and dispositions which are present in unique, separate, and thereby independent ways”) and as a notion that “covers a reality.” Though what Johannsen calls “the notions attached to the current words” have changed dramatically since Johannsen’s time, the figurative work that he prescribed for the gene can still help us to recognize the figurative work of “genes” in contemporary discourse. It is especially relevant for examining the figurative power of the “gay gene.” After providing a brief background of “gay gene” research, in this chapter I consider more popular-press articles that provide extended examples of figurative features visible in the preview text: genes as overtly or purposefully contrived, “genes” figured as material things, genes figured as emerging from within the citadel of science, and finally genes poised on the boundaries of figuration and literalism. RESEARCH REFERENTS

The two research projects that prompted the “Born or Bred” article are Simon LeVay’s study of the brain structure of gay and straight men and J. Michael Bailey and Richard Pillard’s studies of biological twins and adopted siblings. Not surprisingly, given the cultural tensions and political implications spinnakering the projects, these studies received (and continue to receive) a significant amount of press coverage. These two research projects and two others of the 1990s constitute the bulk of referents of “gay gene” articles in the popular press of the 1990s. Thus, before going on to examine other examples of popular-press accounts, here I briefly introduce the four major research efforts (see Table 1).

86

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE TABLE 1 Summary of Research Referenced in “Gay Gene” Articles

Principle Investigator

Institutional Affiliation

Research Synopsis

Simon LeVay

Salk Institute for Biological Studies

Examines hypothalamus structures of gay and straight men

J. Michael Bailey

Northwestern University Boston University School of Medicine

Analyze the frequency of gay identities among twins

Dean Hamer

National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health

Pursues a correlation between chromosome regions and homosexuality

Shang-Ding Zhang Ward Odenwald

National Institutes of Health

Examine courtship patterns in genetically altered fruit flies

Richard Pillard

Hypothalamus LeVay, conducting a study at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, examined hypothalamic structures (a small part of the brain associated with sex drive in many species) in gay and straight men and reported a correlation between male homosexuality and the size of four particular nuclei in the hypothalamus. The anatomical forms of the hypothalamus in the gay men were more similar to the form usually found in women than to that found in heterosexual men. LeVay’s research, first published in Science in August 1991, addresses neither the inheritance of brain structures nor the causal relationship between sexuality and brain structure (i.e., whether one causes or contributes to the causes of the other).1 In his article, LeVay points out that his research results do not include any direct evidence that the difference he has observed actually causes homosexuality. Twin Studies Bailey and Pillard, a psychologist from Northwestern University and a psychiatrist from the Boston University School of Medicine, respectively, analyzed the occurrence of gay identities among sets of identical twins, fraternal twins, and adoptive brothers. They found that out of a sample of 335 men, 52 percent of the identical twins were both gay, 22 percent of the fraternal twins were both gay, and 11 percent of adoptive brothers were both gay. From these findings, Bailey and Pillard estimate that the genetic component of homo-

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

87

sexuality is between 30 percent and 70 percent (Bailey and Pillard). A report in Science based on an interview with Bailey states that “Bailey theorizes that the genes implicated in homosexuality are probably those involved in prenatal brain development—specifically in masculinization of the hypothalamus during sexual differentiation” (Holden 33). Linking Genes The one research project that attempts to directly link homosexual identity to a specific locus of genetic material is that of Dean Hamer and a team of researchers at the National Institutes of Health. In 1993, in the journal Science, Hamer et al. published the results of a two-part study of homosexual men and their families that they claimed produced “evidence that one form of male homosexuality is preferentially transmitted through the maternal side and is genetically linked to chromosomal region Xq28” (325). The first part of the study consisted of analyzing pedigrees (or family patterns) of seventy-six “self-acknowledged” homosexual men. They found that maternal uncles and sons of maternal aunts of the homosexual men in their study were more likely than the general population to be homosexual. They interpreted this finding as “suggesting the possibility of sex-linked transmission in a portion of the population” (321). The second part of the study consisted of DNA linkage analysis of “a selected group of forty families in which there were two gay brothers and no indication of nonmaternal transmission.” The analysis showed that of the forty pairs of siblings, more pairs (64 percent) shared a portion of the X chromosome than would be dictated by chance. The area of the X chromosome is large enough to contain several hundred genes. From this they concluded, “it appears that Xq28 contains a gene that contributes to homosexual orientation in males” (325). Fruit Flies A study of fruit flies, conducted by Shan-Ding Zhang and Ward F. Odenwald of the National Institutes of Health in 1995, did not originate as a study of homosexuality. Rather, the researchers interpreted the behavioral side effects of a genetic manipulation in fruit flies as suggestive of homosexuality. In an article published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, Zhang and Odenwald detail their study as involving the manipulation of genetic material and controlling “courtship environments,” inducing courtship behavior by raising the temperature for short periods of time. From their experiment they conclude, “in Drosophila [fruit flies], both genetic and environmental factors play a role in male sexual behavior” (5525). Though they write “The mechanism(s) by which [the genetic manipulation] alters the sexual behavior of mature males is currently unknown”

88

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

(5529), Zhang and Odenwald suggest a possible explanation of linking their observations to observations of “male homosexual mounting behavior” among cats, rabbits, and rats with reduced levels of the neurotransmitter serotonin. This possible link leads the authors to conclude, “Taken together, these observations suggest that elements of the basic machinery controlling male sexual behavior may be highly conserved between taxonomically distinct organisms. Further genetic dissection of this inducible homosexual courtship may enhance our knowledge of the underlying mechanisms controlling sexual behavior” (5529). THE SEARCH FO R A GAY GEMMULE

Earlier in the chapter, I noted the use of quotation marks around the “gay gene,” suggesting that it be read as openly figurative rather than as a literal claim. A 1995 Time magazine article provides another example of a figurative “gay gene.” In this case, the gay gene appears in the title of the article—and only in the title—doing the rhetorical work of drawing together several suggestions within the article. I focus on it here to read the figurative work and to attend to the play between an apparently literal reference to a gene and the figurative presence of a gay gene. The article, written by Larry Thompson, is titled “The Search for a Gay Gene.” It reports the findings of Zhang and Odenwald’s study of genetically altered fruit flies. The bold title is followed by the headline “A DNA transplant made these male fruit flies turn away from females. What does that say about the origins of homosexuality?” Despite the boldness of the title and the question about homosexuality, the text of the article emphatically avoids any assertion of a gene that could be taken literally as a causal agent of homosexuality. In the first few paragraphs of the article, Thompson explains the flies’ courtship behavior—“With a frenzy usually reserved for chasing females, the males link up end-to-end in big circles or in long, winding rows that look like winged conga lines . . . the males repeatedly lurch forward and rub genitals with the next ones in line” (60)—and explains that “the scientists say they transplanted a single gene into the flies that caused them to display homosexual behavior” (60). Though Thompson takes some liberties in anthropomorphizing (in flamboyantly gay terms) the fruit flies, he uses caution at the sentence level when it comes to figuring a relationship between the fruit fly research and genetics and sexuality. He never uses the term “gay gene” within the text of the article. He does, however, assert a reasonable significance of the “single gene” (which “the scientists say they transplanted”) by denying an extreme claim of causality. Or, more accurately, he has the scientists deny the extreme causality:

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

89

The two scientists are not foolhardy enough to claim that a single gene can make a person homosexual. But they think their studies may yield important new insights into how genetic makeup, through a complex series of biochemical reactions, influences sexual orientation. (61)

This passage forms the transition within the text from the description of the components of the study to the overview of political and social implications of the study. Just as in the preview abstract of the Newsweek article described earlier, the potential significance of the research is presented in terms of two opposing positions: that genetic explanations will make people more “open-minded about equality for gay Americans” and that the pursuit of genetic explanations continues to treat homosexuality as a defect that needs to be fixed. After characterizing potential implications and social meanings of genetic findings, Thompson returns to figuring a role for genes: “No matter how people feel about the issue, it is increasingly hard to argue that genes play no role in homosexuality” (61). The classical litotes figure of denying an opposite claim to offer a seemingly understated assertion works here to affirm a real and active role for genes in determining homosexuality. From here, Thompson moves on to figure the accumulating evidence that supports an argument for a role that genes play: The evidence began to pile up in 1991, when studies showed that identical twins were more likely to have the same sexual orientation than other pairs of siblings. That same year, a California scientist reported slight brain differences between gay and straight men, although the conclusion is disputed. And in 1993, an NIH researcher found a stretch of DNA on the X chromosome that seemed to harbor one or more genes affecting sexual orientation. But no one has proved that a particular gene promotes gayness or has offered any convincing theory of how genes could influence a person’s choice of sexual partners. (61)

Once again, we see a backing away from a strong claim of a gene as a causal agent. But the accumulation of evidence is in place, even if this evidence is a “pile up” of several different and unrelated kinds of genetic relationships. It is in relation to this accumulation, with Zhang and Odenwald’s “adding to the mounting evidence,” that we can see that the figurative work of the “gay gene” of the title is not only to conjure a sense of a material reality but also to assert a conceptual bond among the otherwise disparate evidence that is piled into the text. The figurative relationship between the “gay gene” of the title and the compilation of studies referenced in the text is not unlike the figurative relationship that Darwin set up between his purposefully contrived gemmules and the evidence—regarding “various forms of inheritance” and “the causes and

90

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

laws of variation”—that he had compiled in The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Recall, from chapter three, that Darwin drew together a range of evidence and observations, describing the accumulation as “facts which every one would desire to see connected by some intelligible bond” (369). That intelligible bond was the figment of the gemmule, a hypothesis he introduced to stand in “until a better one be advanced” (350). Recall also that to evaluate Darwin’s gemmules for the literal value of what they did as biological entities is to miss the value of the rhetorical work that Darwin had figured them to do. Similarly, to read the “gay gene” only in relation to literal genes is to miss its figurative work. And, to see the “gay gene” (complete with scare quotes) of the title of the article as merely a rhetorical figure, or simply a catchy and playful gesture, is to miss the rhetorical and cultural work that the phrase can do to create a sense of an “intelligible bond,” even a hypothetical or impending intelligible bond. MATERIALIZING THE GAY GENE

Two articles published in the popular science magazine Discover demonstrate how genes are figured to lend a strong material presence to a biological explanation of homosexuality. These examples are worth paying attention to not just because they show how an explanation of homosexuality is figured, within the popular press, as a discrete material entity. They also show how popular-press writing can do the work of figuring the materiality of the gay gene while maintaining a sense of science as a methodologically cautious and empirically based enterprise. The first of the two articles, published in January 1993 in Discover’s annual “The Year in Science” issue, is a page-long report of Bailey and Pillard’s studies of patterns of homosexuality in families. (Again, the studies found that the likelihood of a set of twins both being gay was greater if they were identical twins than if they were fraternal twins.) The title of the review article is “Gay Genes.” The lead sentences, retreating from the bold title and maintaining a sense of uncertainty, read: Homosexuality may be more than a state of mind. Studies over the past two years have offered tantalizing clues that the brains of gay men are physically different from the brains of heterosexual men. The studies are controversial, but if the differences are real, researchers would love to know when they came about: during puberty, in the womb, or perhaps even earlier, in the genes. (Grady 55)

Here, the opening lines (ever so tantalizingly) move homosexuality from being in the precarious position of a mental state to a potentially stable position in the body. With appropriate qualifiers—“the studies are controversial,

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

91

but if differences are real”—we are moved through a time-space continuum to the search for physical origins of sexuality. First, we have researchers looking for when the differences come about. The possibility of puberty, a time period, is followed by “the womb,” a place representing the beginning of life. From the womb, the incrementum figure leads us to the pre-life marker: genes. The movement from puberty (a time period of life) to the womb (a metonymy representing gestation of life) to genes works its way to suggesting a material source of life. With genes positioned as the origin material, the reporting begins by outlining the outcome of Bailey and Pillard’s study of “gay and straight adults,” which tracked the occurrence of gay identities among identical twins, fraternal twins, and adopted siblings. (Here, people are either gay or straight; the description in terms of “the odds of the other twin being gay” suggests that the gay/straight binary is unambiguous.) Turning from the statistical evidence provided by Bailey and Pillard’s study, the author then sharpens the focus on genetics, solidifying in the discussion the biological conceptualization of twins: “In both studies [those of males and females], because the percentage was so much higher in identical twins than in fraternal ones, it’s safe to assume that conditions shared in the womb were not solely responsible for sexual orientation. What’s left is genetics” (55). The studies themselves were indeed designed to pursue the biological origins of “sexual orientation.” But in the Discover article, we can see the work of “genetics” figuring the link between the statistical correlation of Bailey and Pillard’s studies and a biologically determined explanation of sexuality. Having already introduced the study alongside suggestions of genes as material sources, author Denise Grady is at this point able to use genes in the next sentence to bridge the two areas: “But the researchers find it hard to explain why there should be genes for homosexuality.” Note that the “genes for homosexuality” are ushered in within a subjunctive clause; nobody is asserting that such genes actually exist. Yet the concept of the gay gene has been represented as an entity that can exist: “why there should be genes for homosexuality.” Later in the article, Grady writes, “If one accepts the idea that sexual orientation has a strong genetic component—and some researchers doubt it—the next logical step is to try to track down the responsible genes.” This is powerful science writing. Without overstating the claims that the research or the researchers make, Grady is able to figure the material presence of “genes for homosexuality.” Reporting on a study of patterns of homosexuality (patterns interpreted as suggesting biological over cultural explanations), Grady introduces the existence of genes into the discussion. The incrementum figure (puberty–womb–genes), the question of why there should be genes, and the imagery of tracking down the responsible genes contribute to the material presence of a biological link. Of course, Grady does not single-handedly figure

92

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

the materiality of genes; she is drawing on the rhetorical power of the gene figure to link statistical patterns with a material source of information. Not surprisingly, given its initial design as a specialized term and given the work of the gene as an epistemic thing, the word gene is particularly susceptible to the kind of figuring that we see in Grady’s article. A year after the publication of Grady’s article, in the next issue of Discover’s “The Year in Science,” another article appears figuring the “gay gene” as a discrete material entity. Here the figuring is a bit different—appropriately so, given the research that is being reported. Rather than figurative moves contributing to a sense of materiality of genes, we can see the figurative moves presuming a materiality. The title of the article “X Marks the Spot” conjures up an image of some sort of detective mission. As we read the article, we realize the title is a cutesy pun on the X chromosome, which Dean Hamer’s study linked to cases of male homosexuality. The pun of the title both adds levity to the discussion and figures the study of homosexuality as a search for material clues that will explain, once and for all, the complexity of sexuality. The detective mission continues as Hamer is described as having “scoured X chromosomes for any regions they had in common.” In this case, in contrast to the Discover article discussed above, the research that is being described sets us up for the bridge between the study of patterns of homosexuality and the materiality of chromosomes. Thus, while Grady’s figuring lent a genetic materiality to a study of familial patterns of sexual behavior, in this case it is Hamer’s study that correlates the familial patterns with a genetic material. The article’s author, Rosie Mestel, is cautious about announcing any definitive results from Hamer’s study. But at the same time, her description of Hamer’s study maintains a strong sense of materiality by figuring an elusive concept as an elusive thing. Having described Hamer’s evidence of maternal uncles and cousins being more likely to be gay than paternal uncles and cousins, she writes: “That suggested a gay gene or genes might be sitting on the X chromosome, which boys get only from their mothers” (71, emphasis added). Then, after describing Hamer’s evidence for a region of the X chromosome being shared by two-thirds of the brothers studied, she writes: “This doesn’t necessarily mean that a gay gene is hiding there” (71). In Mestel’s article, we can see the effectiveness of anthropomorphizing genes—they sit, they hide—and the figure of the search—genes are being scoured for. These moves are especially effective given the complicated nature of what it means when one “looks for” a gene. Yet the pragmatics of the device for making complex procedures accessible should not dissuade us from examining the rhetorical and cultural implications of the figuring. While maintaining an elusiveness for genes, the figures of presence, sitting and hiding, reinforce a material presence for gay genes, figuring the concept of a biological link.

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

93

In the Discover articles we can see how the concept of the gay gene can assume a physical presence, even within the context of a statement that actively resists the existence of an actual entity that could be called a gay gene. The statement “This doesn’t necessarily mean that a gay gene is hiding there” simultaneously denies the material presence of a gay gene and affirms the rhetorical power of a gay gene. In spite of the unverifiability of the material entity, the gay gene is vitalized as a cultural concept. The important thing is that this vitalizing of the concept is done without ever claiming that something that has not been proven to exist actually exists. Attitudes toward science as a careful, cautious, and trustworthy enterprise can be maintained. In the Discover articles—as in the Time “Search for a Gay Gene” article—the “gay gene” takes on a figurative presence. But the figurative presence is not ascribed to the scientists whose work is being reported, nor does it challenge the rigor of the scientists’ methods or the precision of their language. In the texts of the articles, a distinction is upheld between what the scientists say about their work and what the science writers say. It is an important distinction; it allows for the figurative presence of the gene to borrow from the authority of scientific research without disrupting the integrity of that authority. In the next section, I take a closer look at how the figuring of the gene works well with figures that maintain a sense of science as a separate authoritative space in society. The more we begin to see that distinctions are upheld between what scientists (and scientific research) can say and what nonscientists can say, the more readily we can see the boundary work of gene figures. GENES EMERGING AS BOUNDARY OBJECTS F ROM INSIDE THE CITADEL OF SCIENCE

In the “Born or Bred” preview described earlier in the chapter, we saw a bold example of the figuring of the “possibility of a ‘gay gene.’” There is another figure underlying that promotional abstract, a figuration of science that coincides with what Gary Lee Downey and Joseph Dumit have identified and labeled as a “citadel image” of science. Recall that the page depicts a researcher who “suspects that heredity drives sexuality” as it introduces two studies that “seem to find the origins of homosexuality.” With these characterizations of provisional knowledge preceding the articulation of “if it turns out that way,” it is as if we are getting a special glimpse into the citadel of science, an advanced preview of the authoritative discoveries that might be coming out of science. The phrase “If it turns out that . . .” simultaneously confirms the unsettled status of the results and assures that whatever those results turn out to be, they will be authoritative. Downey and Dumit, in the introduction to their 1997 edited volume, Cyborgs & Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and

94

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

Technologies, introduce the image of a citadel to identify discourses, practices, and “prevailing modes of popular theorizing about science, technology, and medicine.” As they describe it, “the word ‘citadel’ denotes a small fortified city or a fortress at the center of a larger city that protects and oversees it” (6). As a model of science and technology in society, the citadel maintains a separate (and relatively autonomous and sovereign) sphere within which science and technology are developed. The model also suggests a unidirectional flow of knowledge (outward from the citadel) and articulates the commonly held notion that scientific knowledge precedes its own significance: This is also known as the diffusion model of knowledge in society . . . in which knowledge, in the singular, is created by bright, well-trained people located inside the academy and then diffuses outside into the public arena through mechanisms of education, popularization, policy, and the impacts of new technologies. The tests of cultural significance for new knowledge occur ‘out there’ in the public arena as it is used, abused, or ignored. (Downey and Dumit 6)

As the work collected in Downey and Dumit’s volume attests, the assumptions about the relations of science, technology, and society that are captured by the image of the citadel are so widely held and so deeply ingrained in both popular and specialized discourses that it is difficult to even recognize them as figured relations, let alone imagine alternatives. In other words, science as citadel works as an underlying cultural figure, or, in George Lakoff and Mark Johnson’s terms, as a “metaphor we live by.” Metaphors we live by are not tropes in the restricted senses of stylistic devices that operate on the surface of a text or formal devices legible within an individual text. Rather, as with Lakoff and Johsnon’s oft-cited example of “argument as war,” though it may not be obviously figurative and may not even be explicitly expressed, a metaphor we live by explains the coherence among other figurative expressions that are visible on the surfaces of particular texts and utterances (e.g., “metaphor as war” becomes apparent in articulations of opponents in arguments, participants going on the offense or calling upon their arsenal). It is not so much a figure of speech as it is a figure of culture. In classical rhetoric terms, then, metaphors we live by are more like topoi, or commonplaces that inform speech and argument, than tropes that are apparent and legible on the surface. Though Downey and Dumit are not working with the terms of rhetoric or rhetorical criticism, in identifying science as citadel as a mode of popular theorizing, their work calls attention to the citadel as a commonplace, or topos. We can see the “citadel” take shape in the figuring of the “Born or Bred” abstract. A more elaborate version is developed in a 1995 U.S. News and World Report article reporting on the cultural debates surrounding “gay genes.” In this version, we can see how the citadel figure organizes an article

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

95

for a general audience. The figure, built into the organizational structure of the article, contributes to a sense of genes emerging from the authoritative space of science. The figure of the gene also corroborates the citadel configuration, confirming a sense of authoritative boundaries. It is the corroboration that I am especially interested in here. The article, titled “Is There a ‘Gay Gene’? Why new findings are causing a storm—especially among homosexuals,” is categorized by the magazine as a “Culture & Ideas” article. The accompanying photographs—one depicting antigay protest signs, another depicting a gay wedding in Washington, D.C.—reinforce the “Culture & Ideas” categorization. The new findings that are “causing a storm” in the title refer to a followup study of Dean Hamer’s research linking male homosexuality to a chromosomal region. The article opens with a nature-versus-nurture hook and a brief announcement of the “new findings”—“In this month’s issue of Nature Genetics, biologists from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) report that a region on the X chromosome is tied to some cases of male homosexuality.” The article then turns to “the storm,” which is characterized as two sets of debates: “But that hardly ends the debate in either science or society” (Watson et al. 92). As figured in this transition, science and society are two separate places; they are places within which debate can take place. Figuring science and society as two separate places conveniently partitions issues associated with science from issues associated with society. The next few paragraphs of the article focus on issues associated with the inside of science. Within these paragraphs the “debate in science” is characterized by Hamer’s 1993 finding “that 83 percent of 40 pairs of gay brothers turned out to have extremely similar regions on their X chromosomes” and the critiques that the research drew “from other scientists” regarding the methods of collecting data and the repeatability of the results. Michael Bailey (of the Bailey and Pillard study) is quoted as being in favor of Hamer’s new work, while “some scientists accuse Hamer of choosing his study subjects so selectively that he found something that isn’t really there.” Finally, we learn that Hamer is being investigated by the federal Office of Research Integrity for “allegedly skewing his 1993 data.” Before leaving the “debate in science,” we get word of LeVay’s brain structure research, which has “not yet been replicated.” Actually, LeVay remains anonymous in the article as his research is described: “in 1991, scientists found that an area of the brain is smaller in gay men than in heterosexual men.” The critiques “from other scientists,” the official investigation of Hamer’s research integrity, and the links to Bailey and LeVay together represent the debate inside science. After portraying debates inside science, the focus shifts to the political and ethical implications of the possible scientific knowledge. The shift in focus is marked by a boldfaced heading as well as by a reiteration of science as a separate space:

96

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE Wider implications. Outside the scientific world, it seems that homosexuals have much to gain from proof that their sexuality is determined by their genes. (Watson et al. 93)

Notice that the earlier configuration of science and society as separate spaces has now been transformed to a configuration more congruent with the image of a citadel. Science has an inside and an outside. The scientific world is a world inside a world. In moving from inside to outside, the article leaves behind the questionability of the research and uncertainty of the findings. Inside science, the debates are focused on the verifiability of the research, the repeatability of the results, and the relationship between the genetic studies and other biological research. In short, the technical details of constructing new truths are taken care of inside the science citadel. With the technical issues taken care of inside science, the cultural meaning of a genetic explanation of homosexuality, however hypothetical it may be, can be discussed outside the scientific world. Inside, we have the making of a fact; outside, we have a question: what do we do if we get the fact? The overview of the issues “outside the scientific world” follows the same pattern as the implications discussions in the articles previously described. That is, the possibility of proof of determinism might undo discrimination or it could make for more discrimination. On the one hand, the article states, “A born-that-way explanation would disprove those who say homosexuality is a perversion and encourage gays to seek counseling to change their ways.” On the other hand, genetic determination could offer an easier way to reinforce discriminating practices through genetic screening of adults and unborn children. As in the Discover articles described in the previous section of this chapter, the notion of a “gay gene” acquires a strong presence as it is figured in the reporting of this U.S. News and World Report article. Here, it is figured as a distinct possibility emerging from within science. The citadel imagery in play in the article should call our attention to the ways in which ideas associated with science take shape and gain rhetorical force in their representations “outside” of science. As in the Discover articles, the figuring of the “gay gene” also calls attention to the preservation of science as a careful, cautious, and trustworthy enterprise. Below, I take a closer look at the grammar in the U.S. News and World Report article to see how the citadel notion is reinforced at the sentence level. Grammar Reinforces the Authority of the Citadel The overview of debates inside science occupies a distinct space in the U.S. News and World Report article, separated from the struggle over social meaning by paragraph organization and boldface headings. The grammar of the

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

97

sentences also serves to reinforce the distinction between science and society. Grammatically, the actions of the debate in science are ascribed to the researchers, research results, and an office of investigation. For example, “Hamer’s work drew heavy fire from other scientists who said his study might be a fluke. So he resumed his studies.” The subjects of the sentences (or what Joseph Williams refers to as the main characters of the story in the sentences) are “Hamer’s work” and Hamer, represented by the pronoun “he.” In the next paragraph, scientists and an official institution come into play: “Some scientists accuse Hamer. . . . And Hamer is under investigation by the federal Office of Research Integrity.” The authors themselves are not telling us that the NIH study might be a fluke, nor are they telling us that research methods used in the study are questionable. Instead, the authors tell us that others—credentialed others working inside science—are questioning the research methods. The authors are both respecting and reinforcing the assumption that the construction of scientific knowledge—debates included—takes place within the boundaries of science. We as readers, then, are positioned to join the authors in looking in from the outside to get a glimpse of what the scientists are doing and talking about inside science. This grammar of characters and actions is neither unusual nor terribly interesting as a critical observation. It is a familiar pattern, a strategy of writing common in news reporting, useful for keeping the reporter in a neutral writer’s stance and maintaining the readers’ attention on the central players and the important results. What is worth noting is that as the story crosses the boundary between inside and outside of science, the grammar shifts, telling a different kind of story with different rhetorical consequences. Following the heading “Wider Implications,” the first sentence is: “Outside the scientific world, it seems that homosexuals have much to gain from proof that their sexuality is determined by their genes.” The sentence has put the attention on homosexuals and the possibility of genes. The next few sentences each present an action ascribed to the gene as explanation: A born-that-way explanation would disprove those who say homosexuality is a perversion. . . . It would explode the logic of denying gay men positions as teachers. . . . And it would give parents a guilt-free answer to the Freudians who claim their sons turned out that way because they played with dolls or got the wrong love from Mom and Dad. (94)

The “it” of these sentences—a pronoun that seems to refer back to both “their genes” and “a born-that-way explanation”—is taking on a lot of cultural-rhetorical work: disproving, exploding logic, giving guilt-free answers to Freudians. These are not definitive explanations; they are each presented in the subjunctive mood. But the grammar of the sentences has relaxed the

98

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

neutral writer’s stance. While in the previous section (inside science), the grammar of the sentences indicates that the “debates in science” are being conducted by “other scientists and researchers,” the “wider implications” can be described firsthand without the qualifying actors: “A born-that-way explanation would disprove.” We are no longer watching others debate, the sentences present the issues without actors. Having moved outside the science, the credentialed experts are gone, as are all the human speakers; we get direct statements about what genes would do. Rhetorical Boundary Work of the Gene The U.S. News and World Report article shows the flexibility and boundary work of the “gene” figure within an individual text. Within the article, the “gene” is both a specific location on a chromosome and a potential explanation of sexuality that is presented as having the power to move cultural attitudes. Within the text, the gene functions like Star and Griesemer’s social boundary objects, providing a means of translation across contexts of meaning. Like a boundary object, the gene is both adaptable enough and robust enough to maintain coherence as it travels across the boundaries in the text. The gene takes on a strong and meaningful presence in the popular domain, linking to but not demanding consensus of meaning or reconciliation with genes of the scientific domain. The clearly marked boundaries of science in this article—or the prominence of a citadel configuration—illuminate the flexibility of the gene concept as it translates across the sections of the text that correspond to the inside and outside of science. The flexibility and robustness of the gene—or the gene as a rhetorical boundary object—in turn, illuminate the rhetorical work of scientific figures in affirming boundaries of authoritative discourse. In the next section, I turn to another case of genes and boundary work. Rather than examining the boundary work of the gene within a text, I examine the boundary work of the gene as it moves across different kinds of texts and different realms of discourse. That is, I expand the focus from the popular press to examine the relationship between a popular-press report on a gene and the scientific paper that it reports on. BOUNDARIES OF FIGURATIVE PLAY

In an earlier section I discussed the Time article “Search for a Gay Gene,” paying attention to the pairing of an in-text reference to an apparently literal “single gene” and the overtly figurative “gay gene.” Here, I return to that same article to examine it in conjunction with its peer-reviewed correlate for a further look at the boundary work of genes and a boundary of literalism and figuralism. In the example of the U.S. News and World Report article, I exam-

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

99

ined the “gene” as it translates across sections of the text. Here I turn to see the gene as it translates from one text to another. In the U.S. News and World Report example, the different sections of the texts maintain different grammatical styles: one more distanced and objective and the other more subjective. Here, the two texts maintain different rhetorical styles: one more literal and the other more figurative. The “Search for a Gay Gene,” as described earlier, reports on Zhang and Odenwald’s study of courting behaviors of genetically altered fruit flies. Zhang and Odenwald published their results in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in an article titled “Misexpression of the white (w) gene triggers male–male courtship in Drosophila” (June 1995). In one sense, the National Academy article precedes the Time article: the publication of the National Academy article is the event that the Time article is reporting on. In another sense, though, the two articles work in tandem. They are published during the same week, clearly an outcome of the science writing “embargo” system. According to the embargo system, science reporters receive advance notice and advance copy of scientific publications provided they agree not to publish anything before the scientific journal is published. The embargo system itself suggests a widespread awareness of the mutually beneficial importance of collaboration within scientific reporting. Researchers and scientific journals benefit from the public exposure of the popular press and the popular press benefits from the advantage of early notification and advance copy. Odenwald had been studying genetically altered drosophila, or fruit flies, when he noticed that genetically altered males behaved differently than the non-altered males (Preiser 82). The observation was apparently the inspiration for the controlled study of sexual behavior. In the study, Zhang and Odenwald altered the X chromosomes of a population of fruit flies, affecting the area of the chromosome that is the physical bearing of what is known as the white (w) gene. They then took the flies and subjected them to heat shocks and observed the changed behavior; they induced males to interact sexually and compared the differences between altered and non-altered flies. They observed that the altered flies behave differently under heated (literally) conditions. From their observations, Zhang and Odenwald conclude, as the title indicates, that the misexpression of the white (w) gene triggers male–male courtship. In the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, Zhang and Odenwald explain their research while adhering quite strictly to the norms of the genre of the experimental research report.2 They describe the research in fairly controlled terms, detailing and justifying the methodology, and carefully explaining the correlation between the genetic alteration and the observed behavior. Consistent with the genre, they introduce their article by describing prior research, contextualizing their own study in relation to established knowledge. The established knowledge that they cite consists of background

100

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

on the white (w) gene, genetic research of drosophila, and behavior of drosophila. Also consistent with the genre, Zhang and Odenwald conclude the article by gesturing toward the possibilities of significance of the research and suggesting possible future directions for related research. In the introduction, to situate the research in a body of established knowledge, they provide background on the white (w) gene, drosophila studies, and behavior of drosophila. In the conclusion, to gesture toward larger significance, they suggest links between their own study and biological studies (not necessarily genetic) of sexuality in other animals and call for further research on the “underlying mechanisms controlling sexual behavior” (5529). The article adheres to the norms of a scientific genre, using the format of the introduction and the conclusion to situate the findings in a research context and to extend the significance of the findings to a broader context. The situating and the suggestions for significance create a movement from drosophila studies to a general discussion of sexuality. This is the trajectory that is extended by the Time article. The White (w) Gene as a Boundary Object The introductory description of prior research on the white (w) gene can be read as the trace of a boundary object across historical and disciplinary contexts. In chapter five, I introduced Rheinberger’s argument for reading the history of the gene as a case of the knowledge-making power of a flexibly defined object, an object that changes meanings across specific contexts. Here, Zhang and Odenwald particularize that notion by introducing their study of a specific gene by bringing together several different definitions and perspectives on the white (w) gene: First reported in 1910 by Morgan, the white (w) gene has, over the decades, served as a prototype for numerous studies concerning gene regulation, insertional mutagenesis, and the behavior analysis of mutants (1–7). Located at the distal end of the X chromosome (8), its 2.6–kb major transcript (9–11) is predicted to encode a 687–amino acid member of the ATPbinding, transmembrane, transporter superfamily (12, 13), which functions in the passage of the ommochrome and drosopterin pigment precursors, tryptophan and guanine (respectively) across membranes (14, 15). w has been conserved during metazoan evolution as evident from the human and Drosophila cognate proteins sharing 34% identity and 58% similarity (J. Croop, personal communication). In Drosophila, w is required for pigment production in the light-screening cells of the compound eye, oceli pigment cells, sheath cells of testes, and the larval Malpighian tubules. (5525)

Introduced first as a “prototype,” the gene in this introductory paragraph is a knowledge object that has moved and taken shape across disciplinary per-

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

101

spectives and historic periods. The brief overview calls upon studies that treat the gene as a unit of classical genetic analysis, a unit of behavioral analysis, a chemical unit implicated in organism development, and a location on the X chromosome. All these senses of the gene come together in Zhang and Odenwald’s positioning of their own research. Their experiment focuses on the gene as a location on the X chromosome, but all the other senses of the gene are necessary for establishing it as an object of research with biological significance. In quoting the passage, I have retained the numeral citations to show how the discussion is tied to a series of references. The citations include publications from 1910, 1915, the 1980s, and the 1990s. The earliest research is T. H. Morgan’s drosophila research. T. H. Morgan is credited with identifying the white gene. He is also the scientist I quoted in chapter four as saying that, for the level at which genetic experiments lie, it does not matter if genes are “real or purely fictitious.” This is not to say that Morgan’s research on the white gene was fictitious, but rather that he was not making any observations of material genes. In fact, his report that is cited by Zhang and Odenwald was published in 1910, prior to the publication of Johannsen’s argument for the term gene. Morgan uses the term “genetic factors” to identify the phenotypic traits—white eyes in the usually red-eyed drosophila. It is worth reiterating Rheinberger’s sense of an epistemic thing here. The white gene, like the general gene concept, ought not to be understood as “simply hidden things to be brought to light through sophisticated manipulations” (28). Rather, it is a “mixture of hard and soft,” a mixture of the different conceptualizations and configurations. Pushing too hard to reconcile the differences of perspectives represented in Zhang and Odenwald’s opening paragraph would render the white gene less effective as an object of inquiry. Their research is significant in its relationship to the other perspectives and other definitions of the white (w) gene; their experiments focus exclusively on altering the gene as part of a chromosome. Figuring Sexuality Zhang and Odenwald found that manipulating the chromosomes and subjecting them to heat induced male fruit flies to interact sexually with other males. The male flies mounted one another, forming chains of flies. In their article Zhang and Odenwald refer to the fly patterns as “male–male courtship,” “courtship chains,” and “courtship circles.” The description is taken up a bit more figuratively in the Time article. The Time author, Larry Thompson, refers to the male fruit flies as having “an orgy,” linking up in long rows that “look like winged conga lines.” Compared to the genre of the research report in a peer-reviewed science journal, the pop science genre is a playground for tropes and figures. Thompson has taken the trope of courtship

102

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

and stretched it almost to the point of the absurd, describing the subjects of a controlled research study as if they were characters in a National Lampoon fraternity party skit: Put a male fruit fly into a bottle with a female, and he doesn’t waste any time before getting down to business . . . [but] strange things are happening inside the gallon-size culture jars. In some experiments, the female flies are cowering in groups at the top and bottom of the jars. The males, meanwhile, are having a party—no, an orgy—among themselves. (Thompson 60)

Having established the mating scene and the figurative play, Thompson turns back to the researchers: “What’s going on? Without a wink or a chuckle, Odenwald claims that these male fruit flies are gay—and that he made them that way. The scientists say they transplanted a single gene into the flies that caused them to display homosexual behavior” (60). It is not clear whether Thompson is referring to the absence of winks and chuckles in a personal communication with Odenwald or to an absence in the publication that Odenwald authored with Zhang. Indeed, there are no winks or chuckles on display in the article in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, nor is there any attention to irony or any other rhetorical device that might signal an authorial self-consciousness of metaphors at work. After I had read Thompson’s characterization of the researchers as the caricatured scientists with no sense of irony, I returned to Zhang and Odenwald’s text to see how they figured the sexual activities of the fruit flies. Under the influence of Thompson’s characterization, I could not help seeing Zhang and Odenwald’s descriptions of courting and mating behavior as itself absurd. The observations that would later in the text be extended to animal sex and, in the Time article, to human sex, are presented in the most aseptic of all language: the passive voice with actions (sexual actions) nominalized and described as traits: Populations were identified as possessing the male–male courtship trait if multiple, sustained courtship chains or circles of five or more were observed, none of which displayed courtship repelling signals (wing flicking, face kicking, and/or running away). (5526)

Zhang and Odenwald appear to achieve their straight faces—their lack of winks or chuckles; their appeal to literalism—with the standard devices of scientific prose. Typically, the passive voice within a results section of a scientific paper keeps the attention away from the author and on the object of study, maintaining a rhetorical sense of objectivity. Here, the passive voice and nominalizations also constrain the figurative possibilities of sexuality. I must confess that I was amused when I encountered “face kicking” and “running away” transformed into observable scientific objects, signals of repelling courtship. But I was surprised to find myself blushing when I came across an

FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING

103

errant example of the active voice, with Zhang and Odenwald writing that “suitors licked their genitalia.” In the sterile setting of a results section of a scientific article, the active voice struck me as, well, shockingly sexual. Really, though, I point to the effects of passive versus active voice and actions-as-nouns versus actions-as-verbs not to titter at the white-coated observations of sex but rather to call attention to the typical scientific style that Zhang and Odenwald maintain in their article. Within this scientific style, or this adherence to literalism, the “gene” is a chromosomal alteration that may be correlated with observed changes in the flies. In the results and discussion section of the article, the “gene” stays close to this definition; its literal sense is not stretched or turned; the “gene” is not used to make any explicit claims for significance. As it moves into the popular press, the gene is translated into the stylistic setting of more open figuration. As I described earlier, in the Time article, the gene that Odenwald and Zhang refer to is translated into the openly figurative “gay gene” that is the object of a “search” in the title of the article. The figurative gay gene of the title is linked to the white (w) gene of Odenwald and Zhang’s article. It both is and is not the same thing. To assess the legitimacy of the “gay gene” of the title in terms of the observations of the white gene of Odenwald and Zhang’s text would bring us full circle back to Angier’s observation that the “gay gene” is a dopy, wishful, and patently reductivist term. But to see it as a translation of the white (w) gene from a scientific text to the openly figurative domain of popular-press titles is also to see the work that it does, as a rhetorical boundary object, to preserve a boundary between the “everyday” playful language of the popular press and the controlled literalism of scientific texts. CONCLUSION

The examples of the “gay gene” in the popular press show the figurative work that genes can do in popular, or “everyday,” language. The genes do the figurative work of providing a coherent bond for a set of loosely associated research studies. The genes also figure a material or metonymic expression for a relatively abstract explanation of biological determinism of sexual identity. In the magazine texts, we can see, right before our eyes, how gay genes take on the function of material realities by way of figurations. It is important to remember that the figurative moves that lend a stronger material presence to the reality of genes are not unique to the popular-press texts or to discussions of gay genes. We saw, in chapter five, the same kind of figuring going on in Watson and Crick’s papers on the structure of DNA. The gay genes of the popular press can teach us to see how figurative language works to lend a material presence to a “dopy, wishful phrase.” But the figuring of the gay gene can also call our attention to the preservation of science as a careful, cautious, and trustworthy enterprise. In the U.S. News and

104

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

World Report article, the rhetorical flexibility of the gene figure corroborates the image of science as a citadel, an authoritative world within a world, from which authoritative knowledge emerges. But the notion of science as a special citadel of authoritative knowledge production is not simply created or sustained by figurative representations within individual texts. As the translation from the white (w) gene of Odewnald and Zhang’s text to the “Search for a Gay Gene” of Time shows, the work of constructing science as an authoritative domain from which the otherwise flexible objects of science emerge as fixed, stable, and authoritative entities is sustained by the reinforcing effects of scientific and popular texts working in tandem.

7

Genome: The Secret of How Tropes Work in the Life Sciences

IN THE SUMMER AND FALL of 2003, the Smithsonian Art and Industry Museum in Washington, D.C., hosted an exhibit called “Genome: The Secret of How Life Works.” The exhibit was sponsored by Pfizer Inc., the global pharmaceutical company. It was produced by Clear Channel Exhibitions in collaboration with the National Human Genome Research Institute, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Whitehead Institute/MIT Center for Genome Research. The exhibit has been traveling to exhibition spaces across the country since 2003 and is also available, in electronic form, on Pfizer’s website. It is similar in style, attitude, and genre to other exhibits—including “Brain: The World Inside Your Head” and “Microbes: Invisible Invaders . . . Amazing Allies”—that are also sponsored by Pfizer and currently on display in American cities and on the Pfizer website. The exhibit stands as a great example of epideictic rhetoric, an encomium of scientific and technological progress. The displays present themselves as educational, making concepts accessible to a broad audience. But the overwhelming sense is celebratory, an enthusiastic portrayal of the benefits and progress associated with genetic and genomic research. Aristotle’s approach of distinguishing epideictic rhetoric from forensic and deliberative rhetoric applies; the main focus is not on proving anything or making an explicit argument about future research, but rather on instilling the appropriate values and on persuading the audience to adopt a sense of the worth of its subject (1358b–1359b). But there is a more specific aspect of epideictic that I focus on here, that which has been described by James Jasinski as its role in contructing “communal authority.” “Through epideictic discourse, a community learns who to listen to, who to respect, who to look up to as role models, and who to imitate. And community members also learn who they should not listen to and who they should not emulate” (211). The genome exhibit does indeed offer training in recognizing communal authority. It draws on the authoritative ethos of the institutions that are listed

105

106

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

as co-producers and the historic and contemporary scientists whose voices are incorporated in the exhibit. But there is another kind of authority, besides that of institutions and individuals, that is at stake. It is an authority of scientific rhetoric. Tropes and figures take on a prominent role in the presentation of the authoritative knowledge of genetics. What is of most interest to me here, in this closing chapter of a book that has addressed the rhetorical boundary work of genes (especially the boundary work of upholding a sense of separate spheres of scientific literalism and scientific figuration), is the kind of public training that the exhibit offers for recognizing the authority of science amid the play of rhetorical figures. What follows, then, is a tour of the exhibit, a tour that pays attention to how the exhibit engages in the work of epideictic rhetoric by guiding its audience to an appreciation of a “communal authority” of science and of rhetoric. TOURING THE “GENOME”

As I entered the exhibit “The Genome: The Secret of How Life Works” in the Smithsonian Art and Industry Museum in Washington, D.C., I was reminded of the allure I used to feel as a kid looking at the back of a cereal box. Not health-food cereal but the sugary kind, like Cap’n Crunch® and Fruit Loops®. The kind that came with little plastic prizes and had stories and puzzles and mazes printed on the boxes in bright colors, with cute cartoonlike characters expressing surprise at the story or asking me to help them find their way through the maze. With a similar cereal-box aesthetic, the brightly colored and playful looking displays of the genome exhibit declare fun and puzzle-solving stimulation. This is not a museum exhibit that keeps the viewer at a distance squinting into Plexiglas boxes and looking at arcane artifacts. This is a put-on-your-sleuth-hat and pick-up-that-oversized-magnifying-glass kind of adventure. Colorful signs with oversized letters invite museum visitors to pull levers, press buttons, open doors, and play along the surfaces of the artifacts on display. The artifacts that visitors are being encouraged to interact with are large physical embodiments of tropes and figures. There is an enormous book of life, a hereditary slot machine, a giant puzzle shaped as a zipper to show how DNA zips and unzips, and a demonstration of protein manufacturing as a cookie factory. It’s not that the display stations call upon tropes and figures to help visitors understand the object on display; the tropes and figures are the objects on display. The exhibition is divided into two main exhibit rooms. The first is devoted to basic lessons in biology and genetics, and the second, accessed through a passageway labeled “On the Genetic Frontier,” is devoted to celebrating recent breakthroughs in genetic engineering and applications of medical genomics. It is in the second half of the exhibit space, along the frontier,

GENOME

107

that the corporate sponsorship of the exhibition is most apparent. The stations—explaining genetic screening, research into specific diseases, and ethical concerns related to genomics and medicine—each feel as if they need a reminder at the foot of the display that this is indeed a “paid advertisement.” The aesthetics and style of the two exhibit rooms are decidedly different from one another. The first is more playful; the colorful toy-like interactive stations have a “learning is fun” kind of appeal. Children tend to be running around excitedly in this room. The second has a more grown-up feel; adults tend to linger around the individual stations, each of which requires more reading and sustained attention than those in the first room. It’s in the first that the tropes and figures are inviting visitors to play. The second does not call attention to figurations; it has the flavor of literalism. Thus, below, I attend to the displays in the first room, with their implicit lessons about figurations. I then turn to the boundary of figuration that is represented as the “frontier” to consider the consequences of boundaries of rhetoric in public displays of science. SPIRALING FIGURES

We can start with the entryway for a sense of the intense figuration on display and for a sense of how you are incorporated in the exhibit. The walls at the entrance guide visitors through a spiraled corridor past three round objects lined up in a series. The first round object is a magnified picture of a human egg with the proclamation “This was you.” The second round object is a mirror (about the same size as the human egg), with the message “This is you.” The third is a large red circle with a message inside: “This is the secret of you.” Spiraling away from this circle is a long line of letters—As, Ts, Gs, and Cs—presented as the secret-holding code: This code holds the secret of your genes—and your genes hold the secret to where you came from, who you are, and who you might become. Interacting with your surroundings and influenced by chance, your genes contain the secret of how life works.1

The message is constructed with its own gently spiraling figure, setting up a sense of easy movement among layers of nested secrets: inside the code is the secret of genes; inside the genes is the secret of you; inside you and your genes is the secret of life. The architectural, visual, and rhetorical figures reinforce one another in content and style. The curved entryway spirals visitors into a place that then spirals out to a series of exhibition stations. The visual trimorphism of what you were, what you are, and the secret of you spirals visitors in through biological time and spirals us out from the simple egg to the complex individual and to all of life. The messages of secrets spiral us in to the special knowledge while spiraling out to the expanded significance of genetic information.

108

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

We may notice that we are being ushered in here to a new, more flexible and more fashionable, sense of determinism. Though you are reduced to a singular secret, that singular secret is not quite the old familiar metonymizing move of explaining you as an element of biological material. You are not your genes here. You are what appeared in the mirror just a moment ago. Still, the biological material contains your source code and makes you able to interact with the environment and become something all your own. Your individuality, the mystery of your individuality, and the mystery of life for that matter, are contained in the code. But, more to the point of this chapter, the spiraling figures of the entryway usher us into the style of the exhibition. The layered and overt figuration helps to calibrate us for the playfully serious rhetoric to come. This is playful figuration with important lessons: basic lessons about biology and genetics and suggestive lessons about the importance of tropes and figures in the life sciences. ERIC LANDER AND THE AUTHO RITATIVE SECRET-SHARING ETHOS

A primary theme that dominates the exhibit is that of secrets being revealed. The sharing of secrets helps promote the sense that what is on display is privileged knowledge, and thus all the more real, authoritative, and important. At the entrance—before the spiral—scrawled in handwriting on a chalkboard (well, really, it’s a pretend chalkboard), is an announcement of what is presumably the primary lesson of the day: “the secret of how life works.” Individual learning stations follow suit, telling of secret codes, the “key to the mystery of life,” and “amazing secrets” in the book of “Life’s Recipes.” After being herded in through the spiral entryway, visitors are confronted with the largest of the displays: an enormous model of a DNA double helix, roped off in a style evocative of the huge dinosaur displays at natural history museums. Perched atop this huge model of the DNA double helix is a continuous loop video. The video features Eric Lander, who explains that the DNA model is “the secret of you, the secret of me, and actually, the secret of all life on this planet.” Lander is the director of the Whitehead Institute’s Center for Genome Research, the founding director of the Broad Institute (established in 2003 for pursuing the study of human genomics for medical and pharmaceutical purposes), and a professor of biology at MIT. When the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium published the “Initial Sequencing Analysis of the Human Genome” in Nature in February 2001—an article that begins, by the way, with its own allusions to valuable secrets made available to the public, referring to the genome as holding an “extraordinary trove of information” now being made “freely available”—Lander, by virtue of being the director of the sequencing center that contributed the most genomic

GENOME

109

sequence, was the first author listed. He is one of contemporary life science’s most charismatic promoters, often playing a leading role in educating the public about genetics and genomics. He has a special knack—or a characteristic ethos—for being the enthusiastic teacher and captivating his audience with the pleasures of learning. With a spirited and hospitable speaking style, he lets us in on the key to the mystery of life: Hello! My name is Eric Lander. What you see before you is the DNA double helix. It’s the secret of you, the secret of me, and, actually, the secret of all life on this planet. The DNA double helix is made up of genes, which are sort of a recipe for who you are. The only problem is that recipe is written in a secret code. It took a very long time to figure out how to read that code. But now we have it. To read the code, you have to learn a new alphabet. Instead of your ABCs you have to learn your As, Ts, Cs and Gs [the corresponding letters on the model light up in synch]. The letters stand for chemicals called bases. A stands for adenine, T for thymine, C for cytosine, and G for guanine. The secret is that As always pair up with Ts and Cs always pair up with Gs on the two sides of the double helix. The neat thing about the DNA double helix is that it can make a copy of itself. That’s how genes can be passed on from parents to their children. To make a copy of itself, the DNA unwinds and splits down the middle. Each strand of the double helix becomes a template for a new partner strand. With the help of special proteins called enzymes, each half rebuilds and restores the missing half. Remember As always pair with Ts and Cs always pair up with Gs. Now, where we had just one double helix, we’ve got two identical copies of the double helix. That’s how the code of life replicates itself. The DNA double helix is the key to the mystery of life. It holds the instructions for how we live and breathe, all written out in a four-letter code. It’s really pretty simple when you think about it. But it is the secret of life.

In the secret-revealing video, Lander connects the theme of secrets and the metaphor of codes with the material form of DNA. He also invokes several popular tropes: genes as recipes, chemical bases as letters of an alphabet, DNA as holding instructions, and DNA as a zipper. He tells the people standing in front of the gigantic three-dimensional model of DNA that they are looking at the secret of themselves and the secret of all life. The secret, Lander explains, is both the form itself and the way that the components of DNA interact with one another. That is, the secret is both the way that the form embodies a “code” and the way that it reproduces that code. Lander’s tone—

110

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

his enthusiasm for the component tropes and his slightly hushed and slowed pace at the end—suggests that the secret is also the way the various tropes come together. Lander’s captivating tone shifts from dramatizing the specialness of the secrets, to emphasizing the magnitude of their significance, and then to suggesting the accessibility of those secrets. When he explains that “the secret is that As always pair up with Ts and Cs always pair up with Gs,” he adopts the posture and tone of a favorite uncle showing us what’s inside the magic box. The drama of the secrets works to keep our attention focused on the DNA model and on the elegance of the model, the satisfyingly simple relationships between As and Ts, Cs and Gs. Lander’s explanation does not explicate any broader significance for this special code (other than linking the code with the concept of genes), nor does it account for how this model connects to anything outside of itself. It is as if we are all together inside the bubble of a special secret knowledge, not worrying about how it connects to anything outside the bubble. As I stood with my fellow museum visitors in front of a roped-off model of DNA listening to a recorded explanation of the mechanisms of the model from one of the more authoritative public voices in genomics research, I felt as though I were participating in a simulation of public science. Like the nineteenth-century museum exhibits of natural history, the DNA model stood before us as a spectacle of science. But here, rather than focusing our attention on a “natural” specimen of racial or evolutionary history, the spectacle focuses our attention on the primacy of codes. The elegant confluence of tropes and secrets encourages a sense of awe and wonder in the face of privileged scientific knowledge. TROPES ON DISPLAY

The Lander video relies on the theme of the secret to provide a sense of coherence among a series of tropes that are on display at the exhibit.2 In the stations surrounding the gigantic model of the DNA helix, within earshot of Lander’s continuous loop recording, the individual tropes are materialized in their own three-dimensional form or video display. At each station, visitors can learn a basic biological or genetic concept by learning a trope. The tropes are the vehicle for understanding the concepts. In a sense, then, the museum offers training in using tropes as vehicles for understanding concepts in the life sciences. Below, I describe a few stations in terms of the kind of tropological training that they offer. A Simple Reductive Figure One of the stations, labeled “Atoms to You” and claiming “Parts Make the Whole,” demonstrates a trope of biological reduction with a set of nested

GENOME

111

dolls. The outer doll is labeled “body.” Nested inside the “body” is a doll labeled “organs.” Nested inside that, one labeled “cells.” Then “organelles,” then “molecule.” Finally, the innermost doll is labeled “atom.” I especially like this figurative display because of the recurring pattern of use I noticed while lingering nearby. The nested dolls are located about two feet above the ground, apparently intended for the smaller children touring the exhibition. Typically, a small child would approach the dolls and start lifting the top one off and exploring the magic of finding another one underneath, at times with volatile enthusiasm. The accompanying adult would then crouch down to explain the lesson of the dolls—“see, inside your body, you have organs . . .” The kind of playful interaction, the adult explanation, and the open, blank looks on the children’s faces remind me that the use of tropes and figures to access biological concepts does not necessarily come naturally. In other words, the adults and children interacting with the “Atoms to You” display provide a glimpse into some early training in figurative thinking. The scenes at the museum are similar to those described by Ronald Amerine and Jack Bilmes in their study of third graders who conduct “experiments” by following instructions published as part of a commercial science education kit. The children in Amerine and Bilmes’s study use the instructions for learning about water pressure, but they don’t do a very good job of staying focused on the lesson. For them, the ability to achieve the desired outcome of the experiment becomes more of a competitive game than a lesson in observing natural phenomenon. As Amerine and Bilmes show, if you examine the scene in terms of the intended lesson, there is something absurd about the instructions for the experiment: the way they are written presumes that the users/readers already understand the principle that is under instruction, yet the users/readers are supposed to be learning the principle through these very instructions. The children who Amerine and Bilmes observe are not interacting with the intended lesson. But they are learning. They are learning about the problem of constructing a coherent, successful course of action from a set of experiment instructions. Amerine and Bilmes conclude that the children, while apparently missing the point of the lesson, learn about the relationship between texts and predictable outcomes. Similarly, there is something absurd about a lesson, aimed at children, that requires both a rather sophisticated understanding of the concept of nesting systems and an ability to use abstract tropes to organize our understandings of material bodies. The children may not be absorbing the message about our bodies as nested systems. But they are interacting with a toy that has some figurative relationship with the life sciences. Just as the children who Amerine and Bilmes observe are learning the relationship between texts and predictable outcomes, the children at the museum are being ushered into a form of play that contains lessons about the relationship between toys, figures, and the life sciences.

112

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

Cell Surveillance Technology In the “Cell Explorer” station, visitors can learn about the different components of cells while also getting a lesson in what Lakoff and Johnson call the coherence of a system of metaphors. The display is a large two-dimensional map of a cell, with components marked as targets. Visitors are invited to “slide the crosshairs of the monitor over the part of the cell you would like to explore.” The monitor is a small video monitor affixed to a transparent plate marked with crosshairs. When the crosshairs are lined up with the target on the map, a short video is triggered explaining what the cell component is and how it works. Each component is described in terms of a metaphor; together they form a system of metaphors that cohere around the image of an industrial center. The cell membrane is the cell’s border and security guard. The nucleus is the cell’s office or control center. A lysosome is a trash can. The mitochondrion is the power plant. The ribosomes are protein factories. The endoplasmic reticulum is a conveyor belt. The golgi complex is the loading dock for material that is leaving the cell. And a vesicle is a cell’s delivery truck, carrying materials out of the cell. Just as in many of the other displays in the exhibition, visitors can access a biological concept by learning a metaphor. But this display is also a system of metaphors. As the metaphors come together, so do the mechanisms of the cell. Embedded in the display is a lesson about using systems of metaphors to understand biological systems. Get the system of metaphors and you get a perspective for understanding the relationships among the component parts of the cell. Get that and you’ve got a strategy for thinking in the life sciences. A Cookie Factory The system of industrial production metaphors is sustained in the adjacent station, but this time without the loose military-surveillance associations of locating the place on the map through the crosshairs of a movable visual display. Instead, this station is a bright and cheery display of a “cookie factory.” An elaborate diorama-like display has moving parts that bring together the system of manufacturing metaphors and the genes-as-recipes metaphor to depict the cell at work, following a coded recipe, to produce cookies/proteins. The cartoonish figures in the display move in a coordinated process that is narrated, on a continuous audio loop, by Eric Lander. As the parts and metaphors come together in an elaborate depiction of protein-making process, more training in metaphorical coherence and metaphorical interaction is visible. A cartoon-figure man, working inside the “home office” (or nucleus) can be seen “copying” a special recipe. The copy of the recipe is then sent off via the mRNA (messenger RNA), depicted as a woman on a motorbike scooting over to the “factory” (or ribosome). A figure inside the factory is apparently

GENOME

113

coordinating the process of cookie making; the process is represented by a series of wheels and gears whirring around. In the front of the display is a museum board, functioning like a caption to the display, outlining the metaphors at work in the process and showing how the process corresponds to the actual process of the cell. Though I certainly did not conduct any type of ethnographic or usability study, I did happen to notice while loitering near the exhibit area that this station appeared to receive the most attention from visitors in the nine-totwelve age bracket. While I was mesmerized by the depiction of the process, the sustained metaphorical coherence, and the complex mechanisms of affirming a predictable and foundational reality, a few momentarily unsupervised kids were drawn to the sides of the exhibit, where they could glimpse the mechanisms of the gears and the wheels inside the “factory.” They seemed to be trying to go outside the bounds of “legitimate” exhibit viewing by trying to figure out how the parts were moving along in a standardized and predictable fashion. Meanwhile, I was going outside the bounds of “legitimate” research practices by eavesdropping on their conversations, listening to one kid explain to another that the mechanism that allowed the motorbike to move across the display was hidden behind the little hut. Within the kids’ conversation about the gears, the legitimate meaning of the hut was the object that was masking the mechanisms of the display; it was neither the metaphorical “home office” nor the cell’s nucleus. The kids were clearly interacting with the figurative interfaces, but not in the sense that was intended by the designers. In his theory of metaphorical interaction, Max Black explains that the success of any metaphor depends on the active cooperation of the audience. When a metaphor is applied to a concept or an object, it is up to the listener to select which features of the metaphor, which entailments, to apply to the object. When kids run around to get a glimpse of the gears that are operating behind a system of metaphors, they do not appear to be selecting the intended entailments of the system of metaphors. They are not using the metaphorical display in the intended or “legitimate” way. Again, like the children in Amerine and Bilmes’ study who call attention to the culturally learned relationships between texts and predictable outcomes, these kids catching sidelong views of the cookie factory metaphor call attention to complex relationships among metaphors and biological systems. Metaphors, and stylistic devices in general, do not by themselves fix meaning. They are always in touch with the contingency of meaning and the contingency of discourse. The audience can always wander off and imagine the wrong things. This contingency becomes apparent when we see little kids interact with the nested dolls. Who knows what they’re thinking. But we can see they’re not really getting the intended message. And the older kids playing around behind the cookie factory—trying to figure out how the gears work

114

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

and what makes the thing go round—are apparently not trying to grasp how the messenger on the motorbike is supposed to be representing a rhizome. The display stations in the museum exhibit train visitors to use the metaphors in the intended or legitimate ways to get to the knowledge of biology. But, collectively, the displays also offer a more general training in using tropes. Even if visitors do not study the explanation of the cookie factory, and don’t absorb that the “cookies” being manufactured are analogous to proteins, and don’t retain the components or the sequence of the process, there are still important general lessons on display. Biological processes can be modeled and accessed with familiar and accessible metaphors. The knowledge of the genome is not arcane and occult knowledge; it may be complex, but it is accessible and it is presentable in a public space. Besides the lessons contained in the particular system of metaphors—metaphors that transfer concepts of a predictable, reliable, and knowable process to biological processes of a cell—the cookie factory and the surrounding stations perform the importance of tropes and figures in relation to the life sciences. If we step back and scan the exhibit space, we see each station embodying a different metaphor. We can mix these metaphors to piece together a fuller understanding of genetics. The museum space appears to be as much about training visitors in the role of metaphors and modeling in the life sciences as it is about getting the content across. LAYERED METAPHO RS

In the previous section I considered how the exhibit provides training for using metaphors and models to access knowledge of the life sciences. But there is more rhetorical training embedded in the exhibit than a demonstration of how to use tropes to access knowledge. The tropes presented are not merely a matter of making concepts accessible to a lay audience. Some of the tropes and figures—such as the spiraling entranceway and the origami display—are whimsical and explicitly figurative; they are so overtly stylized that they would not be mistaken for the content of the lesson. But others—such as the mitochondrion as the cell’s “power plant” or the genome as coded information—blur, to varying degrees, the distinction between the stylistic device and the content of the lesson, or between the trope and the knowledge. Thus, in addition to demonstrating how to use metaphors to access knowledge, the exhibit offers an extended lesson regarding levels of metaphors or degrees of figurability. Or, in other words, the exhibit guides its visitors in recognizing which figures are closer to the literal content of the display, which figures have more authority. The layers of metaphor are physically displayed at the giant book display. To prepare to see the display as a form of epideictic guidance for scientific and rhetorical authority, we can borrow from a discussion of levels of metaphors

GENOME

115

provided by S. Michael Halloran and Annette Norris Bradford. In their article “Figures of Speech in the Rhetoric of Science and Technology,” Halloran and Bradford identify as a principle of scientific popularization the importance of revealing to an audience the central tropes of a scientific field. Halloran and Bradford’s purpose is to advocate the “judicious use of metaphor” in the teaching of scientific and technical writing. In so doing, they call attention to different levels of metaphor by contrasting the rhetorical functions of “mere metaphor” and metaphor as a “central heuristic.” Halloran and Bradford examine metaphors in genetic discourse, paying special attention to James Watson and Francis Crick’s papers “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid” and “Genetic Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid.” Watson and Crick’s use of the image of a zipper—a metaphor also on display at Pfizer’s genome exhibit—provides the primary example for Halloran and Bradford’s discussion of metaphors that are so obviously metaphors that they are unlikely to be taken literally. The zipper metaphor provides an accessible image of “how the two strands of the molecule might come apart during cell division.” The metaphor transfers the familiar function of a zipper to the overall description of DNA. We are not likely to think of the DNA molecule as a real zipper; it is only zipper-like in one specific aspect. In Halloran and Bradford’s terms, the zipper metaphor has “local and limited application. . . . When used to explain how the strands of the DNA molecule fit together and come apart, the image of a zipper is a mere metaphor (which is not to say that it is rhetorically useless)” (Halloran and Bradford 188). The more “mere” a metaphor, the more obvious it is as a metaphor. The more obvious, the more limited is its applicability. It is only being used to transfer one aspect of its meaning. We are not likely to see the nested dolls and think that our bodies are composed of distinct physical shells resting inside one another; the trope transfers (or attempts to transfer) the concept of nesting to the arrangement of biological systems. In the case of protein folding likened to origami paper, the analogy is so limited and local that it is made explicit in a simile: “A protein is like a piece of origami paper.” Similarly, the system of tropes comprising the cookie factory is made explicit in part by the visual display, in part by the identification of some of its component similes, and in part by Lander’s narration, with its audible wink letting us in on the metaphor of the cookie as protein. The playful and explicit tropes throughout the exhibit help to emphasize particular aspects of biology and genetics and call attention to particular metaphoric relationships. In contrast to mere metaphors (metaphors that are overtly figurative and limited and local in application), metaphors that are central (or fundamental) to a scientific discipline are less obviously figurative and more likely to be taken literally. To explore the function of scientific metaphors that are not quite as limited or local in application as the zipper metaphor, Halloran and

116

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

Bradford examine the metaphor of communication in genetics, a metaphor also invoked by Watson and Crick. Unlike the limits of the zipper metaphor, the limits of the communication metaphor are not obvious. It is what Halloran and Bradford refer to as a “central heuristic” in the field of genetics. It is so close to the foundational understanding that it is not likely to be recognized or experienced as a metaphor: “It might be argued that to the biologist the idea of genetic communication is not a metaphor but a literal theory, that the genetic process is not like communication, it is communication” (Halloran and Bradford 186). The emergence of communication as a central metaphor in genetics, as a metaphor that doesn’t seem to be at all metaphorical, is a historically specific instance of Friedrich Nietzsche’s claims about knowledge making as a metaphorical enterprise and the production of truth as a process of forgetting about the metaphors.(1174) Several historical and cultural studies of genetics, most notably Lily Kay’s Who Wrote the Book of Life? A History of the Genetic Code, aim at remembering the production of the metaphors of communication that gave rise to contemporary genome studies. As Kay shows, metaphors of communication, information, and code were integral to the production of the Nuclear Age and the cold war; their explanatory power in genetics should not be recognized as emanating from genetic material itself but rather as resulting from the expansion of information sciences in the middle of the twentieth century and the alliances that formed between information scientists and life scientists. Metaphors of communication, information, and code are all part of the museum exhibit. But unlike in Kay’s analysis, these metaphors are not historically situated. And unlike the cell at work as a cookie factory and the lysosome as a trash can, the communication metaphors are not obviously metaphors. The communication metaphors, and the guidance of how to understand these metaphors in relation to the reality of the genome, all come together in the presentation of the genome as a book. In Halloran and Bradford’s terms, the book exhibit guides its visitors in recognizing a range of metaphors, from mere metaphors to fundamental or central metaphors. In Nietzsche’s terms, the exhibit guides its visitors in remembering some metaphors and forgetting others. The genome-as-book metaphor is foregrounded in the exhibit, in both the physical displays and the accompanying texts. At the entrance is a cardboard cutout of a little girl in a dress, standing on a stack of books, her face hidden behind a big red book that she holds open in front of her. The title of the book is the same as that of the exhibit, with the same lettering and double-helix logo: “Genome: The Secret of How Life Works.” Inside the exhibit space—just past the spiraled entrance and within earshot of the Lander video—one of the first display stations we encounter is an enormous book, at least nine feet tall, propped open so that we can see the front and back cov-

GENOME

117

ers and will have to walk around to see whether this is really a book or if it’s just a clever way to create space disguising an exhibit wall as a metaphor. On the “spine” we see the title: “Recipes for Life.” The front cover shows the title along with promotional claims: “All 23 Chapters” and “Filled with Amazing Secrets” and: Inside this giant book’s 23 chapters, you’ll find all the recipes—your genes— for cooking up tens of thousands of proteins. Why proteins? They make and maintain your body. This recipe book holds all the basic instructions for a human—the entire human genome.

The book metaphor is productive for lending the genome the authority of textual sources of information and legitimized knowledge. It is also a flexible and adaptable metaphor, with a range of possibilities, including occult books of secrets, instruction manuals, and recipe books. If we walk around to the other side of the genome-as-book display, we see the inside of the “book.” From this side, it looks like an encyclopedia with two columns of dense text, boldfaced headings announcing the different entries (“Amyoidosis, hereditary kidney disease” and “red hair”), and, along the page edges, twenty-three numbered tabs marking off the chapters, one for each chromosome. Look closely and the densely packed text is composed of strings of letters, but only the four letters—A, T, C, and G—used to represent the four bases of DNA. The text itself is not really the focus of the display; the encyclopedic pages are more of a background to the explanation and instructions that appear on the Plexiglas shield covering the “book.” Remember, the book is about nine feet tall. The Plexiglas shield is fashioned as a protective covering, one that we might find in a stuffier museum covering a precious artifact or original text that is so old it cannot be touched without its pages crumbling. The text on the Plexiglas merges the genre of the museum placard with instructions on how to use the book. To focus on the levels of figurability, we may want to take a sidelong glance at the instruction’s implications for the ability of the genome-as-book to stand alone as a source of meaning and knowledge, without the scaffolding of instructions, interpretive guidelines, and the blunt statements about its epistemic and cultural significance. We might also notice that the secret-recipe-book metaphor has been articulated into layers, detailing the relationship of the metaphor to the genome. But the layers also introduce some ambiguity: what now constitutes the secret knowledge provided by the book? Is it the text of four letters or is it the reading instructions and the reading apparatus? And, what are we doing as we are looking through the Plexiglas at the book? Does the reading apparatus make us into the equivalent of the geneticist who can see and read the code? If we were in the business of catching the book at assuming the posture of a transcendental signifier, we might sort through more carefully these ambiguities and the places where

118

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

the metaphors give way to imprecision. But that’s not what we’re doing here. After all, we’re looking at a nine-foot mock-up of a book. Our focus here is on the layers and levels of figurability and how those layers and levels are marked both by the physical display and by the text. This is where the recipe metaphor comes in particularly handy—the placard description explains that the genes are the recipes and shows that we need to understand the conversion table (the metaphors made explicit) and the instructions to use the recipe book. On the Plexiglas display, the recipe metaphor is made explicit with a conversion chart (“1 recipe = 1 gene”), guidelines for thinking about genes and “looking up recipes,” and a simile that likens the genome to a “huge recipe book” (Figure 3). The web version of the exhibit does not have the assistance of a larger-than-life materialization of the book metaphor, and thus relies on an introductory comment: “It may help to think of it like this: 1 recipe book = 1 genome. . . .” The comment helps orient the viewer to the recipe metaphor, emphasizing the value of the metaphor as a heuristic. In addition to the cues that call attention to the metaphor and the guidelines for using the metaphor to think about genes and genomes, both the physical and the web version also provide an explanation of the implications of the recipe metaphor for thinking about the significance of genes and genomes as determinants of who and what we are: “Just as the cooking environment . . . can change how a recipe turns out, your surroundings influence how you turn out. . . . You are the product of your genes, your experiences, your surroundings—and chance.” The explication of the recipe metaphor appears on a transparent shield. But this is not a display of faith in the transparency of scientific language. Quite the contrary. This is figurative language being foregrounded as figurative language to give more meaning to the textual object behind it. The explication, the conversion chart, the similes, and the guidelines put into dramatic relief the nontransparency of the book metaphor. Behind the transparent shield is the mock-up of the genome-as-book metaphor. As a metaphor, the book is not quite as explicit as the recipe; there are no guidelines telling us that the genome is like a book. It is just standing there as a representation: the genome as book. Still, there are some visual clues that we are not, in fact, looking at a real genome. The bookness of this gigantic genome is rather overdone and cartoon-like, with the little tabs in the margins marking the “chapters.” The recipe metaphor is explicated and gives more meaning to the book metaphor that stands behind it. The display depicts layers of metaphors. The outer layer functions as a “mere” metaphor to help us access the more central metaphor of the book. The book metaphor is, in turn, encasing the metaphor of the genome as code. The code is closer to what Halloran and Bradford describe as a central heuristic. It is not that the genome is like a code; it is a code.

119

Genes are recipes Your genome is like a huge recipe book with 30,000 to 40,000 recipes. They spell out the ingredients for the thousands of proteins that make and maintain your body. Genes don’t work alone Your genetic recipes are influenced by your surroundings. Just as the cooking environment such as oven temperature or altitude can change how a recipe turns out, your surroundings influence how you turn out. By determining which genes you inherit from your parents, chance also plays a role. You are the product of your genes, your experiences, your surroundings—and chance. Conversion Key 1 letter = 1 base A letter in DNA’s code is a chemical called a base. Four bases—A, T, G, and C—make up the rungs of the DNA ladder (A connects to T, G connects to C). Your entire genome contains about 3 billion rungs. 1 word = 1 codon A word is spelled by a sequence of three bases in a row, such as TCG, along one side of the DNA ladder. Each three-letter word is called a codon. 1 recipe = 1 gene A recipe for making protein is in a gene. Some genes contain the recipe for a single protein; other genes can make more than one protein. A gene is a section of DNA on a chromosome.

23 chapters = 23 pairs of chromosomes Your 23 chapters, or pairs of chromosomes, hold all your recipes. Chromosomes are tightly bundled threads of DNA and protein. They’re wrapped up like balls of string in the nucleus of a cell. 1 recipe book = 1 genome The recipe book with all your DNA and genes is your genome-all the basic instructions for a human. Chromosome 4 Recipes Open to a chapter and you’ll find all the recipes on that particular chromosome. In Chapter 4 (chromosome #4), you’ll find recipes for red hair, albumin (a major protein in blood), dentin (an ingredient in your teeth), and many, many others. Some scientists think the gene or genes for a very long life are on #4. This chapter also holds genes that contribute to Huntington’s disease, diabetes, and juvenile gum disease. Looking Up a Recipe Let’s say you want to find a recipe, or gene, for red hair. First, go to the table of contents, or chromosome map, and find chapter 4 (chromosome #4). Then look in the table of contents for that chapter. You’ll find the red-hair recipe below the recipe for amyloidosis, a heredity kidney disease. Now go to the red hair recipe’s page (section of DNA). On this page you’ll find the genetic code—the As, Ts, Cs, and Gs—for the recipe for the protein that makes red hair.

FIGURE 3 The text that appears on the Plexiglas covering the giant book display

120

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

The epideictic training ground of the first room of the “Genome: The Secret of How Life Works” exhibit offers multiple and layered lessons in genetics and biology. The displays also guide the audience in using metaphors to get the knowledge of genetics and in appreciating the value of tropes and figures in the life sciences. The tropes and figures occupy center stage here. They embody both the concepts of the life sciences and the social significance of the life sciences. And, they offer training in recognizing the role of metaphors in conceptualizing biological systems. The book of life display also expresses another very important lesson about metaphors and tropes. Without quite expressing that we ought not to mistake the trope for the thing itself, the implicit lesson of the book display is that while some tropes are open to stylistic play, there are some tropes that are so much closer to the truth of the matter that they ought to be understood as the thing itself. REALITY AND THE GENOMIC F RONTIER

The playful atmosphere—invoked by the “cookie factory,” the gigantic book, and display stations that invite visitors to pull levers and play with dolls— stops at the threshold to the second half of the genome exhibition. There is a clearly marked passage point separating the first part from the second part. Visitors enter the second part by passing through an archway labeled “Living on the Frontier.” Another sign announces “The Frontier Is Here.” To pass through the archway to learn about life on the frontier is to leave behind the playfulness of the tropic interfaces. It is as though we are entering the zone of the serious and the literal, crossing over the boundary into figural realism. Apparently not even the “frontier” is to be recognized as a metaphor. There are no cartoon figures to help us grasp the concept of a frontier and apply it to the notions of technology and progress that are on display. No pictures of covered wagons. No gestures to life on the American frontier. No pictures of native Americans resisting the push of the frontiersmen. Certainly, no acknowledgment of what this frontier might look like from the other side of the cardboard claims of progress. The exhibits comprising the genomic frontier include descriptions of genetic tests for phenylketonuria, genetic research of Huntington’s disease, forensic DNA analysis, and the development of genetically targeted pharmaceuticals. The one station that, on the surface, might appear to uphold the figurative play of the earlier stations—the one titled “Genetic Detective Stories”— is, it turns out, a fairly straightforward explanation of forensic DNA analysis. In noting the place of figuration in science and in representations of science, it is worth considering Latour’s recent argument for the importance of standing guard against the separation of matters of fact and matters of concern. In his essay “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern” Latour addresses what he calls “sturdy realism,”

GENOME

121

or the resilience of scientific realism despite the extensive efforts of critical theory and critical science studies. He opens his essay with the example of political strategists who oppose environmental control by arguing that global warming is contingent and not fixed as an ultimate reality. In light of such rhetorical maneuvers in public debate, Latour points out that critiques of science and technology that work to demonstrate that what appears to be purely factual is, actually, ideological are not quite as useful as they once were (or as we once thought that they were). When we congratulate ourselves on demonstrating that the apparently factual is actually ideological, we miss the powerful science rhetoric that runs not on claims of factuality and value-neutrality but rather on denouncements of contingency and uncertainty. Latour’s call to make critiques of science relevant to science rhetoric in public discourse can be extended to the analysis of figurative language in rhetoric of science and rhetoric about science. Critiques of scientific arguments that demonstrate that what appears to be purely literal is, actually, rhetorical does not necessarily defuse the authoritative power of science rhetoric that claims reality as its foundation by denouncing fiction, figuration, and rhetoric. The “gene,” in all its uses, teaches me to see that in the play of figuration, rhetorical boundaries are reaffirmed, reconstituted, and refigured. Genes, ideas about genes, and representations of genes do not simply emerge from the authoritative spaces of science. Rather, in being figured as being grounded in the real and in being figured as emerging from authoritative spaces, genes contribute to the reaffirmation of the boundaries of those authoritative spaces. The boundaries that separate the rhetorical and the contingent from the literal and the real, the boundaries that figure a distinction between rhetoric that belongs to science and rhetoric that belongs to public culture are not encoded in texts beyond our reach; they are reconstituted within the rhetoric of science and within rhetoric about science. The frontier of the genome display serves as a reminder, just as Johannsen’s speech about the gene does, that the sources of legitimacy and the boundaries of authoritative rhetoric are often figured within the texts that rely on those sources and those boundaries. “Reality Check Theater” At the edge of the space devoted to the frontier, positioned as the last stop before the exit of the exhibition, is a small alcove with a marquee identifying it as the “Reality Check Theater.” Inside the “theater,” visitors can see clips of popular science fiction films. The clips are strung together with a narration that serves as a closing commentary for the exhibition, preparing visitors to integrate what they’ve learned at the museum with other representations of genetics outside the museum:

122

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE Leaving here today you now know lots of things you didn’t know before and being clued in to genetics you are likely to see genetics everywhere in the world around you. In newspapers, magazines, and in the movies and from some of what you’ll see you may start thinking that anything is possible.

The narrator of the “Reality Check” video is, once again, Eric Lander. But here Lander has been transformed from the avuncular guide, inviting us to play with metaphors to learn the secrets of life, to a polemicist warning against literal interpretations of fictional accounts of genomic futures. The video consists of clips from Jurassic Park, The Fly, and Gattaca—films that advance dystopian views of corporate-controlled science, scientific experiments gone awry, and new forms of eugenics and social control. Lander does not directly address or counter the dystopian views; he takes a clip from each film and uses it as a fictional antithesis for establishing the reality and real progress of genomic research. The first clip is the popular image of a genetically engineered dinosaur theme park gone out of control, to which Lander’s voice-over responds: “Whoa!! Is Jurassic park really possible? Could we really bring back dinosaurs from Jurassic DNA?” With a scene extracted from Jurassic Park and presented in the Reality Check Theater, Lander addresses the real feasibility of the fictional scenario, answering his own questions: “Well, probably not. No one has ever succeeded in finding dinosaur DNA. And if they did it would probably be too old and deteriorated and it’s not clear it’s a good use of time and money to try to bring back extinct monsters.” Then, having dismissed the value of the film’s ability to portray real possibilities and having provided reassurance that such outlandish endeavors probably wouldn’t happen anyway, Lander turns to an application of DNA technology that is both real and uncontroversially beneficial: “But scientists are using DNA technology to try to keep today’s endangered species from going extinct in the first place.” The movie The Fly, a story of the horrific consequences of an out-of-control experiment that merged a fly and a human genome, provides another fictional antithesis, this one for real and purportedly beneficial gene-transfer techniques: “But on the other hand scientists have developed a technology to take single individual genes and transfer them from one species to another. Scientists are also moving genes to try to improve food.” The narration tacks back and forth between the outlandish examples of science fiction and the real progress that scientists are making. Lander ends with the importance of differentiating between fantasy and reality and between entertainment and real issues: We’re getting better and better working with genes and cells and proteins and all sorts of living organisms, from people to plants. So that in the future it might not be a question of what we can do, maybe more what we should do. We want to use the power of genetics to make a better world for our chil-

GENOME

123

dren. The promise is enormous but not everything about genetics is clear cut so it’s important to separate fantasy from reality, entertainment from real issues. So go ahead, ask questions, talk about it. What we, all of us, decide to do today creates the world of tomorrow.

The closing comments proclaim the importance of public participation in directing science and technology. But the call for participation is constrained by the emphasis on marking a clear distinction between fiction and reality. The issues raised in the fictional contexts—thorny issues related to the aspirations and responsibilities of profit-driven research institutions, unforeseen consequence and irreversible changes to species and environments, the changing norms of health and health care, and the social and cultural implications of genomic technology—are kept outside of the Reality Check Theater. Public discourse related to genomic technology is presumably to stay grounded in explicit claims on what is real and what is currently realistic and feasible. Lander’s commentary, combined with the exhibits on display along the genomic frontier, offer an explicit example of the assertion of scientific realism in shaping public debate and in shaping opportunities for public participation regarding matters of science and technology. Lander’s commentary is reminiscent of Wilhelm Johannsen’s gene-naming speech in which he made a clearing of scientific realism for the gene by setting it in antithesis to figurative language, fiction, pretending, and speculations taken as fact. Johannsen figured the gene to function metonymically as a claim on a material reality while projecting an immunity to the problems of language and rhetorical style. The purpose of examining Johannsen’s text in chapter three was not to catch him engaging in the promotion of myth or effectively using stylistic devices while denouncing the influence of such devices on the construction of scientific knowledge. Rather my aim was to show how the antithesis of the figurative and the real worked to construct the gene figure and, in turn, can help us to understand the consequences of the rhetorical work of the gene. Donna Haraway has warned of the loss of opportunities for critical examination when the gene stands as, in Sarah Franklin’s term, “the trope of no trope,” or in Harway’s term, an object of genetic fetishism. In her critique of the discourse of “life itself,” Haraway cautions against being swayed by the capacity of genes to function rhetorically as “a thing-in-itself where no trope can be admitted. . . . To be outside the economy of troping is to be outside finitude, morality, and difference, to be in a realm of pure being, to be One, where the word is itself” (Modest Witness 134). The claims to progress on display at the genome exhibit are the kinds of claims to progress that deserve public scrutiny and social and cultural critique. They are the kinds of claims to which we ought to bring critical attention to representations of genetic fetishism. The exhibits mark dramatic

124

HOW THE GENE GOT ITS GROOVE

changes in health and medicine, agriculture, global research and global business, and (as displayed by the list of exhibit sponsors) new kinds of alliances of profit-driven corporations, public research organizations, and education initiatives. Though the exhibit encourages participation, it sustains genetic fetishism. By grounding itself in claims of the realistic and the feasible, the exhibit expresses a sense of inevitable, though beneficial, progress and deflects opportunities for critical examination. The genome exhibit can be seen as a public display of the rhetorical mechanisms that not only shape scientific knowledge and preserve a kind of public authority for science but can also, if we let go of our rhetorical sensibilities, work to deflect criticism. Much like in Johannsen’s speech that prescribed the rhetorical work of the gene, the boundaries of troping and figurative play are integral to the construction of the message and to the construction of a powerful sense of authoritativeness. The stations in the first part of the exhibit embody lessons regarding the productive role of tropes and figures in conceptualizing biological systems. The genome as book display incorporates a sense of the range of metaphoricity and rhetorical play, guiding viewers to recognize some metaphors as openly figurative and to treat other metaphors as representations of the real. Then the “frontier” installs a boundary between figurative play and claims of reality and progress. The boundary is similar to that which Johannsen asserted between the categories of the rhetorical and the real, but the consequences of taking the boundary literally are different. The potential effects of the rhetoric-reality boundary are practically caricatured for us within the Reality Check Theater as we are encouraged to ask questions and participate in the public life of science but discouraged from engaging with the important issues and problems that are raised in fictional contexts or presented in arguments that are overtly and unapologetically rhetorical. I am always wary of such authoritative assertions of reality. But I am heartened by the opportunity to step back and note the playfulness of the “Reality Check Theater” marquee, to look around at all the rhetorical play on display, and to see the “frontier” as a potent reminder that no boundary asserted between the rhetorical and the real should ever be taken too literally.

Notes

CHAPTER ONE. INTRODUCTION 1. For historical overviews of the meanings of genes in twentieth-century life sciences, see Elof Axel Carlson’s The Gene: A Critical History; Evelyn Fox Keller’s The Century of the Gene; and Beurton, Falk, and Rheinberger’s collected volume The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution. For cultural studies analyses of genes see, for example, Donna Haraway’s Modest Witness, and Adam Hedgecoe’s article “Transforming Genes.” 2. See the previous note. For a rhetorical perspective on the changing meaning of genes, with special emphasis on the public meaning of genes, see Celeste Condit’s The Meanings of the Gene. 3. It may be worth noting that despite the study’s kinship with semiotics, the iconicity of the gene is not iconicity in the sense of Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic definition of iconicity in which the signifier resembles the thing signified. Nelkin and Lindee do note the use of the double helix as a visual representation of DNA, but the gene as an icon is an arbitrary sign in relation to the meanings that it signifies. To identify the gene as a cultural icon is to identify the cultural production and cultural work of the sign: “As a cultural icon, [the gene’s] meanings mirror public expectations, social tensions, and political agendas” (199). The cultural iconicity calls attention to the symbolic and persuasive powers of the gene, much like a religious icon stands in for multiple, and at times contradictory, particular meanings while providing a shared sense of the sacred. CHAPTER TWO. GENETIC O RIGIN STO RIES 1. I am simplifying here. The rule of dominance is a rule that emerged from watching several successive generations of plants. Mendel established what he called “pure lines” of plants: plants that consistently produced either violet or white flowers and then crossed those pure lines with one another. The rule of dominance then shows up in the second and third generation of plants produced by the cross of those “pure-line” plants. 2. Kragh uses the case of Mendel as a prime example for emphasizing the value of both anachronical (viewing the past in light of later knowledge and later termi125

126

NOTES

nology) and diachronical (viewing past events in the context of the past) approaches to the history of science. Kragh argues that history of science requires a judicious incorporation of both perspectives. 3. Mendel specifically addresses the eighteenth-century work of Kölreuter and the nineteenth-century work of Gärtner. Kölreuter, in the 1760s, published papers on his own systematic studies of plant hybrids and his findings on the pollination process. Gärtner, in the 1830s and 1840s, conducted extensive crossbreeding experiments, confirming what Kölreuter had found and reporting on the variability of the second generation of crossbred plants (Sturtevant 3). 4. Froggatt and Nevin provide a rich and comprehensive overview of the conflict. Farrall examines the conflict for extending Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts and conflict in science. MacKensie and Barnes examine the case as an example of the social and ideological influences that shape scientific research agendas. CHAPTER THREE. PRESCRIBING RHETO RICAL WO RK: GENETIC THEO RIES, GEMMULES, AND GENES 1. Translation by Michele Braun. 2. My observation of Darwin’s use of figures is limited to his accumulation and alignment of examples for the sake of advocating a unifying theory. For a study of Darwin’s employment of figures and investment of empirical knowledge with structures of reasoning, see Fahnestock’s Rhetorical Figures in Science (1999). 3. For an analysis of the rhetorical work of hedging and other devices of reducing certainty in scientific writing, see Jeanne Fahnestock’s “Accommodating Science” (1993). See also Latour and Woolgar’s taxonomy of statement types (77–79), which Fahnestock both borrows and evaluates for its applicability to rhetorical analysis. 4. In the previous chapter, I described, as many twentieth-century geneticists and historians have, Mendel’s experiments in terms of genes. Though Mendel did not express any notion of genes and did not argue for any such conceptual unit, he is often credited with, at the very least, pointing to the existence of genes and providing the foundation for a comprehensive theory of heredity. In a sense, though, Darwin is arguing for the need for just such a theory of heredity, a theory that “Mendelism” of the twentieth century fulfills and gets projected back onto the work of Darwin’s contemporary. It’s ironic that Darwin calls for a comprehensive theory in the same decade that Mendel publishes his work. Mendel doesn’t present it as a comprehensive theory, but he does get credited for it in that way. CHAPTER FOUR. GENES ON MAIN STREET 1. This article is a strong example of the deliberate style that Time had been cultivating since its very first issue. Historian of American magazines James Playsted Wood characterizes that deliberate style as one of affecting an “air of brassy omniscience.” Established the magazine in 1923, initiators set out to write with “complete assurance, ex cathedra authority, and metallic certainty”—and a professed commit-

NOTES

127

ment to give “both sides of a story but clearly indicate which side it believed to have the strongest position” (Wood 207–210). 2. Most of Lysenko’s commentary on heredity was focused on plants, but comments that he made in a speech in 1935 provide an example of his articulation of communist values in terms of heredity: “In our Soviet Union, comrade, people are not born. Human organisms are born, but people are created from organisms in our country—tractor drives, motorists, mechanics, academicians, scientists, and so on. And I am one of the people created in this way. I was not born a human being, I was made as a human being. And to feel myself such, comrades, in such a position—it is to be more than happy” (quoted in Soyfer 63). CHAPTER SIX. FIGURATIVELY SPEAKING: GENES, SEXUALITY, AND THE AUTHO RITY OF SCIENCE 1. Research conducted by Dick Swaab, published in 1990, also linked differences in brain structures with male homosexuality [D. F. Swaab and M. A. Hofman, “An Enlarged Suprachiasmatic Nucleus in Homosexual Men,” Brain Research 537, 141 (1990)]. For more discussion of Swaab’s and LeVay’s studies, see Barinaga (1991) and Maddox (1991). 2. For analyses of the norms of scientific genres, see Bazerman as well as Gross. CHAPTER SEVEN. GENOME: THE SECRET OF HOW TROPES WO RK IN THE LIFE SCIENCES 1. Though my own source for the texts and transcripts incorporated in the museum exhibit was the exhibit space itself, pictures of the exhibit and most of the texts and transcripts are available through the Pfizer website: http://genome.pfizer.com/index.cfm. 2. See Leah Ceccarelli (2004) for the value of mixed metaphors in communications of genomics.

References

Amerine, Ronald, and Jack Bilmes. “Following Instructions.” In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by M. Lynch and S. Woolgar. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. Angier, Natalie. Woman: An Intimate Geography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999. Aristotle. On Rhetoric. Edited and translated by George A. Kennedy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. Bailey, J. Michael, and Richard C. Pillard. “A Genetic Study of Male Sexual Orientation.” Archives of General Psychiatry. 48 (December 1991): 1089–1096. Barinaga, Marcia. “Is Homosexualty Biological?” Science. 253:5023 (1991): 956–957. Barthelme, Donald. At the End of the Mechanical Age. In Sixty Stories. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1981. Bateson, William. “The Progress of Genetic Research: An Inaugural Address to the Third Conference on Hybridisation and Plant-Breeding.” Report of the Conference on Genetics and Allied Sciences. London, 1906, 90–97. Bazerman, Charles. Shaping Written Knowledge. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988. Beurton, Peter, Raphael Falk, and Hans-Jorg Rheinberger. The Concpet of the Gene in Development and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Black, Max. Models and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962. Blair, Carole. “Contemporary U.S. Memorial Sites as Exemplars of Rhetoric’s Materiality.” In Rhetorical Bodies, edited by J. Selzer and S. Crowley. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. Burke, Kenneth. A Grammar of Motives. New York: Prentice-Hall, 1945. Carlson, Elof Axel. The Gene: A Critical History. Ames: Iowa State University Press. Original edition, 1966, 1989. Ceccarelli, Leah. “Neither Confusing Cacophony nor Culinary Complements: A Case Study of Mixed Metaphors for Genomic Science.” Written Communication. 21.1 (2004): 92–105. Ceccarelli, Leah. Shaping Science with Rhetoric: The Cases of Dobzhansky, Schrodinger, and Wilson. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001.

129

130

REFERENCES

Churchill, Frederick B. “William Johannsen and the Genotype Conception.” Journal of the History of Biology. 7.1 (Spring 1974): 5–30. Clear Channel Exhibitions, the National Human Genome Research Institute, and the Whitehead Institute. Genome: The Secret of How Life Works. http://genome. pfizer.com/index.cfm. Pfizer: 2003. Condit, Celeste. 1999. The Meanings of the Gene: Public Debates about Human Heredity. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1999. “Cut to Pattern.” Time. January 17, 1949, 40. Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. Darwin, Charles, ed. The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Vol. 1 and 2. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Original edition, 1868. 1998. Dawkins, Richard. River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life. New York: Basic Books, 1995. Downey, Gary Lee, and Joseph Dumit. “Locating and Intervening: An Introduction.” In Cyborgs & Citadels: Anthropological Interventions in Emerging Sciences and Technologies, edited by J. D. Gary Lee Downey. Houston: University of Washington Press, 1997. Dunn, Leslie Clarence. A Short History of Genetics: The Development of Some of the Main Lines of Thought: 1864–1939. Ames: Iowa State University Press, 1991. Fahnestock, Jeanne. “Accommodating Science: The Rhetorical Life of Scientific Facts.” In The Literature of Science: Perspectives on Popular Science Writing, edited by M. W. McRae. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1993. Fahnestock, Jeanne. Rhetorical Figures in Science. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Falk, Raphael. “The Gene—A Concept in Tension.” In The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution: Historical and Epistemological Perspectives, edited by P. J. Beurton, R. Falk, and H.-J. Rheinberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Farrall, Lyndsay A. “Controversy and Conflict in Science: A Case Study—The English Biometric School and Mendel’s Laws.” Social Studies of Science. 5 (1975): 269–301. Fly’s Eye. Time. May 27, 1940, 44. Froggatt, P., and N. C. Nevin. “The ‘Law of Ancestral Heredity’ and the MendelianAncestrian Controversy in England, 1889–1906.” Journal of Medical Genetics. 8 (1971): 1–36. Gattaca. Directed by Andrew Niccol. 1997. Gelman, David, and Donna Foote. “Born or Bred?” Newsweek. February 24, 1992, 46–53. “Genes on Main Street.” Time. October 1, 1934, 26. “Genes Seen?” Time. March 9, 1936.

REFERENCES

131

“Genes: Sliced and Pictured.” Newsweek. January 24, 1949, 44. Gould, Stephen Jay. “What Does the Dreaded “E” Word Mean, Anyway.” Natural History. 109.1 (February 2000): 28. Grady, Denise. “Gay Genes.” Discover. January, 1993, 55. Graham, Loren R. Science in Russia and the Soviet Union: A Short History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993. Gross, Alan G. The Rhetoric of Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990. Gross, Alan G., Joseph E. Harmon, and Michael Reidy. Communicating Science: The Scientific Article from the 17th Century to the Present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Halloran, S. Michael. “The Birth of Molecular Biology: An Essay in the Rhetorical Criticism of Scientific Discourse.” In Landmark Essays on the Rhetoric of Science, edited by Randy Allen Harris. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Halloran, S. Michael, and Annette Norris Bradford. “Figures of Speech in the Rhetoric of Science and Technology.” In Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse, edited by R. J. Connors, L. S. Ede, and A. A. Lunsford. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. Hamer, Dean, S. Hu, V. L. Magnuson, N. Hu, and A. M. L. Pattatucci. “A Linkage Between DNA Markers on the X Chromosome and Male Sexual Orientation.” Science. 261:5119 (1993): 321–327. Haraway, Donna J. Modest_Witness@Second_Millennium. FemaleMan_ Meets_OncoMouse: Feminism and Technoscience. New York: Routledge, 1997. Haraway, Donna. “A Game of Cat’s Cradle: Science Studies, Feminist Theory, Cultural Studies.” Configurations. 2:1 (1994): 59–71. Hedgecoe, Adam M. 1999. “Transforming Genes: Metaphors of Information and Language in Modern Genetics.” Science as Culture. 8:2 (1999): 209–230. Holden, Constance. “Twin Study Links Genes to Homosexuality.” Science. 255:5040 (1992): 33. Hubbard, Ruth, and Elijah Wald. Exploding the Gene Myth: How Genetic Information Is Produced and Manipulated by Scientists, Physicians, Employers, Insurance Companies, Educators, and Law Enforcers. Boston: Beacon, 1993. Jarratt, Susan C. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1991. Jasinski, James. Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2001. Johannsen, Wilhelm. “The Genotype Conception of Heredity.” American Naturalist. 45:531 (1911): 129–159. Johannsen, Wilhelm. “Does Hybridization Increase Fluctuating Variability?” Report of the Conference on Genetics and Allied Sciences. London, 1906, 98–113. Johannsen, Wilhelm. Elemente der Exakten Erblichkeitslehre. Jena: Gusav Fischer, 1909.

132

REFERENCES

Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Speilberg. 1993. Kay, Lily E. Who Wrote The Book of Life?: A History of the Genetic Code. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Keller, Evelyn Fox. The Century of the Gene. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2000. Kragh, Helge. An Introduction to the Historiography of Science. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Lakoff, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980. Latour, Bruno, and Steve Woolgar. Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts. London: Sage, 1979. Latour, Bruno. “Why Has Critique Run Out of Steam? From Matters of Fact to Matters of Concern.” Critical Inquiry. 30.2 (Winter, 2004): 225–249. Latour, Bruno. Drawing Things Together: Putting Visualization and Cognition into Focus. In Representation in Scientific Practice, edited by M. Lynch and S. Woolgar. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1990. LeVay, Simon. “A Difference in Hypothalamic Structure Between Heterosexual and Homosexual Males.” Science. 253 (1991): 1034–1041. Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Routledge, 1959. “Lottery of Genes.” Newsweek. September 13, 1943, 86–87. MacKensie, Donald, and Barry Barnes. “Scientific Judgment: The BiometryMendelism Controversy.” Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture. Edited by Barry Barnes and Steve Shapin. Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979. Maddox, J. “Is Homosexuality Hardwired?” Nature. 353:6339 (1991): 13. “Man’s Mysterious Genes: They Color Hair, Shape Nose, and Govern Baldness.” Newsweek. September 4, 1939, 14. Martin, Emily. “The Egg and the Sperm: How Science Has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male–Female Roles.” Signs. 16.3 (1991): 485–501. Mendel, Gregor. Experiments in Plant Hybridisation. Trans. Ronald A. Fisher. Ed. J. H. Bennett. London: Oliver and Boyd, 1965. Mestel, Rosie. “X Marks The Spot.” Discover. January 1994, 71. Nelkin, Dorothy, and Susan Lindee. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as a Cultural Icon (Conversations in Medicine and Society). 2nd ed. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2004. Olby, Robert. “Mendel No Mendelian?” History of Science. 17 (1979): 53–72. Olby, Robert. The Emergence of Genetics. In Companion to the History of Modern Science, edited by Olby. New York: Routledge, 1990. Olby, Robert. The Path to the Double Helix: The Discovery of DNA. New York: Dover, 1994.

REFERENCES

133

Pease, Daniel C., and Richard F. Baker. “Preliminatry Investigation of Chromosomes and Genes with the Electron Microscope.” Science. 1949, 109. Plato. Apology of Socrates. In Four Texts on Socrates. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984. Preiser, Rachel. “Bisexual Flies.” Discover. 1996. Rasmussen, Nicolas. Picture Control: The Electron Microscope and the Transformation of Biology in America, 1940–1960. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Report of the Conference on Genetics and Allied Sciences. London, 1906. Rheinberger, Hans-Jorg. “Gene Concepts: Fragments from the Perspective of Molecular Biology.” In The Concept of the Gene in Development and Evolution: Historical and Epistemological Perspectives, edited by P. J. Beurton, R. Falk, and H.-J. Rheinberger. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Rheinberger, Hans-Jorg. Toward A History of Epistemic Things: Synthesizing Proteins in the Test Tube. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997. Ritvo, Harriet. “Foreword.” In The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. Schiappa, Edward. Defining Reality: Definitions and the Politics of Meaning. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2003. SedgwickRoad. Washington Mutual Commercial: http://www.sedgwickrd.com/work/ portfolio.aspx?id=1. Selzer, Jack, ed. Understanding Scientific Prose. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993. Snustad, D. Peter, Michael J. Simmons, and John B. Jenkins. Principles of Genetics. 7th ed. New York: Wiley, 1997. Soyfer, Valery N. 1994. Lysenko and the Tragedy of Soviet Science. New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press. Star, Susan Leigh, and James Griesemer. “Institutional Ecology, ‘Translation’ and Boundary Objects: Amateurs and Professionals in Berkeley’s Museum of Vertebrate Zoology, 1907–39.” Social Studies of Science. 19 (1988): 387–420. Sturtevant, Alfred Henry. A History of Genetics. New York: Harper & Row, 1965. The Fly. Directed by David Cronenberg. 1986. Thompson, Larry. “The Search for a Gay Gene.” Time. June 12, 1995, 60–61. Thomson, J. Arthur. Heredity. New York: G. P. Putnam’s, 1909. Thomson, J. Arthur. Outlines of Zoology. Edinburgh: Pentland, 1892. Vicedo, Marga. “The Reception of Wilhelm Johannsen’s Genotype in American Genetics: Metaphysics, Philology, and Demenia Mendeliana.” Sveriges Utsadesforenings Idskrif. 107.4 (December 1997): 167–177. Watson, James. The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA. New York: Penguin, 1968.

134

REFERENCES

Watson, James D., and Francis H. C. Crick. “Genetical Implications of the Structure of Deoxyribonucleic Acid.” Nature. 171:4361 (1953): 964–967. Watson, James D., and Franics H. C. Crick. “A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid.” Nature. 171:4356 (1953): 737–738. Watson, Traci, Joseph P. Shapiro, and Jim Impoco. “Is There a “Gay Gene”? Why New Findings Are Causing a Storm—Especially Among Homosexuals.” U.S. News and World Report. November 13, 1995, 93–96. Weldon, W. F. R. “Mendel’s Laws of Alternative Inheritance in Peas.” Biometrika. 1.1 (1901): 228–264. Weldon, W. F. R. “Remarks on Variation in Animals and Plants.” Proceedings of the Royal Society. 57 (1894–1895). Weldon, W. F. R., Carl Pearson, and C. B. Davenport. “The Scope of Biometrika.” Biometrika. 1.1 (1901): 1–2. Weldon, W.F.R., Carl Pearson, and C.B. Davenport. “The Spirit of Biometrika.” Biometrika. 1.1 (1901): 3–6. Williams, Joseph. Style: Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace. Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman, 1981. Zhang, Shan-Ding, and Ward F. Odenwald. “Misexpression of the white (w) gene triggers male-male courtship in Drosophilia.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 92 (1995): 5525–5529.

Index

Amerine, Ronald, 111, 113 Angier, Natalie, 81 Aristotle, 105 Bailey, Michael, 85–87, 90–91, 95 Baker, Richard, 60–62 Bateson, William, 17, 21–28, 30 Bazerman, Charles, 46–47 Bilmes, Jack, 111, 113 biological determinism, 81, 103, 10 biometrics, 23–26, 38, 39, 44–45 Black, Max, 113 Blair, Carole, 6 boundary objects. See genes as boundary object boundary work, 2, 30, 39–41, 63–64, 72, 93, 98–105. See also genes as boundary object Bradford, Annette Norris, 10, 115–118 Bridges, Calvin Blackman, 11, 52 Burke, Kenneth, 10, 43 Carlson, Elof Axel, 24–25, 30, 50, 125n1 Ceccarelli, Leah, 10, 127n2 Condit, Celeste, 53, 125n2 Crick, Francis H. C., 12, 69, 73–79, 115–116 Darwin, Charles, 11, 21–22, 29–38, 45–48, 89–90, 126n4 Darwinism, 17, 22–27 Dawkins, Richard,15, 68

de Vries, Hugo, 20, 32, 35 Downey, Gary Lee, 93–94 DNA 1–4, 7, 61, 65, 69, 73–79, 108–110 grooves in DNA structure, 9–10 Dumit, Joseph, 93–94 Dunn, Leslie Clarence, 20–21, 24 electron microscope, 60 epideictic rhetoric, 50, 54, 105–106, 114–120 epistemic thing, 69–71. See also genes as boundary object Fahnestock, Jeanne, 5, 66–69, 126nn2–3 Falk, Raphael, 51, 75–76 Farrall, Lyndsey A., 23 Franklin, Sarah, 123 Galton, Francis, 39–41 gemmules, 11, 32–35, 46–47, 88–90 genes as autonomous self-stabilizing units, 75 as boundary object, 5, 69–79, 82–83, 93–96, 98, 100–103 as cultural icon, 7–9, 50, 61, 125n3 as material, 51, 90–93 as metonymy,17, 59, 63, 65–66, 85, 103, 123 as real, 6, 16, 37–47, 51, 60, 61, 77–78 as rhetorical invention, 3, 29–32, 36–47

135

136

INDEX

genes (continued) as rhetorical figure, 3, 66–69, 79 as visible, 52–53 definitions of, 4–6, 13, 29–32, 36, 41–43, 53, 125n1 “gay genes,” 13, 81–104 groove of. See DNA grooves and Mendel’s experiments, 16–20, 126n4 in relation to fiction, imagination, or fantasy, 40–42, 51–52, 58–60 white (w) gene, 100–103 genotype theory, 36–47 genotype, definition of, 43 genotype-phenotype distinction, 44 Graham, Loren, 57 Griesemer, James, 5, 69–73, 82, 98 grooves. See DNA Gross, Alan G., 10 Halloran, S. Michael, 10, 77, 115–118 Hamer, Dean, 86–87, 92, 95, 97 Haraway, Donna, 35–36, 38, 70, 123, 125n1 Hubbard, Ruth, 4–5 Jasinski, James, 105 Johannsen, Wilhelm, 8, 16, 19, 29–32, 36–47, 65, 66, 77, 85, 121, 123 Johnson, Mark, 94, 112 Kay, Lily, 69, 116 Keller, Evelyn Fox, 75–76, 125n1 Kragh, Helge, 19, 125n2 Kuhn, Thomas, 125n4 Lakoff, George, 94, 112 Lamarckian notion of acquired characteristics, 37 Lander, Eric, 108–110, 112, 115–117, 122–123 Latour, Bruno, 70, 71, 120–121, 126n3 LeVay, Simon, 85–86, 95 Lindee, M. Susan, 2, 7–8, 125n3 Locke, John, 42, 53 Lysenko, Trofim and Lysenkoism, 12, 56–60, 63, 127n2

Mendel, Gregor, 11, 16–28, 39, 125nn1–3, 126n4 Mendelism, 11, 16, 20–26, 30, 40, 43, 45, 126n4 metonymy,10, 43, 63, 91, 108. See also gene as metonymy Morgan, T. H., 50–52, 58, 100–101 Muller, Herman J., 51–52, 62 Nelkin, Dorothy, 2, 7–8, 125n3 Nietzsche, Friedrich,116 Odenwald, Ward, 86–89, 99 Olby, Robert, 19 pangene, 30, 32 pangenesis, 31–36, 37, 45–47 Pearson, Carl, 24, 25, 40 Pease, Daniel, 60–62 phenotype, 19, 42–45 Pillard, Richard, 83–87, 90–91 Plato’s myth of the cave, 45 Rasmussen, Nicolas, 60 realism. See scientific realism Rheinberger, Hans-Jorg, 5, 65, 69–71, 100 rhetorical figures. See genes as rhetorical figure rhetorical work, introduced, 2–10 Ritvo, Harriet, 33 scientific realism, 10, 36, 43, 63, 121–123 Soyfer, Valery, 58 Star, Susan Leigh, 5, 69–73, 82, 98 Sturtevant, Alfred Henry, 32, 126n3 Thomson, J. A., 35 Wald, Elijah, 4–5 Watson, James, 12, 69, 73–79, 115–115 Weismann, August, 39–41 Weldon, W. F. R., 22–26, 28 Zhang, Shang-Ding, 86–89, 99