La génétique est-elle encore une discipline ?

Abstract

Au sens institutionnel du terme «discipline», la génétique est assurément une discipline. Au sens intellectuel du terme, l’on peut se demander si elle l’est encore. Avec l’émergence de la biologie moléculaire, et plus encore à l’occasion de ses développements récents, le concept de gène, concept théorique central de la génétique, est devenu manifestement obscur. Loin de simplifier la définition du gène, sa caractérisation structurale (moléculaire) l’a rendu totalement équivoque, et ce de manière probablement irréversible. Les raisons que les biologistes ont de garder ce terme sont davantage pragmatiques (communication scientifique entre disciplines biologiques) et idéologiques que théoriques.

In the institutional sense of the term «discipline» (laboratories, societies, congresses, curricula, etc.), genetics remains a discipline. In the intellectual sense of the term (consensus on a definite array of concepts, methods and theoretical purposes), it is doubtful that genetics is still a discipline. At first, molecular biology seemed to have introduced an unequivocal structural (or molecular) definition of the gene : a definite sequence of nucelotides that code for a protein. In fact, as it appears in retrospect, this was not the case. Even in 1961, when Jacob and Monod proposed their first model of genetic regulation in bacteria, there was no possibility of constructing a non equivocal concept of the gene. More recent developments in molecular genetics have made this situation worse. There is no possible definition of the gene as a general category. The reasons why biologists keep the word are pragmatic rather than theoretical: communication among scientists, economic interests and ideology.