Genetic Platonism

In a recent interview on his Mars Hill Audio magazine, Ken Myers interviews Craig Holdrege, co-author of Beyond Biotechnology . One of Holdrege’s key points is that scientists have moved well beyond the early idea that the gene is the “unmoved mover” that determines everything about an organism and now recognize that genes too have a history and are interdependent on other factors in the organism.

Thus falls yet another form of Platonism, that enduring quest to find some point of changelessness that can account for all change. Thus falls too the entire technical effort to manipulate genes to undo human frailty.

Not that the quest will cease. Its motives are ultimately religious. Like every idolatry, it is restless, as it forges ever onward hoping to discover, down some unexplored path, an Archimedean point other than the eternal Word in whom all things consist.