Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ncar!boulder!eddy
From: eddy@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Sean Eddy)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: How do twins work?
Message-ID: <8356@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 25 Apr 89 14:22:17 GMT
References: <8272@boulder.Colorado.EDU> <1683@rpi.edu>
Sender: news@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Reply-To: eddy@boulder.Colorado.EDU (Sean Eddy)
Organization: University of Colorado, Boulder
Lines: 39

In article <1683@rpi.edu> fargo@pawl.rpi.edu (Irwin M. Fargo) writes:
[ - misunderstandings of human reproduction deleted - ]
>
>I don't know how you rank beginners, but I did take my college level biology
>course, and thus, must draw on that as my body of knowledge.  And it is YOUR
>semantics in taking my phrase "very impossible" too literally, not my presump-
>tion of biological knowledge.  Anyways, I don't think the basic ideas in bi-
>ology are going to change according to how much you know, just as 2 + 2 will
>still equal 4 even if I know how to do double integrals!

(Please suggest an *alternative* definition of "very impossible"!)

Look, you can feel free to believe that biology is ordered and
built upon rigorous first principles like physics or math are.
That kind of attitude makes learning (and teaching!) biology
much more comfortable.

However, there are no basic ideas in biology which are carved in stone.
The ideas that exist have been established by observation.
They can be invalidated at any moment.

For instance, one of biology's "basic ideas" at one time was that
the genetic material was protein. DNA (a boring repeating polymer of
ATGC, another basic idea) clearly lacked the necessary complexity.

In this case of your argument with Tony, you should know that
animal reproduction has few rules, and we don't know all there
is to know. Tony happens to be right, so far as I can tell --
I was about to rip in to him for saying there were three polar
bodies, but then checked my facts and found a source that
confirmed what he said.

- Sean Eddy
- Molecular/Cellular/Developmental Biology; U. of Colorado at Boulder
- eddy@boulder.colorado.EDU		!{hao,nbires}!boulder!eddy	
-
- "That such pygmies should cast such giant shadows only shows how
-  late in the day it has become."
-                       - biochemist Erwin Chargaff, of Watson & Crick