Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 April 2022
The question of the influence of genes on behavior raises difficult philosophical and social issues. In this paper I delineate what I call the Developmentalist Challenge (DC) to assertions of genetic influence on behavior, and then examine the DC through an indepth analysis of the behavioral genetics of the nematode, C. elegans, with some briefer references to work on Drosophila. I argue that eight “rules” relating genes and behavior through environmentally-influenced and tangled neural nets capture the results of developmental and behavioral studies on the nematode. Some elements of the DC are found to be sound and others are criticized. The essay concludes by examining the relations of this study to Kitcher's antireductionist arguments and Bechtel and Richardson's decomposition and localization heuristics. Some implications for human behavioral genetics are also briefly considered.
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Based in part on papers presented at Boston University, the International Society for History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology Meeting in Leuven, July, 1995, Notre Dame University, and the University of Maryland. The research leading to this article has been partially supported by the National Science Foundation's Studies in Science, Technology, and Society Program and by a National Institutes of Health Grant R13 HG00703 to the University of Maryland. I would like to thank Drs. Cori Bargmann, Martin Chalfie, and Shawn Lockery for providing me with information about their research, and to them and to Joshua Lederberg for very helpful comments on an earlier draft of the C. elegans parts of this paper. I am indebted to Rachel Ankeny, Robert Cook-Deegan, Paul Griffiths, Eric Turkheimer, the Editor-in-Chief, and two anonymous referees for comments on this paper. I am also grateful to Robert C. Olby for discussions and pointers to the history and philosophy of neuroscience literature, and to Robin Bhaerman-Dillner for research and proofing assistance.