A new biology for a new century
Open accessAbstract
Biology today is at a crossroads. The molecular paradigm, which so successfully guided the discipline throughout most of the 20th century, is no longer a reliable guide. Its vision of biology now realized, the molecular paradigm has run its course. Biology, therefore, has a choice to make, between the comfortable path of continuing to follow molecular biology's lead or the more invigorating one of seeking a new and inspiring vision of the living world, one that addresses the major problems in biology that 20th century biology, molecular biology, could not handle and, so, avoided. The former course, though highly productive, is certain to turn biology into an engineering discipline. The latter holds the promise of making biology an even more fundamental science, one that, along with physics, probes and defines the nature of reality. This is a choice between a biology that solely does society's bidding and a biology that is society's teacher.
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Science is driven by both technological advances and a guiding vision.
“As Woese has argued (Woese, 2004), science is driven by both technological advances and a guiding vision.”
From Neuroscience Needs Behavior: Correcting a Reductionist Bias (2017) · cites this paper as Woese, 2004
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- Authors
- Woese, C. R.
- Affiliations
- University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (US)
- Corresponding author
- Woese, Carl R.
- Venue
- Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology
- Published
- 2004-06
- Volume
- 68
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 173-186
- ISSN
- 1092-2172 (ISSN-L)
- 1098-5557
- PMC
- PMC419918
- OpenAlex
- W2122010307
- Cited by
- 641
- References
- 68
- Citations by year
- 2026: 23 · 2025: 20 · 2024: 18 · 2023: 54 · 2022: 26 · 2021: 46 · 2020: 22 · 2019: 30 · 2018: 24 · 2017: 22 · 2016: 37 · 2015: 24 · 2014: 37 · 2013: 26 · 2012: 20
- FWCI
- 31.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- europepmc.org
- Locations
- Microbiology and Molecular Biology Reviews (publishedVersion)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- U.S. Department of Energy
- National Aeronautics and Space Administration
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › Philosophy and History of Science
- Social Sciences › Decision Sciences › Information Systems and Management › Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › History and Philosophy of Science › History of Science and Medicine
- Keywords
- future of biology, philosophy of biology, nature of reality, scientific paradigm shift
- MeSH terms
- Biology, Science, History, 21st Century
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