Jigsaw Week 1: Genetics…Life Itself?. TED Presentation: “James Watson on How He Discovered DNA” “James Watson on How He Discovered DNA” .

Jigsaw Week 1: Genetics…Life Itself?

TED Presentation:“James Watson on How He Discovered DNA”

• http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/

james_watson_on_how_he_discovered_dna.html

Jigsaw Week 1: Genetics…Life Itself?

this week’s topics:

• Gender and genetics’ origin story

• Role of reductionism & fetishism

-the “gay gene’

-the “fat gene”

• Role of industry, law, & economics

• Its influence on food: what we eat & how we grow it

• Fine line between art & science…creative aspect

• Ethics of creating “artificial” nature

• -Ethics of copying nature

Reflection #6• Why did DNA become

ideologically coded as “the book

of life”?

• According to Hubbard, what role

did gender play in the origin

story of genetics?

Reductionism:

• “nature becomes biology, biology becomes

genetics, and the whole is instrumentalized in

particular forms (Haraway, 134).

Fetishism:

• “things are mistakenly perceived as the

generators of value….genes displace not only

organisms but people and nonhumans …as

generators of liveliness” (Haraway, 135).

Barbara McClintock

1962 Nobel Prize Winners

Rosalind Franklin

the double helix model