Publication Details

Abstract

It is the objective of the paper to grasp and to characterize changes in the concemiporary style of thought and to examine their impact upon the way of thinking in contemporary genetics. The author shows in her analysis that modern genetics, extricating itself from static, reductionist and often ahistorical views can contribute to shifts in the style of thought on its own. In the first part of the paper the author shows how conception of the genotype as the whole, hierarchycally ordered, developing system establishes in the history of genetics due to the influence of the systems approach and overcoming of cybernetic way of explanation, characterized by search for invariants and genetic determinism. The paradigm „seíforganization“, dominating the contemporary style of scientific thought, bringing in a dynamic view of the system, leads to several consequences relevant for genetics out of which four are analyzed by the author: complementarity of necessity and chance, of structure and function, semantic and pragmatic aspect of information, irreversibility and directedness of time.