The Question of Questions: What is a Gene? Comments on Rolston and Griffths & Stotz

If the question “What is a gene?” proves to be worth asking it must be able to elicit an answer which both recognizes and address the reasons why the concept of the gene ever seemed to be something worth getting excited about in the first place as well analyzing and evaluating the latest develops in the molecular biology of DNA. Each of the preceding papers fails to do one of these and sufferrs the consequences. Where Rolston responds to the apparent failure of molecular biology to make good on the desideratum of the classical gene by veering off into fanciful talk about “cybernetic genes,” Griffiths and Stotz lose themselves in the molecular fine print and forget to ask themselves why “genes” should be of any special interst anyway

Preliminary analysis of the Hodgson Collection at the Zoological Society of London

While serving as Britain's diplomatic representative in Nepal between 1820 and 1843, Brian Houghton Hodgson (1801–1894) amassed a unique collection of paintings of Nepalese birds and mammals. A pioneer of nineteenth-century zoology, Hodgson's collection of images is one of the most important of its kind, providing crucial information for modern taxonomists and conservationists working in the Himalayan region. It is also an important and hitherto largely untapped source for the historian of science, indicating that Hodgson and other colonial naturalists, while geographically remote from London's scientific institutions, were fully engaged with London's scientific culture in the 1820s and 1830s. This paper outlines the extent of the Zoological Society of London's Hodgson holdings and the context of their creation. It draws parallels between the scientific content of Hodgson's images and the Quinarian system of natural classification, revising the established view of Hodgson as a wholly descriptive naturalist and opening the collection to new interpretations