Research in genetics has never been more exciting, and over the last few decades, both the depth and the breadth of our understanding of the nature of genetic activity have grown spectacularly. With each advance, the picture of the role of genes in development that biologists learn to draw grows ever more complex and more sophisticated, and in ever more conspicuous defiance of the simple mantra with which they had begun. But little of this new sophistication has yet to reach the public eye. Indeed, it now seems to me that the gap between public and technical understanding has reached something of a critical point, one that urgently requires attention. The Century of the Gene is an attempt to bridge this gap. It is also a celebration of the research that has created such a gap, and of the increasing richness of our understanding of the role of DNA in biological development. Because of the very prowess of molecular analyses of the cell, we have learned once again to marvel not at the simplicity of life's secrets, but at their complexity.
I give the Human Genome Initiative a great deal of credit for bringing us to this point. In revealing the sequence of our DNA, that project may not have succeeded in telling us who we are, but it has taught us how little we know. And that lesson may in the long run prove even more valuable. Yet its contribution does not end with hubris. The information it is producing will also give us tools with which to embark on a new era of biology. Perhaps, a hundred years down the line, our grandchildren will find themselves reading a book called The Century Beyond the Gene.



Evelyn Fox-Keller is Professor of History and Philosophy of Science within the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s program in Science, Technology, and Society (STS). She studied at Brandeis University and Harvard where she received her Ph.D. in Physics. She has taught at The University of California, Berkley in the Department of Rhetoric, History and Women’s Studies, Northeastern University, S.U.N.Y. Purchase, and New York University. Her early work existed at the interface of physics and biology and since she has focused on issues of gender in science and the history of developmental biology. She serves on the editorial boards of various journals including the Journal of the History of Biology and Biology and Philosophy. She is the author of several books including A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock, W.H. Freeman, New York, 1993; The Century of the Gene, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 2000 and her most recent book, Making Sense of Life: Explaining Biological Development with Models, Metaphors, and Machines, will appear in the coming year.