Re: [-empyre-] questions for judith

[Judith Roof <roof12@comcast.net>]

Jim,

Basically any recent high school biology book will give you enough  
basics.  There are some other good, fairly responsible journalistic  
tomes that account for how genetic research got where it is,  
including Jonathan Weiner's "Time, Love, Memory."  My book really  
lays out the problems with representing DNA and genes--it is  
concerned with what gets added and what is subtracted in metaphors,  
narratives, and other characterizations. Ethics only indirectly.   
Social--only indirectly.  But ideology directly, if one can still use  
such a simplistic term.  There are some excellent precursors--Michel  
Morange's book and Evelyn Fox Keller's the Century of the Gene and  
almost anything by Lewontin, and the book by Ruth Hubbard and her son..

I hate to admit it, but my knowledge was simply up-dated from high  
school.  I have the perverse tendency to remember all of that stuff.

Judith
On Oct 10, 2007, at 7:20 AM, Jim Andrews wrote:

> judith, can you recommend some well-written, explanatory,  
> educational books
> concerning what dna is, how it works. the basics. not a textbook in
> molecular biology, but something for non-biologists/non-students of  
> biology.
>
> i see your book 'the poetics of dna' is at
> http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/R/roof_poetics.html . i take it  
> this is more
> concerned with the social, philosophical, ethical issues than the  
> nuts and
> bolts of dna?
>
> how did you pursue your knowledge of dna and poetics thereof? did  
> you study
> biology courses? what did you read, if not?
>
> ja
> http://vispo.com
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> empyre forum
> empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
> http://www.subtle.net/empyre