> You should go read some philosophy of biology I mean... I have. The thing is that the issue really is "biological determinism" for Mehta: it's even one of t

> You should go read some philosophy of biology I mean... I have. The thing is that the issue really is "biological determinism" for Mehta: it's even one of the most frequent bigrams in the piece, between "of science" and "Levins was". But for Mehta, "biological determinism’s intellectual foundation [is] the reductionist fallacy that it is possible to detach genes from environment." If Mehta thinks that any of Levins's opponents agreed with that (or any working biologist, for that matter), then he's using the word "detach" in a very curious way without warning. And again, the only example given would actually seem to imply that genes are more powerful than fundamental physical forces in their effect on phenotype, which doesn't sound to me like such a ringing endorsement of the role of environment. If I'm this confused as a scientist with training in philosophy, I can only imagine how other readers are coping.