Reply #92: "The chart is not the reality." Good: we finally agree on at least one point.

[struggle4progress]

That at least suggests we can talk on common ground about some matters

I do not intend to misrepresent your position, but it seems to me that you asserted "Genes are real" as part of a program to establish something like "All human behavior is reducible to genetics" -- the "It's all in the genes" of your #64

My first point would be that, although it may be very handy, in scientific discussions intended to improve the biological charts, to discuss "genes" as if they were "real," it is worthwhile to keep in the back of one's mind the fact that "genes" are actually just creatures in our intellectual charts, not creatures in the world. It's handy because the biological charts are pretty good, and it's often harmless, in the same way that it would almost always be harmless for someone to point at a map of Boston and say "Here's the Arnold Arboretum." But it is not always harmless, just as it might not be harmless for someone to confuse "the Arnold Arboretum" on a Boston map with the-actual-Arnold-arboretum

An assertion, along the lines of "a person is reducible to the DNA sequence in that person's cell nuclei and the RNA sequence in that person's mitochondria," is pure ideology: it begins from laboratory concepts but sweepingly applies those concepts in areas rather distantly removed from their origins