멘델유전학에서 생명공학시대까지 생명관의 변천 = The Change in the View of Life from the Mendelian Genetics Age to the Biotechnology Age

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

In this paper the authors pursue the transition of the view of life from Mendelian genetics to today's biotechnology. The authors focus on Mendel because of the viewpoint that the nature of biology has been changed from ‘observational science’ to ‘experimental science’ by his works. It is rightly said that Mendel and his contemporary Darwin had been influenced by and had reinforced the mechanistic and reductionist view of life. This view confirmed that if we are to study on life, we have to start with bottom-up approach, because an individual life is only a bundle of cells. By integrating genetics with biochemistry, molecular biology was born in 1970s, which is now enthroned in the heart of scientific technology. It is meaningful to notica that this new area has been welcomed in the market and also the nature of market prefers the mechanistic and reductionist view of life to the organic and systematic view of life. In conclusion, the molecularization of life makes our understanding of life more poor and narrow. So if we really want to perceive what life is, we need to restart top-down approach to life. Only with our responsible participation in building up the integral and inclusive view of life, we can survive in the biotech-future.