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Конечно, не все анкеты удалось опубликовать. Похоже, не удалось получить ответы от знаменитого выпускника биолого-почвенного факультета МГУ Владимира Познера, хотя на одном из сборов курса он сказал: «Без биофака я не состоялся бы» (с. 207). Редактирование анкет, в частности вычёркивание сведений о деле «сестёр Ляпуновых», составителем в некоторых случаях вызвало нарекания. Так, Ю.Ф. Богданов переиздал свой очерк из второго тома «Мозаики судеб» «без купюр» в собственной монографии2.
Помимо ответов на анкеты (всего 51 респондент), в книге в качестве отдельного раздела «Биологи на Ленгорах» даны воспоминания ряда сотрудников и выпускников МГУ. Есть разделы «Гости биофака МГУ» (из Иркутского, Санкт-Петербургского, Тамбовского, Томского и Уральского университетов; этот раздел введён впервые), а также пропущенные ранее ответы старшего поколения биофаковцев МГУ.
В конце книги приведён, по кафедрам, список всех опрошенных, ответы которых размещены во всех томах этой серии. Указаны годы поступления. Большая часть респондентов поступила в послевоенные 1940—1950-е гг. Поколение 1930-х гг. по понятным причинам охвачено незначительно.
Текст книги хорошо вычитан; количество опечаток невелико и, как говорится, по нынешним временам вполне приемлемо... Жаль, что авторы и составитель упорно игнорируют букву «ё».
Остаётся порадоваться, что книга выпущена достаточно большим тиражом (700 экз.), в отличие от множества труднодоступных сборников воспоминаний и очерков по истории науки, которые вышли в последние годы.
Структура книги такова, что её материалы трудно напрямую использовать в историко-биологических исследованиях. Местами много эмоций, даже стихи вставлены, нет, как говорится, аналитики. Я бы не вводил в анкету почти детские вопросы про хобби и способы «общения с природой». Однако живой голос биологов — выпускников МГУ — слышен почти с каждой страницы. На мой взгляд, эти данные, как и любые воспоминания, — поистине бесценный материал для дальнейшего вдумчивого анализа, с учётом других литературных и архивных источников.
Between Epigenetic Research and Politic Commitment: Marcello Buiatti's portrait
Federica Turriziani Colonna
Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ, USA, federicacolonna1@yahoo.it
In Spring 2012, a group of scientists and philosophers met in Pisa (Italy) in order to celebrate Marcello Buiatti’s retirement from university, after a 50-year-long career spent in genetic research. Born in Italy, Buiatti received an education as a biologist. He worked in the University of Pisa and then in the University of Florence on epigenetic modification in some plants’ genomes, such as Nicotiana. He started his research in the late 60s, when epigenetics was rising.
2 Богданов Ю.Ф. Очерки о биологах второй половины XX века. М.: Тов-во науч. изд. КМК, 2012. 508 с.
Colleagues and friends standing at this celebration made speeches about Buiatti’s contribution to scientific knowledge; these speeches have now been collected in a book1.
In his Introduction, biologist Pietro Omodeo focuses on Buiatti’s civil commitment in criticizing, for example, genetic patenting of gene alleles or gene sequences. Since the Genome Project started, in fact, Buiatti underlined the ethic risks implied in allowing private research companies to patent their discoveries in genetics. In Buiatti’s view, genome consists of a non-material good and this kind of goods should not be considered as merchandise to be sold. Buiatti has then been part of a social fight encouraging, on one hand, public research as the only honest producer of scientific knowledge, on the other hand objecting commercial goals of pharmaceutical industry which aims to buy genetic patents in order to make money.
Physicist Marcello Cini writes about formal and informal conversations he had with Buiatti during academic meetings, as much as in private about the idea that scientific research demands collective efforts and needs to be sponsored by public institutions. What comes out from this paper is that Buiatti’s activity in genetics cannot be separated from his social commitment, nor from his political ideas.
Epistemologist Elena Gagliasso focuses on the importance of contaminations between researchers that operate in different fields. Moreover, she uses Ziman’s insightful metaphor of a three-legged table: the first one represents research, the other one the market and the last one vulgarization. Buiatti’s activities — says Gagliasso — resemble to this table and his scientific profile exceeds mere laboratory inquiries and experiments. Marxist ideology interfered and influenced life sciences in Buiatti’s anti-reductionist conception of biology; nonetheless, he never fell into a transcendent idea of life.
Mathematician Giuseppe Longo’s contribution to the volume deals with the role of symmetry in biology, which is broken by aleatory phoenomena. As life sciences have been subjected to the dominant paradigm of the “central dogma”, according to which genetic information was conceived as a program of instructions, aleatory phoenomena need an epistemological space and should indeed be considered as essential in biology. On this topic — of great interest for both scientists and philosophers — Longo and Buiatti have worked for a long time and still do.
Biologist Mauro Durante writes about “epigenetic revolution”, through a historical sketch of this field in which Buiatti is involved. In late 1960s and during all the 1970s, in fact, Buiatti worked with Vittoria Nuti Ronchi and her team of geneticists in Pisa, making experiments on Nicotiana plants and reporting epigenetic changes that occurred. His view of epigenetic mechanisms deals with the acknowledgement that epigenetic modifications seem likely to correspond to the cerebral plasticity in other kinds of organisms. In both cases, a modification of the self is occurring in order to adapt the living being to its environmental context. This contribution of Buiatti’s to biology is part of what his colleagues call his “thought of not”, that is his attitude of exploring heretical features of paradigmatic science.
This peculiar attitude towards biology is also exploited by biologist Manuela Giovannetti, who insists on Buiatti’s interest in complexity as much as in system theory.
1 Vivi perche diversi. Per i cinquant’anni di ricerca di Marcello Buiatti (=We’re alive because we’re different. For Marcello Buiatti’s research 50th anniversary) / ed. by E. Gagliasso. Pisa: ETS, 2013. 149 p.
Epistemologist Giulia Rispoli treats this aspect in detail, telling about some conversations she had with Buiatti about the Russian system theory. Rispoli specialises, in fact, in Russian epistemology and her main interests deal with the spreading of the theory of evolution in Russia and the rise of ideas on complexity. In doing this, she explores social and political context and Buiatti’s empathy for - and knowledge of — Communism has helped in her research.
Economist Gianluca Brunori focuses on Buiatti’s commitment with politics, especially in what concerns agrarian knowledge and economic policy. Buiatti’s critiques against the introduction of OGMs are not merely ideological, but they deal with the fact that this makes farmers powerless and destroys biodiversity.
Philosopher Federico Boem focuses on Buiatti’s anti-reductionism in biology — which does not concern methods, but deals with the idea that every phenotype could be reduced to its genotype — and insists on his systemic approach.
Biologist Brunella Danesi writes, finally, about Buiatti’s contribution to scientific vulgarization, which he especially did through a long series of lectures given to High School students.
From all these papers, a portrait of a great man emerges: a man whose intellectual commitment implies a social and politic conscience, insightfulness in genetic research and an uncommon attitude towards lay understanding of science.
