What is the theme in A Feeling for the Organism: The Life and Work of Barbara McClintock by Evelyn Fox Keller?

Feeling for the organism is another theme in the story. The title of the book is "A Feeling for the Organism," so one might guess that this idea is the main theme of the story. "A Feeling for the Organism" is McClintock's phrase, which describes, in a nutshell, her unique methodology and philosophy of science. To explain it, we can contrast it with a more familiar approach, that of molecular biology. Molecular biology originated partly among physicists. It was a reductive science which attempted to explain higher-order phenomena like chromosomal changes, through interactions at lower levels of nature, particular at the level of genes. The paradigm proceeded very mechanically and was thought to lead straightforwardly from discovery to discovery. It became a systematic research program and was team-oriented.