ABSTRACT
Conventional (albeit oversimplifi ed) wisdom about science holds that it involves a search for truth or for an accurate refl ection of the way the world is. However, the biological sciences present us with a much more complex picture of the natural world, one riddled by variation and change. Leaving aside philosophical debates over the uniqueness of biology and the possibility of its unifi cation with or reduction to other sciences, its lack of laws, and whether fundamental processes and mechanisms can be identifi ed that underlie what may merely be the appearance of diversity, it is indisputable that many actual practices in contemporary biological sciences, particularly those associated with genomic techniques, explicitly focus on elucidating the shared or fundamental components of various natural processes and entities. In the process, assorted methods are utilized to impose what at times may be a somewhat selective order, so as to be able to control this variation and hence more effi ciently study and understand it.
