The Structure Of Dna Summary

The story The Structure of DNA: Cooperation and Competition demonstrates the nature of science in many ways. DNA was not discovered by just one person, it was discovered by many different scientist who built on each others’ ideas. The main scientists who were featured in the story were James Watson, Rosalind Franklin, Francis Crick, Raymond Gosling and Maurice Wilkins. In the case of this story, scientific knowledge assumes an order and consistency in natural systems. Science models were used to explain natural phenomena, science uses observations and inferences and that science also uses empirical evidence.
Firstly, the story really demonstrates that scientific knowledge assumes an order and consistency in natural systems. Wilkins and Gosling X-rayed the DNA and studied the way the beams scattered from the DNA. They found that DNA had a repetitive structure that was shaped like a corkscrew. This supports the idea that scientific knowledge assumes an order in natural systems because all DNA had the same shape after the studies on DNA.
The scientists Franklin and Gosling used a model called B51 to try to figure out how DNA linked together to form genetic information. After these two split up, Gosling went to Crick and Watson to get advice and ended up showing the B51 findings. This eventually led to the model of a double helix that specified how each atom was positioned after more information about the B51 image was found. Watson and Crick had originally planned to build a model but they did not have enough evidence before this finding. Before this final model, they had wanted to build a model of DNA that supported everything known about molecular bonding and all the clue’s about DNA’s