

Is DNA the Language of the Book of Life? - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/is-dna-the-language-of-the-book-of-life

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stared
> “Genes don’t carry semantic information, though. They weren’t made as part
> of an act of communication. So genes don’t literally represent anything, as
> people sometimes say,” explains Peter Godfrey-Smith, a professor of
> philosophy at CUNY.

Understandable that not a professor of biology.

This whole article bases on some notion of "semantics" I cannot grasp. If
someone wants to hold some metaphysical notion of "meaning" which can be only
in human words and symbols - then I cannot argue with this (non-scientific)
statement. Words don't _literally_ represent anything - they can be
interpreted by humans and, well, translated into some knowledge or action,
depending on the previous state and knowledge of a person. Much alike DNA
being interpreted by the cell's machinery.

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azakai
The issue is that, for us here, "DNA being interpreted by the cell's
machinery" is pretty clear. It's like instructions being "interpreted" by a
virtual machine in computer science. They are executed, and something
(hopefully interesting) happens.

For a philosopher, there are millenia of debates behind him or her regarding
what "meaning", "interpretation", "truth", "information" etc. actually are.
Much of those debates is very interesting, for example in the 20th century a
flaw was found in a 2500 year old definition of "truth".

So when the same word, "information" or "interpret", is used both by
scientists in biology as well as by philosophers, it can lead to confusion. I
am _not_ saying that the philosophers are clearly the confused ones, in fact
many of them are not. Their claim is a more subtle one - that the potential
confusion _affects scientists_. In other words, that while it is clear what
"DNA being interpreted" means when a scientist really thinks about it, the
fact is that often scientists do not think carefully and rely on intuition,
and are led astray by such metaphors.

In other words, the better philosophers are saying that some scientists are
making the mistake that the worse philosophers are. As the saying goes, all
scientists are armchair philosophers.

How much of an issue is this in practice? I would say little. It's interesting
to philosphers, but not that much to scientists. Yes, epigenetics were only
appreciated recently, but I doubt it's due to a philosophical
misunderstanding. The simple fact is, the discovery of DNA was like the
discovery of Newton's laws of physics - suddenly, there was a clear and
powerful framework that explained massive amounts of observations coherently.
Such frameworks do lead people to focus on them and to look less at
alternative explanations. It took a while for physics to get past Newtonian
gravity, and for biology to get past a strict understanding of DNA, because
those theories are so good. That's how science has to work - when you have a
great theory, you have to use it to the limit. When it _stops_ working, that's
when you start to consider alternative theories, not before.

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DougMerritt
> in the 20th century a flaw was found in a 2500 year old definition of
> "truth".

What are you referring to?

~~~
mazsa
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettier_problem)

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kens
This article seems to be a jumble of ideas: information vs "semantic
information", heredity vs environment, epigenetics, Shannon's information
theory, and information as a metaphor. After reading this article a couple
times, I still can't get a coherent point from it.

That said, epigenetics is obviously a hugely important area. Although coming
from a computer background, I think biology needs to look at "state" in total
- how an organism holds informational state over widely diverging time scales.
(For instance, look at the brain and consider the many ways it holds
information, from genes to gene expression to neuron wiring.)

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mnemonicsloth
Nonsense article. It calls for a revised understanding of the word
"information" in genetics. The old sense is due to philosophers and could
never have been taken seriously by anyone. The new sense is due to Claude
Shannon and predates the work of Watson and Crick by about five years.

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Animats
This reads like clickbait for smart people.

At least it doesn't contain the word "quantum".

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dbbolton
My opinion is that a language is much more than just the "communication" of
information, but I am a linguist so I'm somewhat biased.

Here is a decent argument against the idea of DNA being a language:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQIWvd3LhC0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQIWvd3LhC0)

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vanderZwan
Regarding this very discussion, I _highly_ recommend The Music Of Life by
Denis Noble. It is a very small, accessible paperback that highlights many
issues with the book-of-life metaphor that is so prevalent.

[http://musicoflife.co.uk/](http://musicoflife.co.uk/)

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hasenj
DNA is a language not in the sense of natural/human language, but in the sense
of a computer language; or rather: machine language.

I don't see where's the problem ..

The article refers to "computer discs". Well, computer discs carry exactly the
same kind of information that DNA carries.

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DiabloD3
This is a pretty good writeup, but doesn't give enough language to argue
between the DNA-first and RNA-first camps of early life on Earth.

One or the other came first, and both sides have logical well supported
arguments.

The tl;dr (combined with bad metaphor usage) of the difference between DNA and
RNA is, they are both dialects of the language used to write the Book of Life.

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cariaso
I'm solidly persuaded by RNA before DNA in chronological order.

Can you offer a logical argument for DNA first?

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DiabloD3
Me personally? No, but I've seen them presented. Next time I see a good one
I'll submit it to HN.

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j_m_b
The Bene Tleilax think so.

