[-empyre-] Re: Poetics of DNA II

[Judith Roof <roof12@comcast.net>]

Steve,

I identify the DNA/gene as non-arbitrary and fixed only in the  
limited sense that unlike language where there is no intrinsic  
relation between signifier and signified, DNA at least has the  
statistically significant tendency for its acids to pair only with  
certain other acids.  This is not to say that what parts of DNA or  
chromosomes may function as a gene is not flexible, nor widely  
variant, nor that there is not a wide range of alternatives always  
changing in the biosphere.

I speak of determinism only on the molecular level.  I would suggest  
that everything else is quite a complex moving open system.

There can be no such thing as empiricism as long as language is  
involved in any stage or human observers intercede in measurements  
that are made with tools requiring interpretation.  Social sciences  
are particularly problematic in this regard since they often envision  
issues of language and representation as countable incidents based on  
protocols that do not take the vagaries of representation itself into  
account.  Of course, not all of them do this, but enough.

In so far as anyone ever conceived of DNA as a code, it was always  
already paradigmatic, since Shroedinger referred to some agency as  
that before DNA's structure was even discerned (an dby someone who  
had read Schroedinger).  Calling DNA a code certainly does not define  
how it functions, but the paradigm does condition how we think about  
DNA--and how some scientists approached it--i.e. "decoding."  DNA is  
not a code.  It is a chemical.  If we need an analogy, cipher is the  
better one.

Science in my usage refers to inquiries that pose and answer  
questions premised on what investigators believe are physical  
phenomena, answered often in mathemetical equations, and accounting  
for the error of experiment.

My student.  Well. True, and alas, he is among the "brightest".

Thanks for the queries--I hope these clarified.

Judith

On Oct 4, 2007, at 1:06 PM, books@krokodile.co.uk wrote:

> Judith/all
>
> I  haven't read the relevant text yet so you'll have to forgive the  
> misunderstandings and misreadings below but a some initial pointers  
> might help me understand the core of the agument whilst the title  
> arrives.
>
> It would be useful to understand why you identify DNA and genes as  
> nonarbitrary and fixed - rather than as being evidence of living  
> beings as being genetically wide-range-determinism. There is a  
> sense that Science/DNA/genetics because it is some form of  
> determinism, has inhabited our social imaginary and led to a turn  
> away from representational complexity.  What then is determinism ?   
> To clarify why I ask this question and hopefully in clear and  
> simple terms: my eyes being blue are genetically determined,  
> speech, sight, hearing and so on however its also clear that the  
> majority of catagories are not genetically determined and are   
> rather social determinations for example sexual difference, gender,  
> intelligence.
>
> Further could you clarify how you justify the initial sentences  
> that begin: "Although a notion of the..." and especially what  
> evidence and argument would you produce to support the implication  
> around "the delusive truth of the empirical".  The final sentence  
> of this first paragraph appears to make the proposition that 'DNA'  
> is a paradigmatic technology - and here is the cause of my doubt -  
> I am getting rather old and this is at least the third or fourth  
> technology and or scientific theory that has been proposed as such.
>
> Could you also perhaps clarify what you understand by the term  
> 'science' important from my perspective because of the way Nick in  
> his introductory mail collapsed everything into the term 'code'.
>
> Finally the 'bright young thing' and the death of film theory,  
> someone who neither understands  film theory  nor  science is not  
> 'bright'
>
> steve/pl