Re: [-empyre-] Re: Poetics of DNA II

[Judith Roof <roof12@comcast.net>]

John,

On Oct 4, 2007, at 1:51 PM, John Hopkins wrote:

> Judith...
>
> > 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.
>
> all IS change...  it is only in our re-presentations that we avoid  
> change, and in that avoidance we sow the seeds of our quickening  
> and dying...  a re-presentation cannot change -- once made, it is a  
> static grasp at that-which-it-cannot-touch.

Except of course even representations change from one moment to the  
next.
> > I speak of determinism only on the molecular level.  I would  
> > suggest that everything else is quite a complex moving open system.
>
> the molecular being a reductive re-presentation of a complex  
> changing system...

In this context, yes, perhaps, but then context changes from that  
representation in that context to this one
> > 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.
>
> why don't all of of them take this into account -- or do ANY of  
> 'them' take this into account?  The account is spent in the sense  
> that people who take re-presentation to be the thing/phenomena/ 
> action/activity itself are missing the thing/phenomena/action/ 
> activity itself...
assuming one can ever get to the thing/activity itself in any way  
except through some kind of representation, even mental
> > 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.
>
> DNA is a re-presentation of a life-system that is still poorly  
> understood except for its affects on the overall system.  A  
> "chemical" is a re-presentative construct of an observed phenomena.

Absolutely and since what we are doing here is reducing complex ideas  
to a representational interchange that is bound to be misunderstood  
this what we have to work with.
> > 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.
>
> isn't science the process of constructing self-reflexive re- 
> presentations that are accurate within the knowledge-space where-in  
> science holds sway?

> Only within the space where the the knowledge-science holds sway.

And cheers back,

Judith
> cheers,
> jh
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