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

[Jim Andrews <jim@vispo.com>]

> 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.

I don't really understand, Judith. One could say of a RAM transistor in a
computer that "It isn't a 0 or a 1; it's a transistor that doesn't hold an
electric charge or does hold an electric charge. We interpret the state as
meaning 0 or 1. Transistors have physical states. They do not form a code."

But, at least in this case, they do indeed form a code--were designed to do
so, actually.

Now, it would be silly to suggest that the same is true of DNA--it would be
tantamount to supposing 'intelligent design', which is surely wrong-headed.

But if we are able to show that a certain DNA sequence, given the
appropriate context, gives rise to a fixed trait, then isn't there really a
relation between the signifier (the DNA sequence) and the signified (the
trait)?

Apologies, I am totally dumb about molecular biology.

ja??
http://vispo.com