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

[Eugene Thacker <eugene.thacker@lcc.gatech.edu>]

Well, what I had in mind w/ the idealism-empiricism reference was the way that
the concept of a genetic code seems to suture together two different, though not
incommensurate, ideas:

- On the one hand, the discourse of information seems to imply immaterial form.
I think this is demonstrable historically (e.g. Crick et al.'s appropriation of
'information' from Shannon's information theory definition), but I think it
still, even today, pervades colloquial language about code.
- On the other hand, what is being talked about is not just abstract code, but
the notion of a biological-material entity *as a code in itself*. Yes, there are
instances in which DNA is 'represented' as code (for instance, the genome as a
string of bits in a database), but this itself is made possible by what I would
argue is actually a non-representational concept of a genetic code. Or, at
least, there's a great deal of fuzziness in the 1950s/60s when 'the coding
problem' was being sorted out. Protein codes are a good example, since it is
their hypercomplex surface structure that enables them to 'stick.'

So in a certain sense - and I think this is a bit reductive, but oh well... -
the concept of a genetic code raises the old split between form and matter. If
DNA is the wet, gooey, 'stuff of life' then how can it be a dry, abstract,
immaterial number? On the one hand there is the code as a string of units (A, T,
C, G...), but the sequence and seriality of this code is indelibly linked to
material and physical processes in the cell (replication of DNA, transcription/
translation of RNA, cellular metabolism). Jacob points this out in 'The Logic of
Life.' DNA is quite Aristotelian. What the life principle or 'psukhe' as form is
for Aristotle, DNA as in-form-ation is for molecular biology. The hylomorphism
of the genetic code is less about what the code 'says' than what it does.

Now, there are, of course, plenty of counter-discourses which resist the notion
of information-as-immaterial (e.g. media ecology, phenomenology-based media
studies, 'the materiality of the medium'). But when we talk about the genetic
code, to me the specificity of this is different from generally talking about
'bodies in code' or any cyber-stuff... If one wanted to think about an
informatic materialism, or a physical code, this seems like an interesting area
in which to look. A researcher can look up a particular DNA sequence via an
online database. Using an oligonucleotide synthesizer, that person can
materialize that sequence in a test tube. That same sequence can then be
inserted into a bacterium (a plasmid  'library') for further research.
Hypothetically the reverse direction is possible too (e.g. the process of
extracting code). So there's the 'code' as a string of bits that appears to
exist across material substrates (database, test tube, organism). But, of
course, it isn't the same in each instance, for each of the media - or biomedia
- bring with them different sets of constraints (e.g. data mining in the
database, PCR for the test tube DNA, genetic recombination or mutation in the
bacterium). It's this 'same/not-same' ambiguity that's interesting to me, and I
think it's also related, even if distantly, to the Aristotelian problem of form/
matter. And it gets even more complicated with emerging fields like DNA
computing....

-Eugene





Quoting "sdv@krokodile.co.uk" <sdv@krokodile.co.uk>:

 eugene,

 Could you explain why the concept of DNA-as-code forecloses idealism or
 empiricism ? It  may be that you are assuming that the following
 sentences referring to the noetic and the noumenal are precisely why you
 believe this... but still I would like to be sure that these comments
 preceded as they are by DNA-as-code threatening to liquidate the thing
 itself, are more explainable.


 >
 > One option is to think about what the overall representational notion of
 DNA-as-
 > code doesn?t allow; what does it foreclose to thought? Well, it certainly
 seems
 > to foreclose either straight-up idealism or empiricism. These options seem
 > absurd, ridiculous. And maybe, for this reason, interesting. DNA-as-code is
 > purely noetic (and thus, in a way, equal to thought) or DNA-as-code is
 purely
 > material (and thus part of a noumenal, inaccessible world ?out there?)...
 >
 > -Eugene
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > empyre forum
 > empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
 > http://www.subtle.net/empyre
 >
 >

 _______________________________________________
 empyre forum
 empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au
 http://www.subtle.net/empyre