From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Tue May 07 2002 - 06:08:05 MDT
On Mon, 6 May 2002, Harvey Newstrom wrote:
> brain. The brain can die when the software stops running. DNA is not a
> process. It does not stop, start or reboot. It simply sits there
> waiting to be read. It does not have a current running state like a
> software process.
It's always difficult, trying to press reality into a rigid man-made
metaphor framework. Isolated DNA per se is meaningless, it's just a linear
biopolymer, after all. It only makes sense in the wet context, and that
context has lots of state (not to mention that DNA itself has also state:
methylation and sequence-specific protein complexes, and whatnot).
Is a complete adult encoded in a few GBases of DNA? Hell, no. Not even in
the fertilized egg, though that information is sufficient to produce a
newborn, with a little bit of extra information from the mother host. Even
if we limit ourselves to the newborn, this richly structured system has
not been created by a blueprint/bauplan in the human sense. Have you ever
seen a complex pattern grow from a trivial seed in a suitable cellular
automaton? The biology is not as deterministic, but the principle is
similiar: minor variations in the initial seed create a rich diversity of
patterns. The morphogenetic code is not completely opaque, but it's darn
difficult to grok -- since it's not been designed to be human-readable. If
you can pick it up, and run with it, the more power to you.
But it would probably help to try seeing the thing as is, without
crippling it by fitting the procrustean bed of your metaphors. Prolonged
exposure to the same concepts on mailing lists without influx of fresh
ideas from the outside after a while tends to denaturate ideas completely,
without you being aware of it. Try subscribing to Science (Nature seems
far more expensive) if you can afford it, and try to catch a book or two
whenever you have time.
Who knows, it even might come useful one day.
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