[ Follow Ups ]
Posted by Ramellini on November 28, 1999 at 02:09:12:
In Reply to: The genetic program: creator, demiurge, or neither? (Re: Program God) posted by Ramellini on November 01, 1999 at 04:41:55:
It's time to begin synthesizing our ideas.
1. If any concept of GP is conceivable, it is to be put on a conceptual level
other than the phenomenological one.
On the phenomenological level we speak about particles (atoms, molecules,
enzymatic complexes) which spontaneously move, collide, chain to each other and
so on; in the terminology of the philosopher Guardini (1925), this is the
intraempirical level.
On the second level (transempirical, according to Guardini) we speak about
programs, organization, regulation, homeostasis, i.e. of entities which cannot
be directly observed in living entities. So that, questions like "Where is
located the genetic program, or biological organization?" are badly
stated, because a program is not a concrete body, extended in space and time,
but an abstract entity. If we don't pay attention to this difference of level,
the concept of GP undergoes a misleading reification or hypostasis; we assist
to a collapse of the concept on the reality, with the subsequent annulment of
the difference between epistemological and ontological reality, between
explanatory and objectual world (see Gagliasso in Continenza e Gagliasso 1998;
note that this point of view is slightly but decisively different from that of
Guardini, inasmuch as Guardini would today say that, however transempirical, GP
is inherent in the living entity, while Gagliasso would maintain that GP is
inherent in our explanation of the living entity).
2. There are at least a broad concept of GP and a strict one:
The broad concept states that GP is a system of information; the vagueness of
this meaning (remember that information itself is often only a metaphorical
concept) makes it difficult to think over it.
The strict concept states that GP is a system of instructions; this is the meaning
I'd like to investigate with the help of an expert in informatics. I think that
the background of this concept dates back to the beginnings of genetics. When
the first genetists used the words 'factor' or 'determinant' to signify what
was after that called 'gene', they thought about elements which could make the
states of character (factor, from the latin facere, i.e. to make) or which
could at least have a decisive influence on the states of characters
(determinant, from the latin de-terminare, i.e. to put boundaries, or to cause
necessarily something).
3. The concrete substrate of GP is thought to be either DNA, or DNA plus other
cellular components, or DNA plus other cellular components plus environment.
Today, the prevailing opinion is the first; the second one is now gaining more
attention, after having been considered a residue of lamarckism; the third one
suffers from a confusion between the two concepts lying beneath genetics, i.e.
genesis and heredity: in fact, environment is implied in the genesis of the
living entity, but the environmental elements in which a living entity lives
are very seldom inherited (think for instance to a viral DNA which has been
integrated in the DNA of the host).
Bibliography
Continenza, B., e E. Gagliasso. 1998. L’Informazione nelle Scienze della Vita.
Milano, FrancoAngeli.
Guardini, R. 1925. Der Gegensatz. Versuche zu einer Philosophie des
Lebendigkonkreten.