Code biology and the problem of emergence
Biosystems 208 (2021)
Abstract
It should now be recognized that codes are central to life and to understanding its more complex forms, including human culture. Recognizing the ‘conventional’ nature of codes provides solid grounds for rejecting efforts to reduce life to biochemistry and justifies according a place to semantics in life. The question I want to consider is whether this is enough. Focussing on Eigen’s paradox of how a complex code could originate, I will argue that along with Barbieri’s efforts to account for the origins of life based on the ribosome and then to account for the refined codes through a process of ambiguity reduction, something more is required. Barbieri has not provided an adequate account of emergence, or the basis for providing such an account. I will argue that Stanley Salthe has clarified to some extent the nature of emergence by conceptualizing it as the interpolation of new enabling constraints. Clearly, codes can be seen as enabling constraints. How this actually happens, though, is still not explained. Stuart Kauffman has grappled with this issue and shown that it radically challenges the assumptions of mainstream science going back to Newton. He has attempted to reintroduce real possibilities or potentialities into his ontology, and argued that radically new developments in nature are associated with realizing adjacent possibles. This is still not adequate. What is also involved, I will suggest, utilizing concepts developed by the French natural philosopher Gilbert Simondon, is ‘transduction’ as part of ‘ontogenesis’ of individuals in a process of ‘individuation’, that is, the emergence of ‘individuals’ from preindividual fields or milieux.Author's Profile
My notes
Similar books and articles
The Immateriality of Meaning.Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera - 2019 - Constructivist Foundations 15 (2):140-141.
Code Biology, Peircean Biosemiotics, and Rosen’s Relational Biology.Marcello Barbieri - 2019 - Biological Theory 14 (1):21-29.
From symbolism to information? – Decoding the Gene code.Frode Kjosavik - 2007 - Biology and Philosophy 22 (3):333-349.
Transcending the Emergence/Reduction Distinction: The Case of Biology.Rom Harré - 2005 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 56:1-2.
The Organic Codes: An Introduction to Semantic Biology.Marcello Barbieri - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
Is the “Histone Code” an Organic Code?Stefan Kühn & Jan-Hendrik S. Hofmeyr - 2014 - Biosemiotics 7 (2):203-222.
A Critique of Barbieri’s Code Biology.Alexander V. Kravchenko - 2019 - Constructivist Foundations 15 (2):122-134.
DNA codes and information: Formal structures and relational causes.Richard V. Sternberg - 2008 - Acta Biotheoretica 56 (3):205-232.
What Does it Take to Produce Interpretation? Informational, Peircean and Code-Semiotic Views on Biosemiotics.Søren Brier & Cliff Joslyn - 2013 - Biosemiotics 6 (1):143-159.
New Mechanistic Philosophy and the Scientific Prospects of Code Biology.Majid Davoody Beni - 2019 - Biosemiotics 12 (2):197-211.
Abitare la soglia: Simondon e l’individuazione del vivente.Andrea Nicolini - 2019 - Scientia et Fides 22:252-267.
Individuazione e nudità. La teoria dell’individuo in Simondon e Deleuze [Individuation and nudity. The theory of individual between Simondon and Deleuze].Tommaso Ariemma - 2006 - la Società Degli Individui 25:17-26.
The Role of Emergence in Biology.Lynn Rothschild - 2006 - In Philip Clayton & Paul Davies (eds.), The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis From Science to Religion. Oxford University Press.
Analytics
Added to PP
2021-07-17
Downloads
249 (#49,871)
6 months
58 (#22,466)
2021-07-17
Downloads
249 (#49,871)
6 months
58 (#22,466)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Life Processes as Proto-Narratives: Integrating Theoretical Biology and Biosemiotics through Biohermeneutics.Arran Gare - 2022 - Cosmos and History : The Journal of Natural and Social Philosophy 18 (1):210-251.
References found in this work
Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology.Daniel J. Nicholson & John Dupré (eds.) - 2018 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
The Organic Codes: An Introduction to Semantic Biology.Marcello Barbieri - 2003 - Cambridge University Press.
The Mathematical Theory of Communication.Claude E. Shannon & Warren Weaver - 1949 - University of Illinois Press.