Defending Information-Free Genocentrism

History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 27 (3/4):345 - 359 (2005)
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Abstract

Genocentrism, the thesis that the genes play a special role in the causation of development is often rejected in favor of a 'causal democracy thesis' to the effect that all causally necessary conditions for development are equal. Genocentrists argue that genes play a distinct causal role owing to their informational content and that this content enables them to program the embryo. I show that the special causal role of the genome hinges not on its informational status — it has none, or at least no more than computer programs have independent of our interpretations of them — but on its power literally to program the embryo, a power nicely illustrated in the use of polynucleotide sequences to compute solutions to NP hard problems in mathematics

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Alex Rosenberg
Duke University

Citations of this work

The Machine Conception of the Organism in Development and Evolution: A Critical Analysis.Daniel J. Nicholson - 2014 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 48:162-174.

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