quote:
Originally posted by Gerhard:
I think I have realized that these forums are for nothing more than arguing for the sake of arguing. Since I am not interested in that, I don't intend to respond anymore. Kudos to all the people who can stand these things.
Wow, he gave up easily. I hadn't had a chance to reply to any of his arrogant little tirades. Shame.
Maybe I should look at a few of his utternaces and see if they were worth replying to anyway?
quote:
As for the second part (Peter disagreed that DNA was a medium for code) my sister, a biochemistry major, laughed her head off. Basically you have just attempted to nullify her field and all of genetics.
Your sister should perhaps rather read a bit more deeply on the role of imagery and metaphor in scientific thought and you would be better be off reading a bit more about the subject before sounding off so smugly.
The "code" metaphor was not used seriously (rather than casually) until 1954, but Crick was one of the first to realise that as a metaphor it was flawed.
At the very least DNA could best be regarded as a cipher rather than a code. But then, I wouldn't want to pick little holes in your argument, when you are so accomodating of others. (as if ...)
Your sister and yourself should perhaps read Lily Kay's excellent book "Who wrote the book of life?" Her key analysis is unanswerable: that
"once a commitment to a particular representation of life is made - material, discursive and social - it assumes a kind of agency that both enables and constrains the thoughts and actions of biologists." She effectively deconstructs the notion of DNA as code, not only demonstrating out that is a mere and inadequate metaphor, but reminding us that "code" and "information" are themselves metaphors.
She also effectively sets this metaphor in its social context - the prestige of codebreaking after the war, the parallelism of research in computing and DNA, and the availability of information theory to act as a metaphor.
What Peter challenged was not genetics or biochemistry but the current danger of overemphasisng the manipulation of a metaphor in favour of more substantive investigation of the reality of biochemical processes.
To think that the complexities of usage of a metaphor can be reflexively applied to the real world with sufficient certainty to call into question countless observations in another field of study is, to say the least, presumptious and, when conducted arrogantly, not a little despicable.
quote:
Peter, what you are saying is that it is not possible to describe two things with two different code sequences. NOT TRUE!! I can call a cat a cat, or a feline, two completely different sequences of letters but they mean the same thing.
That is your standard of argument? We are supposed to learn something about information and code from someone who thinks "cat" and "feline" mean the same thing? My turn to laugh my head off, I think.
quote:
No, DNA does not communicate anything, but its CODE does. It doesn't communicate anything to the cell in the sense you are using (that is, that it communicates conscienctiously) but it does transmit information, just as a computers do constantly without any interpretative act.
Well, call me Mr Picky, but you would think someone who thought feline meant the same as cat would recognize that his "processing" of his microprocessor is pretty damn similar to an "interpretative act" wouldn't you?
Oh well. Bye bye Gerhard.
[This message has been edited by Mister Pamboli, 05-20-2002]
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