A Critique of Pure (Genetic) Information

A Critique of Pure (Genetic) Information 115
as it does upon genetic sequence stability. Perhaps even more to the point,
the very idea of order from crystalline stability must be reworked into
an idea of order from dynamic steady-state systems within which crystalline
structures function as constituent resources that are subject to
dynamic modifications, rearrangements, expansions, contractions, and
replications. Fifty years of hindsight reveals that life is indeed an orderfrom-order
phenomenon but rejects the claim that the chemistry of the
solid state provides the only, or even a privileged, basis for this order.
With the rejection of the warrant for any claims for the primacy of a
hereditary code-script, the door opens for a new overarching perspective
on the nature of the living organism. And just such a perspective is beginning
to emerge.
Drawing on a number of disciplines and contributions [including an
earlier expression of this work (Moss 1992)], new advocates of a developmental
systems theory (DST) are beginning to explore the implications
of a biology which is neither explicitly nor implicitly encased in the
metaphorical space of the code-script.
From a DST perspective, ontogeny is best viewed as contingent cycles of interaction
amongst a heterogeneous set of developmental resources, no one of which
‘controls’ or ‘programs’ the process. These resources range from DNA to cellular
and organismic structure and to social and ecological interactions. Many of
these resources, both inside and outside the organism, can be reliably reconstructed
down evolutionary lineages. Evolution is change in these developmental
cycles. The change in gene frequency often used to define evolution are but
one aspect of the richer complex of stabilities and changes captured by the developmental
systems approach. (Oyama, Griffiths & Gray 5 2001)
From the DST perspective (Oyama 1985, Griffiths & Gray 1994,
Griffiths & Gray 2001) the achievement of any phenotype will rely on
the presence of some set of heterogeneous resources, none of which singly
determines it and the absence of any of which—be it a vitamin, a gene,
or some other developmental cue—may equally result in a characteristic
aberration. The developmental systems perspective is thus permissive of
many different kinds of biological explanations which may be tailored
to local needs and local contexts. At minimum it provides a perspectival
antidote to that malady by which the richness and vitality of life
processes are lost by slippage into that which is (genetically) known in
advance. If no developmental resource is necessarily accorded causal