A Critique of Pure (Genetic) Information

xviii Introduction
autonomization of rhetoric that he ostensibly means to be criticizing.
With the interpretive sensitivity of a good literary critic, Doyle exposes
the semantic stakes in a manner that far outreaches any narrowly
analytical talk about intertheoretic reductionism or the like. However,
when it comes to the practical-normative dimension of social-intellectual
critique, Doyle simply drops the ball.
Chapter 3 is principally concerned with clarifying the cellular and
molecular basis of biological order using Schrödinger as a point of departure.
It is precisely in light of the semantic consequences of the conflated
gene-rhetoric (and all the ramifications of this suggested above) that the
basis of such rhetoric—to the extent that there is one—cannot be left
unexamined. Schrödinger argued that only the thermodynamics of the
solid state (and thus the “aperiodic crystal”), newly (for him) revealed
by quantum mechanics, could account for the existence and continuity
of biological order. Whether the subsequent history of empirical investigations
have ruled in his favor or not must be made relevant to the force
of his rhetorical legacy. Ongoing claims on behalf of what I refer to as
the “conflated gene” must be held empirically accountable.
The principal intention of chapter 3 is to demonstrate that biological
order is distributed over several parallel and mutually dependent systems
such that no one system, and certainly no one molecule, could reasonably
be accorded the status of being a program, blueprint, set of instructions,
and so forth, for the remainder. The idea of characterizing three
subcellular epigenetic systems is derived from Jablonka and Lamb,
although I signficantly depart from them in my treatment of the first two
of these systems (organizational structure and steady-state dynamics).
With respect to the former, I offer a fairly detailed account of the differentiated,
membrane-based, structural, and functional compartmentalization
of the cell. Biochemically distinct membranous bodies constitute
the necessary and irreplaceable templates of their own production and
reproduction, are passed along from one generation to the next, and
provide the unavoidable context in which DNA can be adequately interpreted,
that is, in which genes can be genes.
Under the heading of steady-state dynamics, I offer an extended discussion
of the theoretical work of Stuart Kauffman. Kauffman’s work
is most relevant here because he too presents an explicit response to