Abracadabra: Language, Memory, Representation

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Reading for today:

"In the beginning was the Word? The genetic code and the Book of Life" by Lily Kay, historian of biology.

The Book of Life: Just a metaphor?

1. The persistence of this particular metaphor.
2. the operational force of imagining that DNA is a language.
3. DNA linguistics and bioinformatics "A metaphor literalized." Kay suggests that this metaphor does not stand up to any rigorous investigation of the concept of language: does that mean that genetics is operating under a faulty assumption? what might be the impact of such a state of affairs?
4. Not all metaphors are created equal. Some metaphors are better than others for the creativity of scientific work.

"Yet there were and probably could be other ways of knowing." p.226

"Here it a human being; it's me." Are you this book?

• language
• letters
• data
• information
• symbols
• chemicals
• molecules

History of twentieth century science: biochemistry meets molecular genetics meets linguistics meets information theory.

"Site of the command and control of life"

Can there be a history of a natural, universal, eternal "book of life"?

1. The meanings of this notion, the book of life, change from historical period to historical period.
2. In the ancient world of Plato and Socrates, speech is the locus of truth, writing is only the imperfect imitation of truth.
3. In the old testament, God creates the earth through speech, and Adam names the animals.
4. In the New Testament, the gospel of St. John says: "I am the word." "The word made flesh." "In the beginning was the word." Augustine, Aquinas and others have written commentaries on the Book of Life.
5. In the Medieval era, the book of nature is a supplement to the book of life, and is an image of all things ordered according to grammatical categories.
6. After the 15th c. The "book of nature" became a mechanically printed text.
7. In the 18th century Kant points out that even knowing all the letters and pronounciations is not enough to understand a book. Something more must be necessary
8. In the twentieth century, books are "information" or worse, "content" rather than books.