PMID: 11613275Jan 1, 1995Paper

Who wrote the book of life? Information and the transformation of molecular biology, 1945-55

Science in Context
L E Kay

Abstract

This paper focuses on the opening of a discursive space: the emergence of informational and scriptural representations of life and hereditiy and their self-negating consequences for the construction of biological meaning. It probes the notion of writing and the book of life and shows how molecular biology's claims to a status of language and texuality undermines its own objective of control. These textual significations were historically contingent. The informational representations of heredity and life were not an outcome of the internal cognitive momentum of molecular biology; they were not a logical necessity of the unravelling of the base-pairing of the DNA double-helix. They were transported into molecular biology still within the protein paradigm of the gene in the 1940s and permeated nearly every discipline in the life and social sciences. These information-based models, metaphors, linguistic, and semiotic tools which were central to the formulation of the genetic code were transported into molecular biology from cybernetics, information theory, electronic computing, and control and communication systems--technosciences that were deeply embedded with the military experiences of World War II and the Cold War. The informat...Continue Reading

References

Mar 1, 1979·History of Science; an Annual Review of Literature, Research and Teaching·E J Yoxen
Jun 1, 1992·Studies in History and Philosophy of Science·H J Rheinberger
Apr 18, 1953·Nature·U LEOPOLDJ J WEIGLE

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Citations

Feb 18, 2009·Biological Research for Nursing·Sandra A Founds
Jul 1, 2020·The Hastings Center Report·Colin Koopman
Jul 1, 2020·The Hastings Center Report·Eva Feder Kittay
Jun 4, 2020·Genetics·Ehud LammSophie Juliane Veigl
Mar 17, 2001·Nature Reviews. Genetics·J B Hagen
May 7, 2021·Genetics·Ehud LammSophie Juliane Veigl
May 12, 2021·Medical Humanities·Natalie Riley

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