Defending information-free genocentrism.
Genocentrism, the thesis that the genes play a special role in the causation of development is often rejected in favor of a 'causal democracy thesis' to the effect that all causally necessary conditions for development are equal. Genocentrists argue that genes play a distinct causal role owing to their informational content and that this content enables them to program the embryo. I show that the special causal role of the genome hinges not on its informational status--it has none, or at least no more than computer programs have independent of our interpretations of them--but on its power literally to program the embryo, a power nicely illustrated in the use of polynucleotide sequences to compute solutions to NP hard problems in mathematics.
Rosenberg
Alex
A
Center for Philosophy of Biology, Duke University, Box 90743, 201 West Duke Building, Durham, NC 27708, USA.
D000818:Animals; D004247:DNA; D015509:Developmental Biology; D005796:Genes; D023281:Genomics; D006801:Humans; D007254:Information Science; D008957:Models, Genetic; D008967:Molecular Biology; D010684:Philosophy; D012641:Selection, Genetic
D004247:DNA