Hostname: page-component-5b777bbd6c-j65dx Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-06-19T15:48:20.461Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Information in Genetics and Developmental Biology: Comments on Maynard Smith

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Sahotra Sarkar
Sahotra Sarkar*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Maynard Smith notes that he provides a natural history and not a philosophical analysis of the use of concepts of information in contemporary biology. Just a natural history, however rich, would do little to resolve the ongoing controversy about the role of these concepts in biology. None of the disputants deny that the biological use of these concepts is pervasive. The dispute is about whether these concepts—and the framework in which they are embedded—continue to be of explanatory value in contemporary biology. Fortunately, Maynard Smith does much more than provide a natural history: his contribution is also a sustained attempt to justify many (though not all) of the uses of information in biology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 67 , Issue 2 , June 2000 , pp. 208 - 213
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712–1180.

References

Fox, T. D. (1987), “Natural Variation in the Genetic Code”, Annual Review of Genetics 21: 67–91.10.1146/annurev.ge.21.120187.000435CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Gilbert, S. F. (1997), Developmental Biology, 5th ed. Sunderland: Sinauer.Google Scholar
Haldane, J. B. S. (1936), “Some Principles of Causal Analysis in Genetics”, Erkenntnis 6: 346–357.Google Scholar
Haldane, J. B. S. (1946), “The Interaction of Nature and Nurture”, Annals of Eugenics 13: 197–205.10.1111/j.1469-1809.1946.tb02358.xCrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hogben, L. (1933), Nature and Nurture. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Jablonka, E. and Lamb, M. J. (1995), Epigenetic Inheritance and Evolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kimura, M. (1961), “Natural Selection as a Process of Accumulating Genetic Information in Adaptive Evolution”, Genetical Research 2: 127–140.10.1017/S0016672300000616CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Landman, O. E. (1991), “The Inheritance of Acquired Characteristics”, Annual Review of Genetics 25: 1–20.10.1146/annurev.ge.25.120191.000245CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mahner, M. and Bunge, M. A. (1997), Foundations of Biophilosophy. Berlin: Springer-Verlag.10.1007/978-3-662-03368-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. (1965), The Theory of Evolution. 2nd ed. Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Maynard Smith, J. (1990), “Models of a Dual Inheritance System”, Journal of Theoretical Biology 143: 41–53.10.1016/S0022-5193(05)80287-5CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Monod, J. 1971. Chance and Necessity. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Ptashne, M. (1992), A Genetic Switch: Phage λ and Higher Organisms, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Sarkar, S. (1996a), “Biological Information: A Skeptical Look at Some Central Dogmas of Molecular Biology”, in Sarkar, S. (ed.), The Philosophy and History of Molecular Biology: New Perspectives. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 187–231.10.1007/978-0-585-31233-0_11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sarkar, S. (1996b), “Decoding ‘Coding‘—Information and DNA”, BioScience 46: 857–864.10.2307/1312971CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schneider, T. D. (1988), “Information and Entropy Patterns in Genetic Switches”, in Erickson, G. J. and Smith, C. R. (eds.), Maximum-Entropy and Bayesian Methods in Science and Engineering. Dordrecht: Kluwer, 147–154.10.1007/978-94-010-9054-4_11CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sterelny, K. and Griffiths, P. E. (1999), Sex and Death. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226178653.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Watson, J. D., Tooze, J., and Kurtz, D. T. (1983), Recombinant DNA. New York: Freeman.Google Scholar