Tuesday, October 23, 2007
Dawkins and his replicators
Dawkins and his idea of replicators and vehicles that carry them about
After having read Dawkins’s book “The extended Phenotype” and some other of his works dealing with his main idea of genes being the only replicators and all organisms functioning as their vehicles I came to the conclusion that Dawkins is only partially right. Genes can be of course viewed as replicators, the absolute basic unit of selection, but only in a static or better to say semi-static model. In absolute dynamic model the question must come and how have genes developed?
So if we take genes as something that does not change, that always was here, then genes are replicators and all other organisms their transport vehicles. On the other side when we recognize that genes are itself only a product of informational environment then suddenly they can be only viewed upon as a very specific storage of information. To some extend this resembles the evolution of ideas about how and of what matter is compounded. Some two thousand years ago the idea of atoms came to being and lasted pretty long. Just recently scientists came up with the idea that atom consists of smaller particles, and they were right. Today we know that genes are not the smallest part in DNA and any way we deal with them as if they were. If we knew how genes came to being, we might better understand why they function as they function.
From our point of view that is restricted by the time we live and by the time we deal with genes, and these both kinds of times are too short compared with maybe one or two billion years that it took to produce genes, genes appear as the basic unit of evolutionary heredity. But because they also somehow had to come to being they cannot be the first one in the row, and therefore they must also evolve. It can be that the evolution of genes has stopped or at least it can appeared so because it is possible that genes came to their last possible stage and now they do not change at all only the way how and when and in cooperation with what other genes they work might be of importance, that means epigenetics, information stored in DNA aside of genes and to our best today knowledge guiding and regulating genes.
I prefer the idea of information being stored in a chemical way. It could be really helpful to make some research on this field to find out how information is stored in DNA using different chemicals. At present time I read a lot about mathylation, that means genes working differently if there is a methyl group present or not. This strongly resembles the computer system of processing information, 1 there is some current, 0 there is no current, this system has extremely evolved in maybe last hundred years. It could be that this methyl group functions the same or in a similar way.
It might be shocking to find out that it is not only methyl group storing information about the environment and about the inner state of organism. Then of course the total coding would be much more complex.
My basic idea at present time is that of coding. No matter in universe has direct contact with another matter. But they are in contact, only it is not a direct but indirect contact. Any indirect contact requires coding and storing of information; sometimes even some medium. Many fold repetition of a certain signal that means certain coded information may and really did result in necessity for storing such signal and information coded in it for convenience. It costs too much energy to “ponder” always about the same signal anew. It is more energy saving to produce storage for such information together with already manifold repeated response to it. And thus save time and energy for other signals that means for other information coded in a different way.
I do not know whether DNA code is based on bits and bytes system that means basically binomial system organized in clusters of 8. Actually, DNA might be much more complex coding and storing system it might consist of several binomial systems, organized in clusters of different length. So certain information might be coded by methyl group, some other kind of information might be coded by other chemicals, and there is no need for the same length of clusters like 8 bits in one byte. It could be 20 or 17 or 78. Actually even the length of cluster might be some information and it appears as if a certain shape might be a way of storing information.
I believe that this kind of dealing with information and comparing it with computers might once lead to pretty good theory of how information influenced
After having read Dawkins’s book “The extended Phenotype” and some other of his works dealing with his main idea of genes being the only replicators and all organisms functioning as their vehicles I came to the conclusion that Dawkins is only partially right. Genes can be of course viewed as replicators, the absolute basic unit of selection, but only in a static or better to say semi-static model. In absolute dynamic model the question must come and how have genes developed?
So if we take genes as something that does not change, that always was here, then genes are replicators and all other organisms their transport vehicles. On the other side when we recognize that genes are itself only a product of informational environment then suddenly they can be only viewed upon as a very specific storage of information. To some extend this resembles the evolution of ideas about how and of what matter is compounded. Some two thousand years ago the idea of atoms came to being and lasted pretty long. Just recently scientists came up with the idea that atom consists of smaller particles, and they were right. Today we know that genes are not the smallest part in DNA and any way we deal with them as if they were. If we knew how genes came to being, we might better understand why they function as they function.
From our point of view that is restricted by the time we live and by the time we deal with genes, and these both kinds of times are too short compared with maybe one or two billion years that it took to produce genes, genes appear as the basic unit of evolutionary heredity. But because they also somehow had to come to being they cannot be the first one in the row, and therefore they must also evolve. It can be that the evolution of genes has stopped or at least it can appeared so because it is possible that genes came to their last possible stage and now they do not change at all only the way how and when and in cooperation with what other genes they work might be of importance, that means epigenetics, information stored in DNA aside of genes and to our best today knowledge guiding and regulating genes.
I prefer the idea of information being stored in a chemical way. It could be really helpful to make some research on this field to find out how information is stored in DNA using different chemicals. At present time I read a lot about mathylation, that means genes working differently if there is a methyl group present or not. This strongly resembles the computer system of processing information, 1 there is some current, 0 there is no current, this system has extremely evolved in maybe last hundred years. It could be that this methyl group functions the same or in a similar way.
It might be shocking to find out that it is not only methyl group storing information about the environment and about the inner state of organism. Then of course the total coding would be much more complex.
My basic idea at present time is that of coding. No matter in universe has direct contact with another matter. But they are in contact, only it is not a direct but indirect contact. Any indirect contact requires coding and storing of information; sometimes even some medium. Many fold repetition of a certain signal that means certain coded information may and really did result in necessity for storing such signal and information coded in it for convenience. It costs too much energy to “ponder” always about the same signal anew. It is more energy saving to produce storage for such information together with already manifold repeated response to it. And thus save time and energy for other signals that means for other information coded in a different way.
I do not know whether DNA code is based on bits and bytes system that means basically binomial system organized in clusters of 8. Actually, DNA might be much more complex coding and storing system it might consist of several binomial systems, organized in clusters of different length. So certain information might be coded by methyl group, some other kind of information might be coded by other chemicals, and there is no need for the same length of clusters like 8 bits in one byte. It could be 20 or 17 or 78. Actually even the length of cluster might be some information and it appears as if a certain shape might be a way of storing information.
I believe that this kind of dealing with information and comparing it with computers might once lead to pretty good theory of how information influenced
# posted by Dalibor @ 3:52 AM 
