Hostname: page-component-848d4c4894-wzw2p Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-05-21T09:08:55.353Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Who Wrote the Book of Life? Information and the Transformation of Molecular Biology, 1945–55

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 September 2008

Lily E. Kay
Lily E. Kay
Affiliation:
Program in Science, Technology, and Society, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper focuses on the opening of a discursive space: the emergence of informational and scriptural representations of life 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 information discourse thus became fixed in molecular biology not because it worked in the narrow epistemic sense (it did not), but because it positioned molecular biology within postwar discourse and culture, perhaps within the transition to a post-modern information-based society.

Type
Article
Information
Science in Context , Volume 8 , Issue 4 , Winter 1995 , pp. 609 - 634
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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.)

References

Aspray, William. 1990. Jonh von Neumann and the Origins of Modern Computing. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Augenstine, Leroy. 1953. “Remarks on Pauling's Protein Models.” In Quastler 1953, 75.Google Scholar
Augenstine, Leroy, Branson, HermanB., and Carver, Eleanore B.. 1953. “A Search for Intersymbol Influences in Protein Structure.” In Quastler 1953, 105–19.Google Scholar
Baudrillard, Jean. 1983. Simulations. New York: Semiotext(e).Google Scholar
Bell, Daniel. 1973. The Coming of Post-Industrial Society. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Boltzmann, Ludwig. 1909. Wissenschaftliche Abhandlungen von Ludwig Boltzmann, Fritz Havenohrl, 3 vols. Lepzig: Barth.Google Scholar
Branson, Herman B. 1953. “Information Theory and the Structure of Proteins.” In Quastler 1953, 84–105.Google Scholar
Ceruzzi, Paul E. 1983. Reckoners: The Prehistory of the Digital Computer, from Relays to the Stored Program Concept, 1935–1945. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press.Google Scholar
Cooper, Robert. 1989. “Modernism and Organizational Analysis 3: The Contributions of Jacques Derrida.” Oranization Studies 10 479–502.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dancoff, Sydney M. and Quastler, Henry 1953 “The Information content and Error Rate of Living Things.” In Quastler 1953, 263–273.Google Scholar
Derrida, Jacques. 1976. Of Grammatology, translated by Spivak, Gayatri Chakaracorty. Baltimote: The Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Doyle, Richard. 1992. “Mr. Schrödinger inside Himself.” Qui Parle 5: 1–20.Google Scholar
Doyle, Richard. 1993. “On Beyond Living: Vital and Post Vital Rhetorics in Molecular Biobogy.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Edwards, Paul N. 1988. “The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discoures.” Ph.D. diss., University of California, Santa Cruz.Google Scholar
Ephrussi, B., Lepold, U., Watson, J. D. and Weigle, J. J.. 1953 “Termonology in Bacterial Genetics.” Nature 171: 701.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fisher, Ronald A. 1922. “On the Mathematical Foundations of Theoretical Statistics.” Philosophical Transactions (A), 222: 309–68.Google Scholar
Forman, Paul. 1987. “Behind Quantum Electronics: Nationl Security as a Basis for Physical Research in the United States, 1940–1960.” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 18: 149–229.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Foucault, Michel. 1970. The Order of Things: An Archeology of the Human Sciences New York: Vintage Books.Google Scholar
Frankel, Boris. 1987. The post-Industrial Utopians. Masison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Gamow, George. 1955. “Information Transfer in the Living Cell.” Scientific American 193 (04): 70–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gamow, George. and Yčas, Martynas 1956. The Cryptographic Approach to the problem of Protein Synthesis.” In Yockey 1956 63–69.Google Scholar
Gardner, Howard. 1985 The Mind's New Science: A History of the Cognitive Revolution. New York Basic Books.Google Scholar
Gasche, Rodolphe. 1986. The Tain of the Mirror: Derrida and the Philosophy of Reflection. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Gilbert, Walter. 1990. “A Vision of the Grail.” In The Code of Codes: Scientific and Social Issues in the Human Genome Project ed. Keveles., Daniel J. and Hood, Leroy. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Hacking, Ian. 1982. Representing and Intervening. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Haraway, Donna. 1991. “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Femnism in the late Twentieh Century, “ in her Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinventon of Nature. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Hartley, R. V. L. 1928. “Transmission of Information” Bell System Technical Journal 7: 536–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haurowitz, Felix. 1953. “Protein Synthesis and Immunochemistry” In Quastler 1953 125–46.Google Scholar
Hayles, N. Katherine 1990 Chaos Bound: Orderly Disorder in Contemporary Literature and Science. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Heims, Steve J. 1980. John von Neumann and Norbert Wiener: Form Mathematics to the Technologies of Life and Death. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Heims, Steve J. 1991. The Cybernetics Group Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Irwin, M. R. 1953. “Genes and Antigens.” In Quastler 1953, 147–69.Google Scholar
Judson, Horace F. 1979. The Eighth Day of Creation: The Makers of the Revolution in Biology New York: Simon & Schuster.Google Scholar
Kalmus, H. 1950. “A Cybernetical Aspect of Genetics” Journal of Heredity 41: 19–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
kay, Lily E. 1993. The Molecular Vision of Life: Caltech, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Rise of the New Biology. New York: Oxford Unviersity Press.Google Scholar
Keller, Fox Evelyn 1992. “Nature, Nurture, and the Human Genome Project.” In Gilbert 1992.Google Scholar
Kemeny, John G. 1955. “Man Viewed as Machine”. Scientific American 196 (April): 58–67.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 1976. “The Management of Science: The Experience of Warren Weaver and the Rockefeller Foundation Programme in Molecular Biology” Minerva 14 249–293.Google Scholar
Kohler, Robert E. 1991. Partners in Science: Foundations and Natural Scientists, 1900–1945. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Laclau, Ernesto, and Mouffe, Chantal 1985. Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso Press.Google Scholar
Leslie, Stuart W. 1993. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial Complex at MIT and Stanford New York Columbia University PressGoogle Scholar
Locke, David. 1992. Science as Writing. New Heven, Conn.: Yale University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyon, David. 1988. The information Society: Issues and Illusion Cambride U.K.: Policy Press.Google Scholar
Lyotard, Jean-Franjois. 1984. The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Maxwell, James Clerk. “Illustrations of the Dynamical Theory of Gasses” Philosophical Magazine 19 and 20: 19–32 and 21–37, respectively.Google Scholar
Maxwell, James Clerk. 1871. Theory of Heat London Longmans, Green.Google Scholar
McLuhan, Marshall. 1964. Understanding Media: The Extenstions of Man. New York: McGraw Hill.Google Scholar
Nobel, David F. 1986. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation New York Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Olby, Robert. 1974. The path to the Double Helix London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
Penrose, L. S. 1959. “Self-Reproducing Machines”. Scientific American 200 (June): 105–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Poster, Mark. 1990. The Mode of Information: Poststructuralism and Social Context Chicago Universtity of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Quastler, Henry, , ed. 1953. Essays on the Use of Information Theory in Biology Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Quastler, Henry. 1956. “A Primer on Information Theory” In Yockey 1956, 3–49.Google Scholar
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg. 1992 “Experiment, Difference, and Writing”. Parts 1 and 2 Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 23: 305–31 and 389–422, respectively.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Rosenblueth, Arturo, , Wiener, Norbert, and Bigelow, Julian 1943. “Behavior, Purpose, and Teleology”. Philosophy of Science 10: 18–24.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shannon, Claude E. 1948 “A Mathematical Theory of Communication.” Bell systems Technical Journal 27 379–423 and 623–56.Google Scholar
Shannon, Claude E. and Weaver, Warren 1949. The Mathematical Theory of Communication Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Stent, Gunther S. and Calendar, Richard 1971, Molecular Genetics: An Introductory Narrative San Francisco: Freeman.Google Scholar
Szilard, Leo. 1929. “Über die Entropieverminderung einem thermodynamischen System bei Eingriffen intelligenter Wesen”. Zeitschrift für physik 53: 840–856.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Touraine, Alain. 1969. La Sociétépost-industrielle: Naissance d'une société. Paris: Denoel.Google Scholar
Trifonov, Edward N. and Brendel, Volker 1986. Preface to Genomic: A Dictionary of Genetic Codes. Rehovot: Balaban Publishers.Google Scholar
Vonnegut, Kurt Jr. 1952. Player Piano. New York: Dell.Google Scholar
von Neumann., John 1951. “The General and Logical Theory of Automata”. In Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior, ed. Jeffress, Lloyd A., 1–32. New York Hafner Publishing Co.Google Scholar
von Neumann., John 1965. Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata edited by Burks, Arthur W.. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Watson, James D. 1990. “The Human Genome Project — Past, Present, and Future”. Science 248: 44–49.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Wheelwright, Philip ed. 1966. The presorcratics. New York Odyssey Press.Google Scholar
Wiener, Norbert. 1950. The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Wiener, Norbert. 1961. Cybernetics: Or Control and Communication in the Animal and the Machine 2nd ed. New York. MIT Press and Wiley.Google Scholar
Yčas, Martynas. 1956. “The Protein Text”. In Yockey 1956, 70–100.Google Scholar
Yockey, Hubert P. ed 1956. Symposium on Information Theory in Biology. New York Pergamon Press.Google Scholar
Yoxen, Edward J. 1979. “Where Does Schrödinger's ‘What is Life’ Belong in the History of Molecular Biology?” History of Science 17: 17–52.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed