The Concept of Genetic Information and Historical Epistemology

Abstract

The information concept in molecular biology and genetics has a duality inherent in any canon: on the one hand, now it looks universal, and it is difficult to think of transcending this discourse; on the other hand, historians of science show that one's emergence is culturally contingent and is associated with the “informatization” of science and society during WWII and the Cold War. This kind of duality is analyzed by historical epistemology (critical presentism), trying to understand science, on the one hand, as rational (truth is universal), on the other, as contingent (other possible worlds of scientific knowledge are conceivable). In this article, using the concept of genetic information as an example, it is shown how the first goal of historical epistemology is achieved by criticizing the science of the past with the help of modern science and philosophy of science. The second goal is achieved by criticizing modern science from the point of view of past science. Namely, the rapid rise of the concept of information in biology in the middle of the 20th century and the fast transition from quantitative mathematical information theory to information-linguistic metaphors can be rationally understood within the framework of the teleosemantic concept of information developed in the modern philosophy of biology. On the other hand, delving into the past of biology, we find all the more radical alternatives to the information concept and informational and linguistic metaphors: from the mathematical theory of information to the “chemical” concept of “absolute” specificity as stereospecificity to the “physical” concept of relative specificity as a consequence of collective effects. This historical perspective makes it possible to discern feasible alternatives to the information concept in modern biology.