Ive been reading some interesting material on biosemiotics – codes of life Marcello Barbieri and

Jesper Hoffmeyer which identifies numerous codes within organic life. The dna code is the most famous but they have identified several others which they claim are also present.

as I read their papers I begin to wonder though when a code is in place.

some of the examples, for example the sequence of amino acids in the dna sequence that enable the winding of the string around the histones is presented as a code, but it is the physical properties of the underlying medium which causes this. The notion of a code,  to my mind, must be distinguished from the causal effect of the features of the underlying medium.

It is similar to the notion of font or pitch, in that two words written in the same font have the same meaning. If they do not, then this is a pragmatic question not a semantic question. If I write my name in 6 point and then again in 200 point, the fact that one can be read from a distance and the other not, is not a issue of coding.

I think there is some ontological confusion regarding the very notion of code, which tempers my initial enthusiasm about this whole area.

the notion of nucleosome is interesting but again I think we should consider it pragmatic rather than semantic, and therefore the notion that all these examples are examples of of code is a bit stretched.

the idea of multiple codes is interesting though and I am open to it, because it does suggest that the notion of information is embedded at all levels of organisation.

on similar lines, the role of polymerisation in this domain is I think very significant.

also the role of molecular machines is also profound, but leads us into the notion of design which is I think a dead end. the whole phenomenon must be naturalised.

but anyway, still totally fascinated by this whole area.