I am always puzzled when biologists make analogies between living systems (or sub-systems) and human-designed devices (even complex devices). Human designed devices have an essential property that biological systems do not -- they were designed. While radios may seem complex, they are built from a relatively small number of component types with very well understood behaviors and typically limited numbers of interactions. Biological systems have no such constraints -- they were not designed, there can be many different ways to do the same thing (in the same cell), there are at least thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of different components, many of which have lots and lots of interactions. Considering how messy the systems are, it is quite remarkable that genetics and biochemistry discovered the basis of heredity (or at least some of it), the genetic code, hundreds of signaling pathways, etc etc. But there is no missing language, because there was no design that used that language.
I saw a wonderful recording of a talk the authors gave a few years ago (which I regrettably can't find now), and it was amongst the most eye-opening talks I've ever seen.
the two schematical views reminded me of a) the dualisms in Pirsig, and b) also of another similar one: two views of what-a-cat-consists-of - one according to the granny owner, and another according to the surgeon - but cannot remember which book was that from. Anyone?
I am always puzzled when biologists make analogies between living systems (or sub-systems) and human-designed devices (even complex devices). Human designed devices have an essential property that biological systems do not -- they were designed. While radios may seem complex, they are built from a relatively small number of component types with very well understood behaviors and typically limited numbers of interactions. Biological systems have no such constraints -- they were not designed, there can be many different ways to do the same thing (in the same cell), there are at least thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of different components, many of which have lots and lots of interactions. Considering how messy the systems are, it is quite remarkable that genetics and biochemistry discovered the basis of heredity (or at least some of it), the genetic code, hundreds of signaling pathways, etc etc. But there is no missing language, because there was no design that used that language.
As was flagged in the other discussions, see Could a neuroscientist understand a microprocessor: https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo...
Or a recap from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/06/can-neur...
I saw a wonderful recording of a talk the authors gave a few years ago (which I regrettably can't find now), and it was amongst the most eye-opening talks I've ever seen.
the two schematical views reminded me of a) the dualisms in Pirsig, and b) also of another similar one: two views of what-a-cat-consists-of - one according to the granny owner, and another according to the surgeon - but cannot remember which book was that from. Anyone?
Related:
Can a biologist fix a radio? Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis (2002) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31697757 - June 2022 (21 comments)
Can a biologist fix a radio?–Or, what I learned while studying apoptosis (2002) [pdf] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30120457 - Jan 2022 (18 comments)
If is unemployed, you can bet that can and will do it.