The new book Revenge of Plato: the new science of intangible genomeBy David Klinghoffer, this is an incredible idea. He previews a project on which Dr. Richard Sternberg has been working for two decades.
I met Rick Sternberg for the first time around 2006 when he started to come to our laboratory meetings. He would bring back incredible things by genomic researchers. He said once looking in the DNA file was like examining an abyss of information that continued to go further and become more complex, the more you went down. This image remained with me.
It was almost 20 years ago. Some things about it have not changed. Her shoes are always leather – no sneakers. He is generally reserved, even silent, until you say something to which he opposes, how his voice can mount to put the accent. He is always a gentleman – and one of the most learned people I have ever known. He also thinks, but now his thought goes beyond the genome.
Rick is both shiny and deep. The two traits do not necessarily always go together. It is also widely read, after having studied the classics of biology that most people born after 1953 (the year when the DNA structure was discovered) does not bother to read. For them, old literature does not matter. This is a shame, because you will find puzzles that have had scientists perplexed for generations, and that DNA cannot respond.
Grandmother pearls
For almost 50 years, scientists have been in love with the gene idea, the allegedly unitary element of the inheritance, arranged as pearls on a chain along the DNA sequence. Then came the discovery of moving genes, transposable elements, which could change position in the genome. Imagine if some of the grandmother’s pearls had started to jump on his necklace – it is how difficult it was for almost all geneticists of the time to imagine.
While the genomes began to be sequenced in the mid -1990s, it has become clear that the genome of each organization had too few genes to explain the development of the organization. The rest of the genome did not code for proteins, and a large part of the non -coding genome was transposable elements. Although the non -coding genome was disparaged as undesirable, Rick admitted that he was not at all unwanted – the transposable elements had a regulation function and were hot spots for recombination.
He always brought surprising data to our laboratory meeting. He told us that the genes could overlap or integrated into other genes, in different executives. Which has expanded the potential for the transport of information. It also widened my mind. He told us about the extraordinary degree of alternative splicing that the RNA of a gene could suffer, leading to the possibility of thousands of variant proteins. It was fascinating and heavy at the same time. How could it be regulated?
The biggest surprise
But the greatest surprise was his argument that there is far too much information necessary to take an organism from the egg to the adult as what could be explained by the capacities coding for the information of the material genome. I recognized that the idea of an intangible genome, if it was confirmed, would change All We understood biology.
The last century was dominated by a vision of the strict materialist world, that life is “composed by” and “composed of” nothing but matter and energy. This vision is now dogma in the biological citadel, even if it is a philosophical, not scientific vision.
Rick’s argument for an intangible genome is based on mathematics of set theory. He underlines that this is not a frightening anti-science story. It is based on a rigorous scientific and mathematical argument. The brilliant mathematician Georg Cantor established (created / discovered) the theory of sets, in which he proposed that certain infinite sets were larger than others. The theory of cantor sets has since proven to have been a fairly powerful analysis tool.
Rick used sets theory to establish that an animal form in development requires an “unpleasant orchestration always expansive” to collect cells at the right time, with the right constraints and the right modes of being for all parties to operate in cooperation. The set of instructions required for this transfinite orchestration cannot be circumscribed by (cannot be described by) a finished set of genetic instructions.
An intriguing analogy
And Sternberg says that the intangible genome, the set of instructions for each cell of each living being, is transfined (one of the infinities of Cantor), but the cells themselves are finished. David Klinghoffer acquires an intriguing analogy of the Jewish Kabalistic Tradition: in the creative act of God, the infinity folds up, or contracts himself to adapt to finished creation. This contraction, or folding the infinity in the finish, is called Tsimtsum.
The idea of an infinite god in a way finished also appears in Christian belief. I think of the incarnation of Christ, when the infinite God took a finished human form. Rick’s work can indicate a deeper, wider and wider perspective than only mystics among us – or perhaps the Greek Plato philosopher, says Rick – planned.
Image source: Discovery Institute Press.I don’t completely understand. I grop in my own way by trying to describe something quite beyond me. The implications for our understanding of the world are however powerful enough. On the one hand, it has the potential to demonstrate in a conclusive way the need for a designer. He would put a stake through materialist explanations to life and reveal the infinite value of creation, both material and intangible.
Older theoretical biologists like Robert Rosen (author of Life itself) Recognized that the information to produce and maintain life was too important to adapt to individual organizations. Rosen has shown how much the way to follow, but it lacked detailed knowledge of total complexity and the mystery of life. Rick read Rosen. So now, Rick unites his broad knowledge of the structure and the function of the genome, the theory of evolution and animal development with his knowledge of deep philosophical work underlying the biology and mathematics of the theory of sets. It is a work of love always in progress.
Publisher’s note: For more information on Plato’s revenge with praise and endorsements, please visit Discovery Institute Press.