Reflections on the Nature of Molecular Mechanisms

Introduction Imagine yourself in a biological laboratory. In front of you is a test tube with a set of instructions on how to determine its contents. You perform the instructions and everything seems to accord with what was predicted by them. What just happened? Do you understand what happened? Surely not. What would it take for you to understand what just happened? A common response … Continue reading Reflections on the Nature of Molecular Mechanisms

Listening to myself singing: The structural constitution of musical absorption

“Before this position [in the gallery] there was without doubt nothing. And certainly nothing will remove it. This position is not, as Husserl would have it, a captured-understanding between intuitions or presentations. No perception of a bright day of presence outside the gallery is given to us, and certainly not promised. The gallery is a labyrinth which itself contains its own exits: we have never fallen into it as into some special casus of experience, the one that Husserl then thinks he is describing. It then remains for us to speak, for the voice to echo down the corridors, to replace the glamour of presence. The phoneme, the acumen, is the phenomenon of the labyrinth. It is the casus phone. It rises to the sun of presence, but it is Icarus’ way.” – Jacques Derrida, Glas, p. 85 Continue reading Listening to myself singing: The structural constitution of musical absorption

Kako brati dedni zapis?

S silovitim napredkom biokemijskih tehnologij je bil v 20. stoletju duh vitalizma (do)končno izgnan iz bioloških znanosti. Preobrat je z encimatsko teorijo življenja neoporečno prikazal uniformnost živih in neživih kemičnih reakcij ter z informacijsko teorijo živega dedne in razvojne dinamike izenačil z molekularnim prepisom kodonskih zaporedij iz DNK v beljakovino. Skupaj z neodarwinistično sintezo je v teoriji bioloških znanosti za nekaj časa zavladal absolutni genetski redukcionizem. Ta se je z organicistično interpretacijo evolucijskih in ekoloških dinamik razvojnega sistema razrahljal šele na prehodu v 21. stoletje; kot zdaj vemo, predmeti naravnega izbora niso le specifična nukleotidna zaporedja (in njihove mutacije), temveč evolucijsko izmojstreni regulativni procesi, ki ta zaporedja izražajo. Nedavnemu znanstvenemu razvoju primerno bi veljalo premisliti pojem biološke informacije, saj služi kot obodna os sodobne biologije kot celostne stroke Continue reading Kako brati dedni zapis?