Information,programme,signal: dead metaphors that negate the agency of organisms

Abstract

The metaphorical adoption of the concepts of information, programme and signal introduced into biology the logic and implicit causal structure of the mathematical theories of information; this is inimical to biology. In turn, those metaphors have hindered the development of a theory of organisms by transferring the agency of organisms to natural selection and to DNA. Moreover, those metaphors introduced into biology the dualism software–hardware and a Laplacian causal structure. Instead, we propose to uphold the agency of the living by adopting three foundational principles for a theory of organisms: namely, (1) the principle of biological inertia (i.e. the default state of cells is proliferation and motility), (2) the principle of variation, and (3) the principle of organization.