Is it? It’s probably more like binary code for computers that our machines run on but that we as individuals cannot comprehend. But you cannot call it a language as individual organisms are not able to use it as such.
Comment on The circle of life
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks agoDNA is language, my dude. it’s like programming code.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
How do you figure that DNA/RNA isn’t language? It’s a system of abstract symbols that carry information, it uses highly complex syntaxes, there are even different dialects, large parts of it is higher level than Assembly Languages, and it can carry context between organisms.
Limiting your definition to organisms is shortsighted. Fully sapient organelles, computers, crystals, superorganisms, or whatever else could could create vast galaxy spanning civilizations with dizzyingly deep culture and art, and you’d argue that they don’t use language because they’re not specifically a certain kind of individual?
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
Hm, interesting point regarding not limiting the definition of language to individuals only. Maybe I should have said entities? And my point is still valid, just because everyone of us carries DNA with us, we still cannot “talk” DNA. I meant this mismatch in various levels of the complex multicellular entities we are.
Does DNA/RNA really pose an example of complex communication? It certainly is some highly specialized form of storing and transferring information. Calling it dialects sounds more like anthropomorphizing it to make it sound more like a language. Not sure if it is my human bias accustomed to human-style languages, but it somehow doesn’t feel like a language to me when the information is just past further down the line and there is no real back-and-forth?
And don’t get me wrong, I’m not set on rejecting DNA as a language. I just try to explore the opposite position to yours ;)
Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca 5 weeks ago
Maybe I should have said entities?
How would you define entity them? Why not have the state of fitness communicating with possible future states, or evolutionary processes communicating with themselves, like a massive comment thread unbroken over 3+ billion years?
Calling it dialects sounds more like anthropomorphizing it to make it sound more like a language
Anthropomorphization? Kinda, sure. But different brances of life do use DNA/RNA differently, like us with separate chromosomes and one-way genes, prokaryotes with circular chromosomes that can be read in both directions, and viruses with free genes to hijack other DNA/RNA systems. We don’t understand all the ins and outs of genes yet, and I’m certainly not an expert in the topic, so maybe it would be more accurate to call these variations “language groups” and instead use the compatability of the proteome and metabolome to define languages, with genes simply being the words and some syntax.
it somehow doesn’t feel like a language to me when the information is just past further down the line and there is no real back-and-forth?
different categories of language
This I can almost agree on. A technical manual or a journal is definitely a form of language, but you can’t have a conversation with it. A category of languages that can be used for conversations would exclude most genetic languages, as well as all programming languages. Both could still be used to define a communication protocol though, which might still be considered a conversational language. For example neurotransmitters or HDMI. The depth of this communication could be quite shallow though, even if they carry greater meaning in a different format.
Going further than this we could define a catergory that has enough communication depth and mutability to directly transmit arbitrary ideas, which would pretty much cover only primate, corvid, and cetacean language. At this point we’ve moved beyond the details of grammar and vocabulary and into the methods and capabilities which generate and use grammar and vocabulary. Certainly an interesting category to define and explore the limits of, but definitely not what most people think of when you say “language”. Perhaps “laguability” would be a better term for this?
In my opinion, there’s definitely a huge amount of difference between our conversation and what bacteria do with and between themselves, but language probably isn’t the right word to differentiate them. It’s the difference between a die cast toy car, a pickup truck, an ICBM, and a novel; vastly different yet all called vehicles.
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
I think the advantage of thinking of DNA as some kind of program code is that we can draw inspiration about what can/can’t be done from IT. And the other way around, nature’s DNA code might give inspiration to computer language development.
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Yeah well I guess it depends on whether you call bytes on a computer a language.
What if those bytes represent characters that compose language that carries meaning? Because precisely that happens in DNA. An individual fraction of DNA might not carry much meaning, but in its sequence (ATGCCAT…) it encodes blueprints, and therefore meaning.
flora_explora@beehaw.org 5 weeks ago
I think it rather depends on how you define language. For example, Wikipedia says the following:
Depending on philosophical perspectives regarding the definition of language and meaning, when used as a general concept, “language” may refer to the cognitive ability to learn and use systems of complex communication, or to describe the set of rules that makes up these systems, or the set of utterances that can be produced from those rules.
What kind system of complex communication do we have in DNA/RNA? It sure is a mode of storing and transferring information. But does this make it a language? And if yes, who is speaking the language of DNA/RNA? Can cells talk then? Because I would argue that this (hypothetical) language of DNA is then always “spoken” by individual cells and isn’t transferrable to a multicellular entity? (I mean, sure all your cells are “speaking” DNA in this way, but you yourself aren’t.) But back to the question of the “complex systems of communication”. I would argue that while DNA is a mode of transferring information, it isn’t a language in itself. Because you don’t have a back-and-forth. It is a pretty simple progression of reusing information again and again. But it isn’t a mode of communication and especially not complex communication.
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
DNA is a long molecule that is made of many individual smaller molecules (called nucleotids) that come in four variants (called A, T, G, C). So a DNA molecule is a sequence that can be represented as ATGCTGCCTA…
This is a sequence of characters in this representation, but it’s also a sequence of something resembling characters in reality. The cell has a component called “ribosome” that can take this sequence of characters as input and uses it kinda like a blueprint, and produces a protein (enzyme) depending on the blueprint. That enzyme can have many varying functions. So yes, this is a complex system.
The flow of information goes mostly in one direction: that is, from the cell nucleus’s DNA to mRNA (intermediary step) and then to the ribosomes, where proteins are produced. Still, many parts of this process resemble script and communication (the transport of information), which I call “language”.
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
interesting thought …I’m curious - who would be talking to who, in this framing of the idea ?
gandalf_der_12te@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
well it’s more like a script, a book or library basically. It’s not so much the transport of information, but the storage of information.
beefbot@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 weeks ago
Ah, ok. Yeah I think that’s different. Like the periodic table would also be that structure, but not in the concept of language