Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
outline of conventional genetic determinism because it adds a stage
of self-organisation to self-assembly based on stereospecificity, then
swings towards a particular phenotype. However, it is not funda-
mentally different from it. It is still a sketch of construction of the
organism which starts from the genes and works upwards to the phe-
notype. Genetic information determines the folding of the proteins
which spontaneously self-assemble owing to their three-dimensional
structure. Their theory again falls within the context of the princi-
ple of order from order, and cannot resolve the problem of the
non-specificity of molecules.
5.4 Self-organisation does not exist
Very many biologists reduce self-organisation to a theory which
seems to reject genetic determinism while acknowledging that
biological organisation emerges spontaneously from local interac-
tions between molecules (Camazine
et al
., 2003). This widespread
simplification leads to the worst confusions. It neglects what the
concept of emergence really means. In truth, molecular biologists
have never denied that an organism forms from interactions
between molecules! They have formulated the concept of self-
assembly to describe this. To them it is obvious (Britten, 1998), and
Jacques Monod spoke in this respect of spontaneous morphogenesis
(CN pp. 82-88). The ideas of emergence and self-organisation go a
great deal further. They imply that there is creative activity in mat-
ter which makes emergence possible, from their single elements, of
totalities with irreducible properties. Such a phenomenon would
involve inexplicable creation and go beyond the rationality of sci-
ence. A conception of this nature cannot resolve the problem posed
by the non-specificity of molecules. Being content to assert that
order emerges spontaneously from interactions between molecules
without suggesting a mechanism for this falls into the realm of
magic. The adherents of self-organisation have really tried to for-
mulate more elaborate models to explain emergence, but all these
models are based on stereospecific molecular interactions.
