Linguistics, Semiotics, and Philosophy - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 165

Table 6.4 An estimation of the average information content, I, or the complexity, H, of a
linguistic text or a metabolic pathway based on the cellese-humanese isomorphism thesis and
the simplified version of Shannon's formula, Eq. ( 4.3 ) . The cellese is postulated to consist of two
sub-languages - DNese and proteinese

Complexity a
of a text (H or
I, in bits)

Letters in
alphabet (a)

Letters in a
word (b)

Words in a
sentence (c)

Sentences
in a text (d) Language

~4.7 10 3 English 26 ~10 ~10 ~10

10 4 DNese ~60 (nucleotide

triplets)

~100 (genes) ~10 (genes

co-expressed)

~10 (genes
working as
a pathway)

~5.9

10 4

Proteinese 20 (amino

acids)

~100
(polypeptide)

~10 (complexes/
metabolons)

~10 (metabolic
pathways)

~4.3

a The complexity of a linguistic system (viewed from the perspective of the message source)
is measured in terms of Shannon's entropy, H, that is, Eq. ( 4.3 ) , which is equivalent to information,
I, when viewed from the receiver's point of view (Seife 2006)

one language is replaced by the other. In other words, cell and human languages
may be said to belong to a linguistic symmetry group with five symmetry operators,
that is, the SG(5) group.
The set of the five rules common to cell and human languages may be divided into
two complementary subsets - (1) physical laws (to be denoted as the P set) and (2)
linguistic or semiotic principles (to be denoted as the L set) (See Sect. 6.2 ). It is clear
that PSO and MERIT belong to the P set, and that the members of the L set include
the principles of triple articulation as indicated in Table 6.3 , the principles of the
arbitrariness of signs and rule-governed creativity that are discussed next. These
results agree with the matter-symbol complementarity thesis of Pattee (1969, 2008)
and the basic tenets of the semantic biology advocated by Barbieri (2003, 2008a, b).

6.1.3 The Complexities of the Cellese and the Humanese

One of the most useful results that can be derived from the cellese-humanese
isomorphism thesis is our ability to estimate the complexity (or the information
content per symbol) of the cellese based on our experience with the humanese (see
Table 6.4 ). The maximum complexity (viewed from the perspective of the message
source) or the maximum information content (viewed from the receiver's perspec-
tive) (Seife 2006) of an English text can be estimated using the simplified version of
Shannon's formula (see Eq. 43 ) , that is,

I ¼ cbd log 2 a (6.13)

where a is the number of letter in an alphabet, b is the number of letters in a word,
c is the number of words in a sentence, and d is the number of sentences in a text.