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turn serving as the sign for proteins during the translation step catalyzed by
ribosomes
, (2) that the relation between DNA and RNA during transcription is
primarily iconic (due to Watson-Crick base paring) and indexical (requiring the
mechanical energy stored in DNA as
conformons
(Ji 2000) to power orderly
molecular motions), and (3) the relation between mRNA and protein synthesized
during translation is
iconic
(owing to the complementary shapes of codons and
anticodons),
indexical
(requiring
conformons
in the ribosome to drive the orderly
movement, or
translation
, of aminoacyl tRNA molecules along the mRNA track),
and
symbolic
(due to the
arbitrariness of the relation
between the codons of mRNA
and the corresponding amino acids carried by tRNA, i.e., the arbitrariness of the
genetic code) (Barbieri 2003, 2008c).
If these conjectures prove to be correct in principle, it would be logical to
conclude that biological information processing in the cell cannot be completely
characterized in terms of the
laws
of physics and chemistry alone but requires, in
addition, the
rules
(e.g., genetic codes) engendered by biological evolution, thus
supporting the
von Neumann-Pattee principle of matter-sign complementarity
as
applied to biological systems (Pattee 2001, 2008; Ji 1999a, b). In other words,
biology is best viewed not as an autonomous science separate from physics and
chemistry as some evolutionary biologists assert but a
triadic
science based on
physics, chemistry,
and
semiotics
on equal footings.
6.2.6 Human and Cell Languages as Manifestations
of Cosmolanguage
The proposition that the cell possesses its own language, “the cell language,” seems
almost tautological in view of the fact that cells communicate, since
no communi-
cation would be possible without a language.
The natural question that then arises
concerns the relation between human language and cell languages. There may be
three possibilities:
1. Human language has evolved from cell language.
2. Both cell and human languages are different manifestations of a third language
that exists independent of, and serves as the source of, them.
3. Possibilities (1) and (2) are not mutually exclusive but represent the
diachronic
and the
synchronic
manifestations, respectively, of the fundamental
characteristics of the Universe we inhabit, namely, that
the final cause of our
Universe is to know itself through Homo sapiens.
(Such a Universe was named
the Self-Knowing Universe
or
Universum sapiens
in Ji [1991].)
The author is inclined to accept the third possibility. If this view is true, we are
living in the
Self-Knowing Universe
where both cell and human languages exist as
diachronic manifestations of a third language which may be referred to as the
Cosmological language (or
Cosmolanguage
, for short). By invoking the existence
