Footnotes
- (1)
- Henry Etzkowitz, at a talk at the University of
Rhode Island. See [Etzkowitz et al., 2000] for a further discussion of
the metaphor that fails to take into account the idea that the
metaphor itself may have misled policy-makers seeking to ameliorate
the situation.
- (2)
- [Schön, 1977] points out a similar situation,
where different choices of metaphors used to describe the condition
of an urban neighborhood lead ineluctably to wildly different
redevelopment policy prescriptions.
- (3)
- See, for example, [Keller, 2000],
[Lewontin, 2000], and [Kay, 2000].
- (4)
- The references date from the misty dawn of
molecular genetics ([Apter & Wolpert, 1965], [Chargaff, 1968],
[Waddington, 1968]) and the more recent past ([Sarkar, 1996],
[Gilbert & Faber, 1996], [Shapiro, 1999], [Atlan & Koppel, 1990]).
- (5)
- The
qualifier is generous. "Almost always" might be more accurate, at
least in the popular accounts.
- (6)
- In algorithmic information theory,
the information content of a message is a measure of the complexity
of the message, combined with the complexity of the Turing machine
program that emulates the reader of that message ([Chaitin, 1995/1996]).
If the reader can't be so modeled, this is a problem.
- (7)
- Indeed, it's hard to imagine
how life could have begun if DNA, with all the enzymes it needs to
operate, had to start it all. Francis Crick tried to imagine it,
and he couldn't. So he postulated we were planted here by aliens
([Crick, 1981]).
- (8)
- [Keller, 2000], p. 80. She also
credits the evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr with coming up with
the idea around the same time, presenting it in a contemporaneous,
but unpublished, talk.
- (9)
- In
interviews during the 1970's, Crick denied the importance of his
choice of words. In [Judson, 1979], he attached no
significance to the word "code." Crick's (and others')
carelessness with language makes the project of [Kay, 2000] a
little exasperating. The history she tells is fascinating, but her
enthusiastic deconstruction of the words and writing of molecular
biologists -- not a group renowned for their careful use of
language -- is more troublesome.
- (10)
- One implication of this is
that some degree of misunderstanding may actually help propel
science forward. Some of these metaphors are helpful, after all.
