Is there really information being conveyed within a cell?

[Giltil (Gilbert Thill)]

@sfmatheson

I think that might be what @Giltil means. He’s right that a symbol need not have any connection to its meaning. Sometimes it is mission critical to keep the symbol utterly unrelated to the meaning, and you agree with that. This means that there is no inherent necessity in that relationship. If Gil (who does, in fact, make stuff up on the fly) thinks that lack of a connection is somehow part of symbolic syntax, then of course he’s just feeding us more but in this case (yeah, I’m a generous guy) I don’t think that’s what he meant. YMMV.

I would be very interested to know whether you think that Rum is right when he asserts that tree rings are symbols (see 394)?

[AllenWitmerMiller (Semi-Expired Professor & Minister.)]

Yep. Senior moment. It was an insect. Not sure why I wrote fish.

[sfmatheson]

@Giltil

I would be very interested to know whether you think that Rum is right when he asserts that tree rings are symbols (see 394)?

Here’s what he wrote:

@Rumraket

Tree rings are a code, in that it consists of a system of signals that communicates information, and this information can be translated. And it forms completely naturally through tree growth.

That is clearly true. The key is the phrase that begins “in that.” But you asked about whether tree rings are “symbols.” I would say no, just because I understand symbols to be things used by minds. But what @Rumraket means (if I understand him correctly) is that if codons are symbols, then so are tree rings, and I agree with that.

[Puck_Mendelssohn]

@sfmatheson

But what @Rumraket means (if I understand him correctly) is that if codons are symbols, then so are tree rings, and I agree with that.

Quite right. And a further illustration that it doesn’t bloody matter what we CALL things. Construe the word “symbol” narrowly, and the genetic code is what it is. Construe the word broadly, and the genetic code is still what it is. The word-juggling game of trying to shoehorn real things into verbal expressions, and then reason about the verbal expressions rather than about the real things, is futility itself.