CEFISES Seminar: Ivan Kuzin, “The Concept of Information and New Phenomena in Molecular Biology”

Series: MolDevBio

Speaker: Ivan Kuzin (University of Linz)

Title: “The Concept of Information and New Phenomena in Molecular Biology”

Abstract

The concept of information is embedded in the discourse of molecular biology, and is typically interpreted semantically (i.e., as the transmission of an instruction or description). However, this interpretation is difficult to naturalize, which has led to controversy in the philosophy of biology. New phenomena in molecular biology, such as intrinsically disordered protein regions and biomolecular condensates, raise questions about the properties of semantic information, including non-ubiquity, functionality, and the arbitrariness of correspondence. Understanding these phenomena in the informational context may require turning to science (soft matter physics and complex systems theory), philosophy (causal emergency and causal specificity), and even the history of science (weak specificity).