Abstract

The notion of information is ubiquitous in the biological sciences. But what do biologists mean by the term ‘information’? Is there something substantive when biologists refer to informational based concepts or alternatively, is the concept of information simply a useful fiction without any substantive content? In this thesis, I examine the notion of information as it pertains to both molecular and developmental biology which are fields of biology that are sometimes included as forming part of the research program of experimental biology. One of the interesting aspects of the biological sciences is that many biological explanations are functional explanations. Philosophers of biology have argued about the legitimacy of functional explanations in biology and indeed whether there is an account of functions that is effectively able to account for the type of functional ascriptions in biology. In chapter two, I introduce the notion of genetic coding and I argue that there is a legitimate sense in which one can refer to a genetic code – furthermore, there are some circumstances in which genes literally code for the primary sequences of polypeptides. In chapter three, I propose a pluralistic account of functions and I maintain that experimental biologists do not exclusively appeal to one account of functions when ascribing functions to various biological structures and traits. Furthermore, I argue that there are circumstances in which biologists legitimately ascribe teleofunctions to various biological structures in experimental biology. In the thesis, I defend the view that there is a plurality of functions and also a plurality of informational based concepts. I argue that there are many circumstances in which a particular biological structure can be considered to instantiate multiple functions. Thus, I contend that the view that a particular biological structure can be uniquely characterised in terms of its function is fundamentally problematic. This position is not, however, consistent with the view that there is a plurality of informational teleofunctions which is a position which I do not defend in this thesis. Although some philosophers of biology have regarded the functions debate as a debate concerning competing and incompatible accounts of functions, I instead argue that the two major rival accounts of functions are compatible. I present and defend a version of a teleosemantic account of genetic information in chapter four. I also claim that some scientific concepts are explanatorily useful without being literally true. In this thesis, I apply Arnon Levy’s fictionalist account of biological information to the case of genetic information in order to argue that the notion of genetic information is an explanatorily important but ultimately fictional scientific concept. One of the interesting implications of the fictionalist account is that some explanatorily useful concepts should not necessarily be eliminated from the biological sciences simply on the basis that they are not literally true. I claim that there are only a relatively few number of circumstances in which biologists can legitimately ascribe information to biological structures such as genes. Consequently, one of the fundamental aims of this thesis is to establish the conditions under which biologists can legitimately ascribe information to biological structures such as genes. In chapters three and four, I show that there are only likely to be a relatively few number of circumstances in which biologists can legitimately ascribe information to genes and other genetic elements. Hence, claims to the effect that a gene contains information should be treated with caution. In chapter five, I turn my attention to developmental biology and in particular, I examine Lewis Wolpert’s so called French flag model of development where I propose that positional information has an indispensable explanatory role in the case of the French flag model. As will be seen in chapter five, the French flag model forms a central explanatory thesis in contemporary developmental biology. I defend an account of information that has the potential to distinguish cases where biologists are legitimately entitled to ascribe information from cases where biologists are not entitled to ascribe information to biological structures such as genes. I defend a pluralistic account of functions that is applicable to experimental biology and a fictionalist account of teleosemantics and it is argued that there are many contexts in which references to informational based concepts operate as a useful, albeit ultimately fictional, explanatory fiction.