quotes and the reporter
This is one of may favorite quotes, I think:
Ohno and Ohno (1986) conceptualized the transdisciplinary meanings of genomic repetition as a source of inspiration and novelty.
“Whereas ordinary mortals are content to mimic others, creative geniuses are condemned to plagiarize themselves” is my shorter, albeit inarticulate, version of what Van Veen said in Ada by Vladimir Nobokov. Indeed, it seems that vaunted geniuses seldom invented more than one modus operandi during their lifetimes, and even civilization has largely been dependent upon plagiarizing a small number of creative works; e.g., the multitudes of Gothic churches can be viewed as pan European plagiarism of the abbey church of St. Denis and/or the cathedral at Sens. This is not surprising for new genes sensu stricto has seldom been invented. Evolution rather relies on plagiarizing an old and tested theme; the mechanism of evolution by gene duplication. … this principle of repetitious recurrence pervades both the construction of coding sequences in the genome, which can be regarded as being representative of nature, and musical composition which can be regarded as the most abstract and therefore the most intellectual expression of nature. (Ohno and Ohno 1986)”
In joining the concepts of linearity and plagiarism, Ohno and Ohno ignite a relationship between two of the most ancient and derived expressions of nature and humanity, that of the genetic code and music composition.
1. it deals with repetition
2. if refers to nabakov and “ada”
3. evolution and church architecture are in the same paragraph
4. aesthetics and genomic biology share equal space
I asked a reporter today about his approach to metapor. I prefaced the question with a statement about how evolutionary biology is full of metaphors- going on to highlight the apparent conflict between scientific proclamations that the genome is the “grail” or book of life or language of god and the scientific community’s response to intelligent design. He said that he paid attention to metaphors- which I suppose is all one can do. Still, using metaphorical language is a political act, and it seems to be irresponsible if we aren’t genuine with the beliefs contained in our choices of metaphors. Anyway, I hope at least everyone (many scientists) in the room saw the connection between their discourse and society.
