376 Michael Wheeler
is necessary to specify a living being, we divest these components...
of their interrelation with the rest of the network. It is the network
of interactions in its entirety that constitutes and specifies the char-
acteristics of a particular cell, and not one of its components. That
modifications in the components called genes dramatically affect the
structure is very certain. The error lies in confusing essential participa-
tion with unique responsibility. By the same token one could say that
the political constitution of a country determines its history. This is
obviously absurd. The political constitution is an essential component
in any history but it does not contain the “information” that specifies
that history. [Maturana and Varela, 1987, 69]
Maturana and Varela’s claim is that the fan of genetic information mistakenly
confuses “essential participation with unique responsibility”. This suggests that
for genes to count as carrying the information that specifies phenotypic traits, and
thus for genes to be in the right conceptual ballpark to code for such traits, genes
would need to bearsole responsibilityfor phenotypic form. But if, as the examples
discussed earlier suggest, biological development is a playground for explanatory
spread, then any such description of the genetic contribution here looks to be
unwarranted. In general, DNA willnotmeet the sole responsibility condition.
So it seems that if the representational theory of genes is tied to this condition,
then that theory is straightforwardly undermined by the presence of developmental
explanatory spread. And that, in essence, is Maturana and Varela’s point when
they say, with respect to the cell, that it is “the network of interactions in its
entirety that constitutes and specifies the characteristics of a particular cell, and
not one of its components”.
But now surely something has gone wrong. Given my opening remark that every
biologist understands (or ought to understand) development as involving a vast
range of geneticand non-geneticcausal factors, Maturana and Varela’s argument
seems to do no more than set up a straw man for summary execution. However,
things are not quite that simple. Indeed, despite the pretty much universal ac-
knowledgement that there are extra-genetic causal contributions to development,
the fact is that many theorists fall prey to the following, seductive thought: if one
could find out the complete sequence of an organism’s DNA, then, in principle, one
would be able to use that informationaloneto compute the adult organism, such
that one would be able to predict, in every relevant detail, that adult’s phenotypic
form. As DeLisi puts it:
The collection of chromosomes in the fertilized egg constitutes the com-
plete set of instructions for development, determining the timing and
details of the formation of the heart, the central nervous system, the
immune system, and every other organ and tissue required for life.
[DeLisi, 1988, 488]
At work here is a deceptively tempting view of outcome-directed representa-
tion that Clark and I have previously dubbedstrong instructionism([Wheeler and