The Weaving and Unravelling Life

Seung-Chong LEE

doi:10.21049/ccs.2021.62..53

We examine the natural history of life which Dawkins has constructed based on the concept of the gene. We argue that Dawkins has committed various fallacies and errors in the making of this history. These errors occurred when he regarded the gene as the bearer of the identity which replicates itself, and when he grafted it to the idea of evolution, which documents the history of difference. Like all other languages, the language of life consists of a finite alphabet. As we obtain an infinite number of written texts out of a finite alphabet, the various structures and functions of the phenomena of life can be recorded by this alphabet of life. The monopoly of the gene over life has been disseminated and stratified through the whole text of the phenomena of life. The clear and distinct encounter of the notion of the gene with what it refers to is deferred again. These are the dual functions of difference and deferral which différance produces in the text of life. Rather than bestowing the monopoly of life to the gene, it would be more reasonable to acknowledge the division of labor among DNA, RNA, proteins, cells, organs, and other levels of organisms, and therefor distribute life more equally among these various levels. Out of this approach, we obtain a new picture that life is not a lineal and serial processor with a single-track origin that only stems from genes, but is rather a non-lineal parallel-distributed processor. The phenomena of life can be interpreted as the work of this processing. In terms of complicated networks, the processors of life are interconnected, communicated, scattered, merged, and evolved in conjunction with and in opposition to one another. Both the genes and we, ourselves, stem from this processing that comes about due to the weaving and unravelling of these texts and networks of life.

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* 2021년 이후 발행 논문의 참고문헌은 현재 구축 중입니다.

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