On Sun, Jan 02, 2005 at 11:22:11PM +0530, Ramanraj K wrote:
Sharing code is a fundamental fact of life:
<quote> Bacteria have developed a second avenue of evolutionary creativity that is vastly more effective than random mutation. They freely pass hereditary traits from one to another in a global exchange network of incredible power and efficiency. The discovery of this global trading of genes, technically known as DNA recombination, must rank as one of the most astonishing discoveries of modern biology. Margulis describes it vividly: `Horizontal genetic transfer among bacteria is as if you jumped into a pool with brown eyes and came out with blue eyes.'
Code is an integral part of reality, or so I argued in my work in philosophy. On such recent work that tries to show the ontological basis of this claim is in this paper: http://www.hbcse.tifr.res.in/newweb/web/Data/Objects/cogsci1
Putting it very simply: there are three kinds of stuff in this world, matter, energy and code. The former two are coserved while the latter is not. The implication of this is that the former two are not copyable while code is. Our free software philosophy should be based on this foundation.
Apart from Margulis, you may find reading `Semantic Biology' by Marcello Barbieri. Apart from DNA and RNA there are various kinds of codes that can be found operational in the evolution and also during the embyogenesis (ontogeny) of a living being.
Nagarjuna