A musical metaphor

• Human Genome Project: Implications by Brian Robinson, 10/2/98
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    • A Model of Gene and Non-Gene by David Berreby and John Fentress, 10/10/98
      
      

Images, metaphors, analogies ...

Well let's see how this goes, then ... Suppose we think of the physical gene substance as a length of piano string corresponding to the note B above middle C. For the sake of argument let's take it that the pitch is always fixed at the modern concert pitch, so that the string always causes the surrounding air to vibrate at the same frequency - if you analyse what the auditory brain hears, it's always B. (The same nucleotides always make the same proteins.)

But the EFFECT is far from always the same. Harmony provides the context, or a particular context. That same B, if it occurs in, say, an E major chord, has a very different significance from what it has if placed in a C major chord - it has a different purpose and function, a different musical logic, it leads in a different direction. Yet measure it in isolation, it always has the same number of beats per second. (Put the proteins in a different medium, subject them to a different climate, add or subtract different compounds.) And that's without dopplerizing the pianist!

Or here's another image for context ... A wind could be any old wind but if you're a mercantile sailor it can become a trade wind.

The 'meaning' of the note, of the wind, of the gene, is contextually determined as much as it is physically so.

I would expect a human predilection for seeking shelter to have a strong genetic component, but I would not expect the genes in themselves to influence whether any particular human sought to live in a cave as distinct from a caravan, or in a third-floor apartment rather than a bungalow. I think Bach must have been a musical genius because of his genes, but his genes didn't determine him to write fugues: if he'd lived a couple of hundred years later, he'd have written symphonies. And so on ...

• Notes and Other Sounds by John Fentress, 10/17/98