02 April 2026

Douglas Hofstadter argued against the DNA-centric view in his famous book 'Godel, Escher, Bach'

GÖDEL, ESCHER, BACH (1988)

"As development of an organism takes place, can it be said that the information is being "pulled out" of its DNA? Is that where all of the information about the organism's structure reside;

DNA and the Necessity of Chemical Context

In one sense, the answer seems to be yes, thanks to experiments li Avery's [1]. But in another sense, the answer seems to be no, because so much of the pulling-out process depends on extraordinarily complicated cellular chemical processes, which are not coded for in the DNA itself. The DNA relies on the fact that they will happen, but does not seem to contain a code which brings them about. Thus we have two conflicting views on the nature of the information in a genotype. One view says that so much of the information is outside the DNA that it is not reasonable to look upon the DNA as anything more than a very intricate set of triggers, like a sequence of buttons to be pushed on a jukebox; another view says that the information is all there, but in a very implicit form.

Now it might seem that these are just two ways of saying the same thing, but that is not necessarily so. One view says that the DNA is quite meaningless out of context; the other says that even if it were taken out context, a molecule of DNA from a living being has such a compelling inner logic to its structure that its message could be deduced anyway. To put it as succinctly as possible, one view says that in order for DNA to have meaning, chemical context is necessary; the other view says that only intelligence is necessary to reveal the "intrinsic meaning" of a strand of DNA."

Quote from chapter 6 'The Location of Meaning'. 

 

My copy of Douglas Hofstadter's famous book 'Gödel, Escher, Bach' (Dutch translation, 1985) stood gathering dust on my bookshelf for some 30 years. A few days ago when I was searching for artwork of M. C. Escher in Hofstadter's book, I unexpectedly came across arguments against the 'DNA-centric view' of life. I have blogged about DNA-centrism many times over the past several months. It is extraordinary to find the same ideas you have been developing in a book that was written 47 years ago. As far as I can see, Hofstadter was not participating in an ongoing discussion among biologists about DNA-centrism. He wrote his ideas as part of an investigation of formal languages. DNA was an example of such a language. Probably the two mutually exclusive points of view –'DNA-centric' and 'cell-centric'– did not exist at the time. Likely, mainstream biology was DNA-centric. For example, Hofstadter writes: "Gunther Stent has characterized the nucleus as the 'throne room' of the cell, with DNA acting as the ruler." (page 509). Hofstadter writes this in passing and without further comment! Stunning remark! If this isn't DNA-centrism, then I don't know what is! Hofstadter accepts it as if it were merely a neutral description of what DNA is. Probably it reflects mainstream scientific thinking at the time.

Hofstadter is a computer scientist and investigated coded messages and the concept of information. It appears he had a detailed knowledge of what DNA is and how it functions. In chapter 16 Hofstadter gives detailed description of the structure of DNA, the Genetic code [2], transcription, translation, proteins, Transfer RNA and Ribosomes. Furthermore, he understood that knowing the Genetic Code, that is how a particular DNA sequence is translated in to a protein, is far from sufficient to understand how a genotype is translated in to a phenotype [1]. This truth still holds today! 

An important question for Hofstadter was: 

Where is the meaning of a coded message located? 

Applied to DNA, attempts to answer this question yield important insights. Interestingly, he proposed two possible answers: the intrinsic and extrinsic view of meaning. The intrinsic view means that DNA has 'a compelling inner logic' that enables an intelligent (extraterrestrial) investigator to decode the DNA message. This sounds rather vague. Hofstadter doesn't explain what 'inner logic' means [4], [5]. The extrinsic view is that the meaning of DNA is not stored in DNA itself, but that "extraordinarily complicated cellular chemical processes" are required.

Although he never rejects the intrinsic meaning hypothesis explicitly, I conclude from his statement "extraordinarily complicated cellular chemical processes, which are not coded for in the DNA itself", that he favours the extrinsic view. This is further confirmed by the heading "DNA and the Necessity of Chemical Context" and this (charming!) statement: 

"they [an extraterrestrial civilization] might to try to deduce from its chemical structure what kind of chemical environment it seemed to want, and then supply such an environment." (under the section heading How Universal Is DNA's Message?). (page 183).

Another wonderful statement:

"On the other hand, DNA is itself a passive molecule which undergoes manipulation at the hands of various kinds of enzymes; in this sense, a DNA molecule is exactly like a long piece of data, as well." (page 542) (my emphasis). I love this. This is exactly what I argued on several previous blogs. And: "But most of the 'living' in a cell goes on outside of the nucleus, namely in the cytoplasm..." (page 512). Well said! I fully agree. In other words: DNA is dead, the cell is alive! However, Hofstadter does not note there is a certain degree of contradiction between DNA 'sitting on a throne' and being dead.

Bootstrap problem

Continuing with the intrinsic and extrinsic point of view. There is a problem with the distinction. The tRNAs contain the translation key of DNA to protein. Since the information for producing tRNAs is stored in DNA (necessarily, because it must be inherited), one could say that the meaning of DNA is intrinsic to DNA. That's OK. However, in order for that information in DNA to be used, it must first be read by cellular machinery. Hofstadter is aware of the problem [3]: "... there is no way for the DNA to hoist itself by its own bootstraps. Some amount of knowledge of the Genetic Code must already be present in the cell beforehand." (page 519) (my italics). Excellent remark! Remarkable insight! However, it appears that the concepts intrinsic and extrinsic meaning are ambiguous. In one sense, DNA has an intrinsic meaning because DNA encodes for tRNAs, but on the other hand the meaning is extrinsic because machinery outside DNA is necessary to get the whole process started. In other words: a bootstrap problem [6]. The information is there, but one can not get it out!

Think about this: 47 years ago a smart computer scientist clearly understood that a DNA 'message' is meaningless without its cellular context! So, the cell-centric view is certainly not a modern invention. It was kept alive in the fringes of science. Hofstadter did not fully realize that his anti DNA-centric views contradicted the prevailing view of DNA as 'the Ruler on the throne'. Since Watson and Crick (1953) DNA-centrism has experienced stormy growth. Today, more and more scientists reject the DNA-centric view of life.



Notes

  1. My note: Avery (1944) was the first to demonstrate that DNA and not protein was the vehicle of heredity.  
  2. The Genetic Code table is on page 515. Furthermore: "The curious
    fact is that the Genetic Code is stored-where else?-in the DNA itself.    " (page 517).     
  3. quote: "(Warning: Understanding this "language" would not at all be the same as cracking the Genetic Code, something which took place in the early 1960s. ... The cracking of the Genetic Code was a vital step on the
    way to extracting the meaning of DNA strands, but it was only the first on a long path which is yet to be trodden.)    " page 168.
  4. An argument against the intrinsic meaning of DNA is: the genetic code is a rather arbitrary association of 61 base triplets with 20 Amino Acids and 3 base triplets with STOP signals. Hofstadter did not mention this in this book. But 3 years later, in his 1982 Scientific American "Metamagical Themas" column, titled "Is the genetic code an arbitrary one, or would another code work as well?" Hofstadter argued that the genetic code is not fundamentally dictated by chemical necessity, suggesting that many other codes could theoretically work. (answer by Google AI!). The conclusion must be: there is no compelling logic in DNA. 
  5. A further problem with 'intrinsic meaning': how to find the translation keys in a code script with the length of billions of symbols? The code for the tRNAs are scattered all around DNA and there are many duplicate keys. In other words: how to locate the meaning of DNA?! That's the fundamental question.

 

Sources

The paperback edition is still available on Amazon. The PDF of the book can be found on several websites, such as this one. I discovered the Dutch translation of the book at my bookshelves, which so it appears was a birthday present. 


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22 March 2026

Utrechts Landschap: Brandrode runderen beschermen, slachten en opeten + reclame voor vlees maken

Brandrode runderen op landgoed Sandwijck
Een verhaal over het behoeden voor het uitsterven van een oud runderras, én het slachten van diezelfde runderen. 

Infobord op landgoed Sandwijck (NB: vlinder!)

  
Het ras was bijna uitgestorven!

  

Vlees van eigen koeien!

Stier (L) en koe (R) van de Brandrode runderen
De lang gerekte bouw valt op. Dit zijn geen 'hobby-koetjes'
 

Het Utrechts Landschap beheert natuur in de provincie Utrecht. Op één van die terreinen worden 'Brandrode runderen' gehouden. Het is een oud runderras dat niet meer gebruikt wordt in de intensieve veehouderij. Er wordt mee gefokt en er worden jaarlijks kalveren geboren. Volgens het UL passen ze goed in het landschapsbeheer. Ze mogen hun hoorns behouden, en de kalveren mogen het eerste weideseizoen bij hun moeder blijven. Deze runderen worden ouder dan in de moderne veehouderij gebruikelijk is volgens het UL. Tenslotte lees ik: "de maatschap verkoopt vlees van eigen koeien". 

Maar kun je echt blijven beweren dat je de dieren respectvol behandelt, terwijl je ze ook slacht? Een oud runderras tegen uitsterven behoeden én ze tegelijk ook slachten? Eerst vertroetelen, dan de kogel. Some we love, some we hate, some we kill, some we eat. Opvallend genoeg, komt het woord 'slachten' niet voor op de informatieborden. Er worden géén dieren gedood, er wordt alleen maar vlees van eigen koeien verkocht! Dat noem ik verhullend taalgebruik [1]. Bij verhullend taalgebruik heb je iets te verbergen. In dit geval dat je ze slacht. Vlees is namelijk geen wol! Een andere verhullingstechniek is: grappen maken. Een vrijwilliger grapte bijvoorbeeld: één van de Brandrode runderen heeft zichzelf vrijwillig opgeofferd! Zo'n grap verhult de ongemakkelijke waarheid dat het uiteraard niet 'vrijwillig' is. Een respectloze houding. Volgens het UL worden ze ouder, maar wat gebeurt er als ze bejaard zijn? Bejaardentehuis? Begraven? In de natuur gelegd voor de wolven? Of ...? 

Wat het UL kennelijk niet weet is, dat die runderen in een groep, in familieverband leven. Het zijn sociale dieren. Alsof ze niet merken dat een groepsgenoot, dochter, zoon, vader of moeder plotseling is verdwenen. Alsof ze hun groepsgenoten niet missen. Alsof sociale dieren elkaar niet herkennen. Alsof het domme dieren zijn. Is het misschien te ongemakkelijk om over dit soort vragen na te denken als je heel graag hun vlees wilt eten? [4].

Als je runderen gaat houden, dan ben je een veehouder! Als je dieren fokt en slacht, ben je geen natuurbeschermer maar veehouder en slager! Dat past niet bij een natuurbeschermingsorganisatie.

Ik heb het Utrechts Landschap hierover gemaild en er op gewezen dat ze reclame maakten voor vlees (zie borden hierboven). En dat dit niet meer van deze tijd is vanwege de eiwittransitie (3). Er kwam wel een reactie, zelfs van de directeur, maar ze toonde geen enkel begrip voor mijn standpunt. Een organisatie die in deze tijd nog reclame maakt voor vlees, kan niet meer rekenen op onze steun.

kleine edit 26 maart. 

 

Wildernisvlees!


'Wildernisvlees' is vlees van dieren (runderen, paarden) die in het wild of semi-wild leven in natuurgebieden, zoals die beheerd door Utrechts Landschap en beheerd door FREE Nature, waarbij het vlees wordt verkocht als een duurzaam natuurproduct uit gebiedsbeheer, met afhaalpunten zoals op Landgoed Oostbroek in De Bilt (let op: dit stopt per 1 jan 2026.

Op 8 januari 2026 is Landgoed Oostbroek en de Blauwe Kamer van het Utrechts Landschap nog steeds afhaalpunten zijn van wildernis vlees: Afhaalpunten wildernis vlees.

 

Bestelformulier wildernisvlees jan 2006

Nevenactiviteit van de Slagerij het Utrechts Landschap: het vlees van die dieren die je beschermt verkopen: veel anonieme namen zoals 'gemengd pakket', 'stoofvleespakket', 'vlugklaarpakket', 'tartaar', 'beefburgers', 'verse worst', 'rundergehakt', 'rundertong', 'gemengd paard'. Behalve 'paard' en 'rund', van welk dieren is dit vlees afkomstig? Ree? Wild zwijn? Hert? Je wilt/mag het niet weten! Hoe zijn ze aan hun eind gekomen? Geschoten door jagers? Verkeersslachtoffer?

  

Noten

  1. "Taal moet onthullen. ... Niet om de realiteit te vervormen of haar mooier voor te doen dan ze is, maar juist om zichtbaar te maken wat we anders zouden missen." Iris Murdoch (1919-1999). (Filosofie Kalender).
  2. Juridisch: de wet definieert 'moord' specifiek als het doden van een mens door een mens. Het doden van een dier door een mens wordt niet aangeduid als 'moord', maar valt onder wetgeving inzake dierenwelzijn of dierenmishandeling.  
  3. Eiwittransitie (overstap van dierlijke naar plantaardige eiwitten) en: Voedingscentrum over eiwitten. 
  4. "My own research on the ‘meat paradox’ shows how people reconcile caring about animal welfare with enjoying eating meat: when reminded of animal suffering, they resolve the tension by downplaying the mental capacities of animals." from Nature book review of Animate: How Animals Shape the Human Mind Michael Bond Picador (2026) by Brock Bastian. 26 mrt 26

 

Bronnen

     

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    14 March 2026

    If the blueprint of the embryo is not in DNA, then where is it? Alfonso Martinez Arias. A very convincing argument for the cell-centric view of life

    The Master Builder

    In previous posts I argued that DNA is not the blueprint of life, nor the control center of the cell. But, there must exist some organizing principle. If that is not in our DNA, then where is it? We still need an explanation. The book of Alfonso Martinez Arias (2023) 'The Master Builder. How the New Science of the Cell is Rewriting the Story of Life' was very helpful for me in answering the problem how is an embryo made from a single cell? 

    Alfonso Martinez Arias' book is a lengthy and detailed  defense of the cell-centric view of life. His arguments are based on first-hand experience with growing embryos in the lab. After reading this book, I realized that the hardest problem in evolution is neither the origin of species, nor adaptation by natural selection, but: how is an embryo made from a single cell? Without answering this central question, the major evolutionary transition [1] from single cell organisms to multicellular organisms will forever be a mystery. Without going deep into technicalities, I have selected a few important quotes from the book in order to give a sense of why the creation of an embryo out of a single cell is an extraordinary feat. "What a piece of work we are!" A newborn baby is estimated to have approximately 26 billion to 2 trillion cells all originating from a single cell. Imagine a robot constructing itself from a less than a 1 mm sized entity! That does not exist. A crucial milestone in the development of the embryo is the creation of the three body axes:


    This is a spatial problem par excellence. The fertilized egg cell has neither a head-tail axis, nor a dorsal-ventral axis, nor a left-right axis. These must be created. All other developments such as the creation of organs in the right positions depend on the body axes. This is the work of cells, which are after all three-dimensional objects contrary to DNA. 
    CarnegieStage-2figure-4 (The Virtual Human Embryo).


    (illustration not in the book)

     

    Alfonso Martinez Arias convincingly shows that "DNA cannot send orders to cells to move right of left within your body or to place the heart and the liver on the apposite sides of your thorax; nor can it measure the length of your arms or instruct the placements of your eyes symmetrically across the midline of your face. We know this because each and every cell of an organism generally has the same DNA in it. But cells can send orders, measure lengths." "If genes can't tell right from left or middle, they simply can't be responsible for doing everything involved in the making of you and me." 

    To get a grip on causes, cells are grown in vitro: 

    "Why do cells behave differently in culture versus in embryo? We found that when embryonic stem cells are left to roam on a Petri dish in certain conditions, they will become different from each other; they generate the different types of cells that make up the embryo but do so in a disorganized manner. If the same cells, with the same genes, are placed in an early embryo, however, they will faithfully contribute to the embryo. Same cells, same genes. So, something other than genes must be involved in making an embryo."

    (the above quotes are slightly adapted from the Introduction and the first chapter of the book) 

     

    Figure 18: Duboule's hourglass. Chapter 5.
    Starting from very diverse forms and going through
    a bottleneck of similarity, animals diversify.

    Figure 27. Human embryos from Day 14 to Day 28.

    The 'embryo problem' becomes especially urgent when realizing that there is no miniature human being in the egg (preformatism !), so all body parts must be created 'out of nothing' (de novo)!

    By placing a fertilized egg in a Petri dish in a lab, cells show what they are capable of outside the natural environment of the mother, and which external triggers are required. These experiments show: 1) that DNA is not enough, and 2) that cell-cell interactions are crucial. 

    Growing a human embryo in vitro beyond 13–14 days—approaching the time of gastrulation—presents profound technical challenges, primarily because laboratory conditions cannot fully replicate the complex, dynamic environment of the uterus. While recent research has pushed past the traditional 14-day limit using specialized techniques, standard methods fail because the embryo enters a phase requiring intricate, 3D interactions with maternal tissue, which are difficult to simulate [2].

    The limited power of genes

    "Identical twins have very similar faces because they share the tools and materials needed to build a face. It's like assembling bookshelves from a store kit: the final products look identical because parts in the kits are identical and adjusted to fit perfectly. ... Someone has to put the pieces together." 

    A genome neither creates an organism, nor does software create a computer.  

    "If you were to put DNA in a test tube and wait for it to make an organism, it would never happen. Even if you were to add all the ingredients that allow the reading and expression of the information in DNA – the transcription factors, plus some amino acids, lipids, sugars, and salts to help catalyze chemical reactions – it would still never happen. DNA needs a cell to transform its content into a tangible form. An organ or a tissue, and most certainly an organism, is no more the result of the activity of a collection of genes than a house is an aggregate of bricks and mortar." [3].

    Tools: 

    "Understanding how animal (and plant and fungal) life emerged demands that we see genes not as the instructions or blueprint for an organism but rather as the instructions or blueprints for the tools and materials that cells use to build organisms." (Chapter 3).

    "It is the cell that reads, interprets, and translates the tools or signals it is given." (Chapter 5)

    Genes are agnostic

    The genes are agnostic about anything except the protein that will be made after they're copied into RNA, and the genes that are copied because of signals being communicated between cells based on their environment. (Chapter 5)  [4].

    Gene-centric versus cell-centric thinking

    "This way of talking about what is happening in cells differs greatly from the language used by geneticists. In their view, genes are the bosses, the engineers, the drivers of the events that decide when and where something happens. Yet, as we can already see, the cells are the ones who count and read signals from their neighbors and assess their position in the community, sensing not only the chemical signals they exchange with each other but also the physics of geometry, tension, pressure, and stress within and across a group." (Chapter 6). 

    Faustian bargain

    "Cells are allowed to take control of the genome's hardware in order to build and maintain the organism, so long as the cells pass the genome along intact to the next generation through the germ cells: eggs and sperm." (Chapter 7). 

    Genes are not ignored!

    "It was this idea that inspired me in 2003 to turn my attention away from fruit flies, which I had been working with for fifteen years, to embryonic stem cells." (Chapter 7). Arias has firsthand knowledge of genetics. Genes are not dismissed as unimportant. Genes get their rightful place in the story. Unlike other anti-gene-centric authors such as Denis Noble, Arias is an expert in genetics and developmental biology.


    Conclusion

    In order to give the reader a general idea of the position of the author, I decided to give striking quotes instead of all the data (which is anyway impossible to do). But I guarantee that the book contains all the details to convincingly substantiate the cell-centrism position. Furthermore, I've included some illustrations from the book to show the topics the author discusses. 

    For a geneticist the universe is made of genes, for an embryologist the universe is made of cells. Now it's time for both points of view to be merged.

     

     

    Notes

    1. John Maynard Smith (1995) The Major Transitions in Evolution.
    2. quote from google-AI. 
    3. Slightly edited quote from Chapter 1 Not in our genes. [IKEA bookcase!]
    4. I like to compare this situation with the Chinese Room experiment. Genes are inside the Chinese room and don't have any idea of what they are doing, and what the symbols mean, they are blindly following rules.


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