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. 

Previous blogs

• 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 14 March 2026
• Richard Dawkins admits: DNA is *not* a blueprint! But Dawkins still got another metaphor wrong! 16 February 2026
• Think about this:  09 February 2026
• Gene-centrism is bad biology. Here is why. 17 December 2025
• What is DNA-centrism? Why is it wrong? 10 November 2025