How would you define entity them? Why not have the state of fitness communicating with possible future states, or evolutionary processes communicating with themselves, like a massive comment thread unbroken over 3+ billion years?
Calling it dialects sounds more like anthropomorphizing it to make it sound more like a language
Anthropomorphization? Kinda, sure. But different brances of life do use DNA/RNA differently, like us with separate chromosomes and one-way genes, prokaryotes with circular chromosomes that can be read in both directions, and viruses with free genes to hijack other DNA/RNA systems. We don’t understand all the ins and outs of genes yet, and I’m certainly not an expert in the topic, so maybe it would be more accurate to call these variations “language groups” and instead use the compatability of the proteome and metabolome to define languages, with genes simply being the words and some syntax.
it somehow doesn’t feel like a language to me when the information is just past further down the line and there is no real back-and-forth?
different categories of language
This I can almost agree on. A technical manual or a journal is definitely a form of language, but you can’t have a conversation with it. A category of languages that can be used for conversations would exclude most genetic languages, as well as all programming languages. Both could still be used to define a communication protocol though, which might still be considered a conversational language. For example neurotransmitters or HDMI. The depth of this communication could be quite shallow though, even if they carry greater meaning in a different format.
Going further than this we could define a catergory that has enough communication depth and mutability to directly transmit arbitrary ideas, which would pretty much cover only primate, corvid, and cetacean language. At this point we’ve moved beyond the details of grammar and vocabulary and into the methods and capabilities which generate and use grammar and vocabulary. Certainly an interesting category to define and explore the limits of, but definitely not what most people think of when you say “language”. Perhaps “laguability” would be a better term for this?
In my opinion, there’s definitely a huge amount of difference between our conversation and what bacteria do with and between themselves, but language probably isn’t the right word to differentiate them. It’s the difference between a die cast toy car, a pickup truck, an ICBM, and a novel; vastly different yet all called vehicles.
Hm, I think I start to see your point. I guess the thought of language as something like human language is biasing a lot what we consider language. It feels kinda weird, but if I shake off this narrow view on what a language is, all sorts of alternative ways to look at it come to mind.
I think it helped that you mentioned a technical manual that is a form of language but that doesn’t count as a conversation. And having a conversation in itself is very much biased by our human form of language.
And now that you mention the proteome and metabolome, it really seems like a much richer form of information and that much more back-and-forth is happening. I guess epigenetics have shown that the DNA/RNAs are much more plastic than we thought, too.
Thanks for this conversation, it did actually help me get to explore this much more and change my mind :)
I think part of this confusion comes from the general usage of language to mean specifically human art and culture, like “Language Arts” or “Vernacular Language”. Thinking about language as the simple components and systems that carry information might seem disrespectful to the totality of human expression, but I think it helps to see just how unique our flavour is, and how much we could grow.
Well I’m glad to have expanded your horizons! And also glad I got to use “proteome” in a conversation. It’s such a cool concept that most people won’t appreciate. :D
Haha yes, it is sometimes sad when other people around cannot really appreciate certain thoughts or concepts of one’s own.
One book that really got me excited about studying biology well over a decade ago was Evolution in four dimensions, which touches on some similar topics as in our conversation. Or maybe even in reverse, how language is actually some dimension of evolution in itself. Since then my knowledge on evolution and genetics got a bit rusty because I specialized in ecology. But I find it deeply fascinating how evolution works and what mind-boggling stuff it came up with.
How would you define entity them? Why not have the state of fitness communicating with possible future states, or evolutionary processes communicating with themselves, like a massive comment thread unbroken over 3+ billion years?
Anthropomorphization? Kinda, sure. But different brances of life do use DNA/RNA differently, like us with separate chromosomes and one-way genes, prokaryotes with circular chromosomes that can be read in both directions, and viruses with free genes to hijack other DNA/RNA systems. We don’t understand all the ins and outs of genes yet, and I’m certainly not an expert in the topic, so maybe it would be more accurate to call these variations “language groups” and instead use the compatability of the proteome and metabolome to define languages, with genes simply being the words and some syntax.
This I can almost agree on. A technical manual or a journal is definitely a form of language, but you can’t have a conversation with it. A category of languages that can be used for conversations would exclude most genetic languages, as well as all programming languages. Both could still be used to define a communication protocol though, which might still be considered a conversational language. For example neurotransmitters or HDMI. The depth of this communication could be quite shallow though, even if they carry greater meaning in a different format.
Going further than this we could define a catergory that has enough communication depth and mutability to directly transmit arbitrary ideas, which would pretty much cover only primate, corvid, and cetacean language. At this point we’ve moved beyond the details of grammar and vocabulary and into the methods and capabilities which generate and use grammar and vocabulary. Certainly an interesting category to define and explore the limits of, but definitely not what most people think of when you say “language”. Perhaps “laguability” would be a better term for this?
In my opinion, there’s definitely a huge amount of difference between our conversation and what bacteria do with and between themselves, but language probably isn’t the right word to differentiate them. It’s the difference between a die cast toy car, a pickup truck, an ICBM, and a novel; vastly different yet all called vehicles.
Hm, I think I start to see your point. I guess the thought of language as something like human language is biasing a lot what we consider language. It feels kinda weird, but if I shake off this narrow view on what a language is, all sorts of alternative ways to look at it come to mind.
I think it helped that you mentioned a technical manual that is a form of language but that doesn’t count as a conversation. And having a conversation in itself is very much biased by our human form of language.
And now that you mention the proteome and metabolome, it really seems like a much richer form of information and that much more back-and-forth is happening. I guess epigenetics have shown that the DNA/RNAs are much more plastic than we thought, too.
Thanks for this conversation, it did actually help me get to explore this much more and change my mind :)
I think part of this confusion comes from the general usage of language to mean specifically human art and culture, like “Language Arts” or “Vernacular Language”. Thinking about language as the simple components and systems that carry information might seem disrespectful to the totality of human expression, but I think it helps to see just how unique our flavour is, and how much we could grow.
Well I’m glad to have expanded your horizons! And also glad I got to use “proteome” in a conversation. It’s such a cool concept that most people won’t appreciate. :D
Haha yes, it is sometimes sad when other people around cannot really appreciate certain thoughts or concepts of one’s own.
One book that really got me excited about studying biology well over a decade ago was Evolution in four dimensions, which touches on some similar topics as in our conversation. Or maybe even in reverse, how language is actually some dimension of evolution in itself. Since then my knowledge on evolution and genetics got a bit rusty because I specialized in ecology. But I find it deeply fascinating how evolution works and what mind-boggling stuff it came up with.