The Language of Life

Natural History, Sept, 2000

The analogy between the genetic code and an language is remarkable. Spoken utterances are composed of a sequence of a rather small number of unit sounds, or phonemes (represented, at least roughly, by the letters of the alphabet). The sequence of these phonemes first specifies different words, and then, through syntax, the meanings of sentences. By this system, the sequence of a small number of kinds of unit can convey an indefinitely large number of meanings. The genetic message is composed of a linear sequence of only four kinds of unit.... In both systems a linear sequence of a small number of kinds of unit can specify an indefinitely large number of outcomes....

We have treated the origin of language as the last of the major transitions. This shows that we are biologists, not historians. Language was indeed the last transition that required biological evolution, in the sense of a change in the genetic message. But there have been two major changes in the way in which information is transmitted since the origin of language. The first was the invention of writing. Without writing, or some equivalent way of storing information, large-scale civilization was impossible, if only because one cannot tax people without some form of permanent record. The latest transition, through which we are living today, is the use of electronic means for storing and transmitting information. We think that the effects of this will be as profound as were those after the origin of the genetic code, or of language, but we are not rash enough to predict what they will be. Will our descendants live most of their lives in a virtual reality? Will some form of symbiosis between genetic and electronic storage evolve? Will electronic devices acquire means of self-replication, and evolve to replace the primitive life-forms that gave them birth? We do not know.