Reducing Haeckel (13th of March 2011)
I have to admit that I have difficulties getting along with the idea that EVERYTHING that characterizes an individual is written in
hers/his DNA molecule. It seems to me that my "information content" is immeasurably more complex when compared with the quantity
of information that can be stored in my DNA molecule, especially in the parts that in fact do carry some information. It is difficult
for me to imagine how the DNA codes for the shape of organism on the macroscopic scale, positioning of organs, number of
fingers and ribs, and similar. It is certain that a part of these macroscopic characteristics of the organism is a consequence of
physical factors influencing growth, a consequence of dynamical instabilities that, starting from a bunch of cells (blastula),
first make a structure that is topologically equivalent to
torus. When the unstructured parts of a growing organism pass through further set of instabilities,
different branchings take place and arms, legs and fingers are formed. That is relatively clear to me, as it is clear that those
physical instabilities in morphogenesis/embryogenesis may be influenced chemically, by a change in ionic concentrations, or by a change
in pH value. That can be coded for genetically, which would suggest that by small molecular "interventions" one can influence
the macroscopic shape of the organism. But still... Something seems to be missing, does not fit well. That something is indeed
missing is also clear to molecular biologists and new "paradigms" relating the DNA and the state of the organism are constantly
evolving. One of those paradigms is called >> "epigenetics".
But this will also not be enough, at least it seems so to me.
Such thinking influenced the images that I present in this post. They show an "interpreter", a machine that swallows the DNA molecule
and produces beautiful images of organisms whose DNA it interprets (see below). Thus, it interprets the information in the DNA
molecule so well that it can make an image of the formed organism, together with all the details such as color, size, a surrounding
where the life of an organism can proceed, and so on.
Still, the images that the "interpreter" produces are too beautiful to fool anyone into believing that they are a result of a mere machine interpretation of a DNA molecule. These are the illustrations by >> Ernst Heinrich Philipp August Haeckel (1834 - 1919). Haeckel was infamous in his time exactly for this "freedom of interpretation" because some thought that in his "artistic interpretations" of the embryonic development he was so free that these could also be considered a fraud. Namely, in that time (1874) Haeckel made an anthropology textbook in which he had shown how similar are embryos of fish, salamander, chick, pig, cow, rabbit and human, especially in the earlier phases of development. That was not liked by many, especially not by church.
Although controversial, Haeckel's scientific contribution was important in the times when Darwinism was developing as a theory, but I got interested in Haeckel's work primarily because he combined science and illustration so well (sometimes too well, it seems). He is almost equally well known in scientific and illustrator communities. The image below is a reproduction of one of his black and white illustrations that I used to produce the image above. Unfortunately, I was too careless when I made an archive of Haeckel's illustrations, so that I didn't write down what was Haeckel actually illustrating. Sorry for that.
The image below shows another version of "haeckelian DNA interpreter". Can you discern what are the differences between the three versions shown, besides, of course, the illustrations chosen?
Inspect also the DNA molecule a bit. One can see pairs of bases that are bound by three or two cylinders that represent hydrogen bonds. Can you from this information determine how adenine, guanine, cytosine, and thymine look like in my representation ?
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Last updated on 13th of March 2011.