Flow of Information in Molecular Biological Mechanisms

Lindley Darden Committee for Philosophy and the Sciences Department of Philosophy University of Maryland College Park, MD USA [email protected] Abstract In 1958, Francis Crick distinguished the flow of information from the flow of matter and the flow of energy in the mechanism of protein synthesis. Crick’s claims about information flow and coding in molecular biology are viewed from the perspective of a new characterization of mechanisms (Machamer, Darden, and Craver 2000) and from the perspective of information as holding a key to distinguishing work in molecular biology from that of biochemistry in the 1950s–1970s (Darden and Craver 2002). Flow of matter from beginning to end does not occur in the protein synthesis mechanism; flow of information (from Crick’s perspective) does. The flow of information and coding in molecular biological mechanisms are distinguished, on the one hand, from formal information theory, and, on the other, from information as used in cognitive neuroscience, where information and representation are often coupled.