The Concept of Information in Biology

By John Maynard Smith. Philosophia Scientiæ, 2000

590 citations recorded by the source corpus.

How researchers see this paper

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Genetic Information: A Metaphor in Search of a Theory (2001, background): “(Griesemer and Wimsatt 1989; Sterelny and Griffiths 1999, 64; Sterelny 2000) The now standard diagrammatic representation of evolution shows a causal arrow from genes to phenotypes and a causal arrow from the genes of one generation to those of the next (e.g., Maynard Smith 1993, figure 8).”
The symbol grounding problem has been solved, so what’s next? (2008, background): “For example, the leading evolutionary biologist John Maynard Smith (2000) has been arguing clearly that the genetic system is best understood in information processing terms and not (just) in molecular terms.”
Selectionist and Evolutionary Approaches to Brain Function: A Critical Appraisal (2012, background): “The analogy seems to be crystal-clear, especially since it can be used to recall the notion of an “adaptive landscape” by Wright (1932), arguably the most important metaphor in evolution (Maynard Smith, 1988).”
Representation in the genome and in other inheritance systems (2007, background): “If genetic representation were founded in there being a genetic code (eg, Wheeler 2003, forthcoming), then a system of inheritance by protein samples would not count as representational (Godfrey-Smith 2000a, 2002).”