CHAPTER FOUR

ORGANIC CODES AND CELL MEMORIES

The characteristics of the codes

The term codes, or conventions, normally indicates the rules which are adopted by a human community, but it has also a wider meaning. A code can be defined as a set of rules that establish a correspondence between two independent worlds. The Morse code, for example, connects certain combinations of signs with letters of the alphabet. The highway code is a liason between illustrated signals and driving behaviours. A language makes words stand for real objects of the physical world.
The extraordinary thing about codes is that a new physical quantity appears in them, since they require not only energy and information but also meaning. The information of the word ‘ape’, for example, is measured by the bits that are required to choose the letters ‘a’, ‘p’ and ‘e’ in that order, and is the same in all languages that have a common alphabet. But in English ‘ape’ means a ‘tailless simian primate’ whereas in Italian it stands for ‘honey-making insect’, and in both languages it could have had any other meaning. Words do not, by themselves, have meanings. They are mere labels to which meanings are given in order to establish a correspondence between words and objects.
Because of this, it is often said that meanings are arbitrary, but that is true only if they are taken individually. The words of a language may seem arbitrary if taken one by one, but together they form an integrated system and are therefore linked by community laws. Codes and meanings, in other words, are subject to collective, not individual, constraints.