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Code and Context in Gene Expression, Cognition, and Consciousness

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The Codes of Life

Part of the book series: Biosemiotics ((BSEM,volume 1))

‘Code’ and ‘context’ are two of the most ambiguous words in English, as there cognates no doubt are in other languages. In this paper, we are concerned to bring these notions down to earth, and use them as structuring schemas to understand various types of biological and cognitive activities. En route, we consider work such as Barbieri’s and Smith’s that impinge on our concerns in various ways. The notion of code, of course, has been discussed with respect to what constitutes the original genetic code, and indeed what the original autocatalytic sets were to facilitate the emergence of a biological code in the first place, and where in organisms they could be located. These issues are not our central concern here.

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Nualláin, S.Ó. (2008). Code and Context in Gene Expression, Cognition, and Consciousness. In: Barbieri, M., Hoffmeyer, J. (eds) The Codes of Life. Biosemiotics, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-6340-4_15

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