We often describe DNA as a code, a string of instructions telling organisms how to build themselves. But what if this metaphor has led us astray? What if DNA isn’t a code in any meaningful computational sense—but rather a set of thermodynamically stable chemical patterns that emerged from, and continue to reflect, the environments in which life originated.
In modern biology, we tend to think of information as flowing from genes to the world, Crick’s ‘Central Dogma’: DNA as a kind of internal map or software that gets executed. But early replicators didn’t begin as messengers—they were more like imprints. Their structure, behaviour, and persistence were dictated by the external conditions they were embedded in. In this light, the earliest biological ‘information’ flowed from the environment to the replicator.
The environment didn’t just “influence” replicators—it effectively sculpted them. Replicators that matched the energy landscape persisted; those that didn’t fell apart.
What we call “genetic information” may be better understood as a condensed memory of successful interactions with the environment. That memory isn’t symbolic—it’s thermodynamic. Replicators that persisted were those that could harness energy gradients in stable, reproducible ways. In this sense, DNA is less like software and more like a fossilised energy pattern. Jeremy England’s demonstration that systems evolve toward states that dissipate energy more effectively seems to me to be a good indicator that early replicators were following this constraint. The Code Metaphor Isn’t useless, but It’s Limiting. Although the order of bases functions as a kind of mapping system—A means “this,” T means “that",this interpretive layer depends on a complex translation apparatus (tRNAs, ribosomes, enzymes) that didn’t exist at life’s origin. The code isn’t inherent to DNA—it’s context-dependent, shaped by co-evolved molecular machinery. Without the cell, DNA is inert. The code is in the system, not the strand.
Instead of thinking of early replicators as codes or blueprints, we might think of them as thermodynamic witnesses—molecular forms that managed to persist in a sea of chaos, not because they “knew” how, but because they fit the flow of energy in their surroundings. They didn’t store information so much as embody it.
Of course 4 billion years on we are confronted with a complicated enclosed molecular system that from our perspective looks like a set of instructions akin to a program. But essentially it’s still chemicals doing what chemicals do in thermodynamic systems that are maintained far from equilibrium. The string of bases in DNA is still meaningless until something inherent in the environment is relevant. If life began not with instructions but with interactions—if information emerged from the way matter flowed and settled under energy constraints—then maybe the metaphor we need isn’t “code,” but "resonance". The genome isn’t a script—it’s a survivor of a thermodynamic past.
The environment didn’t just “influence” replicators—it effectively sculpted them. Replicators that matched the energy landscape persisted; those that didn’t fell apart.
What we call “genetic information” may be better understood as a condensed memory of successful interactions with the environment. That memory isn’t symbolic—it’s thermodynamic. Replicators that persisted were those that could harness energy gradients in stable, reproducible ways. In this sense, DNA is less like software and more like a fossilised energy pattern. Jeremy England’s demonstration that systems evolve toward states that dissipate energy more effectively seems to me to be a good indicator that early replicators were following this constraint. The Code Metaphor Isn’t useless, but It’s Limiting. Although the order of bases functions as a kind of mapping system—A means “this,” T means “that",this interpretive layer depends on a complex translation apparatus (tRNAs, ribosomes, enzymes) that didn’t exist at life’s origin. The code isn’t inherent to DNA—it’s context-dependent, shaped by co-evolved molecular machinery. Without the cell, DNA is inert. The code is in the system, not the strand.
Instead of thinking of early replicators as codes or blueprints, we might think of them as thermodynamic witnesses—molecular forms that managed to persist in a sea of chaos, not because they “knew” how, but because they fit the flow of energy in their surroundings. They didn’t store information so much as embody it.
Of course 4 billion years on we are confronted with a complicated enclosed molecular system that from our perspective looks like a set of instructions akin to a program. But essentially it’s still chemicals doing what chemicals do in thermodynamic systems that are maintained far from equilibrium. The string of bases in DNA is still meaningless until something inherent in the environment is relevant. If life began not with instructions but with interactions—if information emerged from the way matter flowed and settled under energy constraints—then maybe the metaphor we need isn’t “code,” but "resonance". The genome isn’t a script—it’s a survivor of a thermodynamic past.
