Paul-Antoine Miquel

Is information a proper observable for biological organization

In the last century, jointly with the advent of computers, mathematical theories of information were developed. Shortly thereafter, during the ascent of molecular biology, the concept of information was rapidly transferred into biology at large. Several philosophers and biologists have argued against adopting this concept based on epistemological and ontological arguments, and also, because it encouraged genetic determinism. While the theories of elaboration and transmission of information are valid mathematical theories, their own logic and implicit causal structure make them inimical to biology, and because of it, their applications have and are hindering the development of a sound theory of organisms. Our analysis concentrates on the development of information theories in mathematics and on the differences between these theories regarding the relationship among complexity, information and entropy.

Evolution of Consciousness and Evolution of Life

Regarded from this point of view, life is like a current passing from germ to germ through the medium of a developed organism . . . The essential thing is the continuous progress indefinitely pursued, an invisible progress, on which each visible organism rides during the short interval of time given it to live. Now, the more we fix our attention of this continuity of life, the more we see that organic evolution resembles the evolution of a consciousness, incommensurable with its antecedents.2

Bioethics in France: 1991–1993

During the 1991–1993 period in France, legislative action on bioethics by Parliament has been in the foreground. The National Advisory Ethics Committee for Life and Health Sciences (CCNE: “Comite Consultatif National d’Ethique pour les sciences de la vie et de la sante”) gained a new President, Jean-Pierre Changeux, in 1992 and celebrated its tenth anniversary in 1993. The regulation of human research, following the 1988 law “on the protection of persons undergoing biomedical research” [77] and the establishment in 1990–1991 of 57 regional Committees (review boards: “CCPPRB”) to assess research projects, was carefully evaluated with a view to emending and improving the law. The proceedings of the International medical ethics congress held in Paris in early 1991 appeared ([95]; see analysis in [50], § V, A, 1). The group of five persons (MM. Got, Gremy, Hirsch, Tubiana, Dubois) who had previously suggested [59] several of the key reforms that were made during the 1980s in the field of public health (or that remain to be made) evolved into a “Haut-Comite de la sante”. But the main feature of the period was the considerable effort made to “turn ethics into law” [47], i.e., to define a common legal and institutional framework within which new techniques in biology and medicine should develop. The CCNE itself had suggested in 1988 that reflection in the field of bioethics should be given “official legitimacy”.