Understanding Development

Abstract

I suggest that Rosenberg's first difficulty derives from his uncritical acceptance of Wolpert's own causal translation of "understanding" into "computability"; his second from accepting Wolpert's equation of a "total description of the fertilized egg" with "the total DNA sequence and the location of all proteins and RNA"; and histhird from accepting an equation between "computable, " "predictable, " and "algorithmic" representability. Let me take these problems in order.