Elusive locus of control in biological development: Genetic versus developmental programs

Taken as a composite, the meaning of the composite term "genetic program"-w idely taken to suggest an explanation of biological development - simultane ously depends upon and underwrites the particular presumption that a "plan of procedure" for development is itself written in the sequence of nucleoti de bases. Is this presumption correct? I want to argue that, at best, it mu st be said to be misleading, and at worst, simply false: To the extent that we may speak at all of a developmental program, or of a set of instruction s for development, in contra-distinction to the data or resources for such a program, current research obliges us to acknowledge that these "instructi ons" are not written into the DNA itself(or at least, are not all written i n the DNA), but rather are distributed throughout the fertilized egg. I wil l argue that the notion of genetic program depends upon, and sustains, a fu ndamental category error in which two independent distinctions, one between "genetic" and "epigenetic," and the other, between program and data, are p ulled into mistaken alignment. The net effect of such alignment is to reinf orce two outmoded associations: on the one hand, between "genetic" and acti ve, and, on the other, between "epigenetic" and passive. (C) 1999 Wiley-Lis s, Inc.