"My thesis is that molecular biologists used “information” as a metaphor for biological specificity. However, “information” is a metaphor of a metaphor and thus a signifier without a referent, a catachresis. As such, it became a rich repository for the scientific imaginaries of the genetic code as an information system and a Book of Life" (Lily Kay, Who Wrote the Book of Life, Stanford UP: 2000, 2).

So much to unpack here. The 20th century catachresis, the "Book of Life" of our age, is that the genetic code is a language. Every living being is a text. My ancestors, descendants, and I are a corpus, the unified global ecosystem is a library. The code had to be cracked, we can now "write" in it, we can "edit" it, we can "delete" a line here and there. A signifier without a referent might very well be the definition of meaninglessness though, at the very least, it is epistemologically problematic. Part of Kay's argument is that the genetic code isn't a language. So, then, considering it to be a language is just a heuristic then? A convenient way to think about it that helps us to make sense of and discuss it? But if that metaphor for the genetic code is an inaccurate or inadequate description of the code, then how did we conceive of this biological specificity with such a metaphor, talk about this bio-molecular stuff using this metaphor, and use it to persuade people on our grant applications. How did we assign linguists and cryptanalysts, in addition to molecular biologists, the job of figuring it out, and they succeeded in figuring it out? How did a false metaphor-on-metaphor-sandwich lead us to figuring out one of the most complex problems posed to science? That's one hell of a heuristic. What does this say about the role humanists and other non-STEMy people could play in helping the STEMy people with their puzzles? Hard problems take creative solutions. Wicked problems take downright artistic solutions. Let's get the artsy-fartsy wackos on board; let's get the synesthetes on board; let's get the autistic savants who can't tie their shoes on board. What does it say about the iron-clad supposedly strictly-procedural scientific method? I don't recall that part of Bacon's Novum Organum Scientiarum: make up a metaphor of a metaphor of a thought experiment and play with it for a couple decades.