Reading recent reports in the biological sciences, I often encounter strikingly assertive terms: “Complete determination of individual genomic sequences,” “Conversion into discrete digital data,” and “Overwhelmingly precise comprehensiveness.” Looking at these flamboyant rhetorics brought about by technological progress, it feels as though humanity has finally conquered the grand puzzle that is the blueprint of life.
However, I feel a strange discomfort in the face of this word, “complete.” Is this a tribute to scientific achievement, or is it an arrogance practiced within the limits humans have set for themselves?
The Rhetoric of “Completeness” Betraying Induction
From a philosophical standpoint, science is fundamentally grounded in induction. We derive a single law through tens of thousands of observations, yet that inductive reasoning carries the inherent fallibility of being overturned by a single exception. Can we truly call it “complete” just because we have read billions of base pairs with 99.99% accuracy?
What we call a “complete genome” is, in fact, merely a “technical terminus” reachable by current sequencing technology; it does not mean completeness in the sense of capturing the essential truth of life’s phenomena. The act of placing the period of “completeness” while hiding behind the safety net of statistical margins of error may be a case of forgetting the humility that induction must carry as its destiny.
Building Digital Bricks Against an Analog Wave
The expression that data has become “discrete” is also intriguing. The movement of molecules inside an actual cell is profoundly analog and continuous. Proteins vibrate incessantly, change shape depending on their environment, and undergo chemical modifications. Life is a massive flow that cannot be divided into 0s and 1s.
The moment we substitute that flow with the symbols A, T, G, and C and call it “discrete data,” we are not reading the essence of nature—we are taxidermizing it into a “language we can understand.” In other words, discrete data is not an inherent attribute of nature, but a realm of “axiomatic agreement” reached by humans for the sake of communication and analysis.
Between Arrogance and Confidence
Of course, the assertive language of scientists is effective from a practical standpoint. From an engineering perspective—treating diseases or editing genes—we need a map that we assume to be “complete” for the time being. However, utility is not synonymous with truth.
I try to look beyond these confident declarations of modern biology. Rather than the arrogance of cramming the vastness of nature into a framework of human logic and saying, “Now we know it all,” perhaps the more scientific attitude is to acknowledge that the maps we create are subject to revision at any time.
What we have determined is not the “genome” itself, but merely a “cross-section of the genome” as seen through our eyes. We must not forget that true scientific progress begins not with the period of “completeness,” but with the comma of “I might be wrong.”
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