Giuseppe Longo – Information in Biology and Models of Phenotypic Complexity as Anti-Entropy

We will critically analyze the dominant metaphor of “information” in biology, particularly the idea that DNA acts as a digital program or code-script that fully determines an organism’s development and evolution. 
We challenge the Laplacian and reductionist view—rooted in classical physics and early molecular biology—that biological organization can be reduced to linear, predictable processes, such as the “one gene, one protein” hypothesis or the Central Dogma. The talk highlights instead the extensive stochasticity and complexity at the cellular and organismal levels, arguing that biological systems are not merely bottom-up constructions from molecular data but involve multi-level, non-linear interactions. 
The second part of the presentation introduces the concept of “anti-entropy” as a new observable, to be added to negentropy and that captures the phenotypic and morphological complexity of living systems, which is sensitive to coding and irreducible to digital information alone. The framework aims to model the growth of complexity in evolution and embryogenesis through diffusion equations, emphasizing the role of randomness, symmetry breaking, and the creation of new niches in driving biological innovation. 

// ABOUT THE LECTURER // Giuseppe Longo is Professor at Centre Cavaillès, République des Savoirs CNRS et École Normale Supérieure, Paris.