Henri Atlan's early writings

The importance given to biological complexity and dynamics, the progressive giving up the notion of genetic programme, the attention paid to noise at the molecular level, are all new aspects of biological research characteristic of the post-genomic era. They are frequently mentioned as the signs of the delayed recognition of the important contributions made by Henri Atlan from the beginning of the 1970s. By focusing my study on his first major essay, l'Organisation Biologique et la Théorie de l'Information, I reach a somewhat different conclusion. Whereas Henri Atlan proposed an early criticism of the notion of genetic programme, the point of view he adopted was at odds with molecular biology. His attempt to apply the theory of information to organisms was a project already abandoned in the United States. The importance he placed to the second law of thermodynamics and his insistence on the limits of the Darwinian theory of evolution were more the sign of an attachment to past traditions of biological thought, still permeating the French community of biologists in the second half of the XXth century, than an anticipation of future developments in the post-genomic era.