DNA as Blueprint of Life

Metaphor: Genes are often described as a “blueprint,” with DNA as the architect’s drawing and organisms as the finished construction project. The genome is cast as a master plan, dictating every detail of biological form and function.

Problem / Misleading Aspect: This metaphor imports engineering imagery into biology. It suggests determinism, top-down control, and linear causality: as if DNA simply instructs bodies to assemble. In reality, development is relational, dynamic, and context-dependent. Gene expression is modulated by environment, interaction, and chance. By imagining DNA as a blueprint, the metaphor erases plasticity, feedback, and co-constitution — and it turns organisms into passive buildings rather than active participants in their own becoming.

Relational Ontology Correction: DNA does not prescribe life; it participates in relational processes of actualisation. Genes provide potentials, not fixed instructions, which only take form through interaction with cellular environments, ecological pressures, and historical contingencies. Life is not constructed from plans but emerges from alignments of relational systems.

Parody: If DNA were really a blueprint, geneticists would need planning permits, builders would sue embryos for code violations, and natural selection would hire site inspectors in hard hats. The joke lands because the metaphor miscasts dynamic, responsive living systems as inert architectural projects, missing the relational dance at the heart of biology.