Would it be too presumptuous to characterize the problem as follows?
We might consider the genome as a book; and the net effect of the HGP was that it transcribed the letters from the book into a computer database. And thus you have a bunch of computerized letters, collected in the order in which they appear, which is pretty swell -- an excellent resource.
The problem, of course, is that the letters aren't actually the point of the book at all; nor is the particular order in which they appear necessarily going to confer any deep knowledge to a reader who doesn't know the language, much less the ideas that the language is trying to express. The value of a book is that there's a meaning and a context to the book that far transcends the collection and pattern of those letters, that mere transcription cannot capture. We can't just look at the letters and understand the concepts, abstractions, the book contains -- much less the puns.
The analogy would seem to apply as well the compilation of DNA's letters. Merely having them confers no knowledge of what information they contain, nor what they mean when taken together as a system.
Moreover, a simple transcription of the letters and patterns does not address how the book is intended to be used ... the purpose of a phone book, for example, is different from that of the Bible or a text on topology. Even the chapters of a book have different applications.
Here I am drawing an analogy with respect to the interactions between the DNA code, and the mechanisms of the cell that actually operate on and with the DNA. Those cells provide a specific context for specific portions of the DNA -- in a very real sense the cellular mechanisms represent information that seems to me to be separate from, and perhaps even broader than, what the DNA itself holds.
If the HGP "failed," perhaps it failed by assuming that simply collecting letters would be enough...?
Absolutely outstanding, r9etb! I do believe you've captured the very problem in a nutshell, and have formulated beautiful conclusions.
In answer to your question above, I'd say: Yes, I do believe that. That's the very problem with it.
Thank you ever so much for your wonderfully insightful and incisive essay/post!
I don’t think it would be presumptuous at all. Sounds like an excellent conclusion.
I do note, however, that the reason for the failure of the HGP, is going to have to have to (sadly, to some) be put in the realm of a philosophical context, something evos resist like oil resists water.