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The Greeks did not have faith in their gods. There is—to recall Wilamowitz—no faith of the Hellenes.
FINK: However, the Greeks had myth.
HEIDEGGER: Nevertheless, myth is something other than faith.—But to come back to noncoercive steering, we could ask how things stand with genetics. Would you also speak of a coercive steering there?
FINK: Here one must distinguish between the natural behavior of genes, which can be interpreted cybernetically, on the one hand, and the manipulation of factors of inheritance, on the other.
HEIDEGGER: Would you speak of coercion here?
FINK: Even if coercion is not felt by the one overpowered, it is still coercion. Because one can today coercively intervene and alter the behavior of genes, it is possible that one day the world will be ruled by druggists.
HEIDEGGER: Regarding genes, the geneticist speaks of an alphabet, of a store of information, which stores up in itself a definite quantity of information. Does one think of coercion in this information theory? {GA 15: 28}
FINK: The genes that we discover are a biological finding. However, as soon as one comes to the thought of wanting to improve the human race through an altering steering of genes, it is thereby not a question of compulsion which brings pain, but indeed a question of coercion.
HEIDEGGER: Thus, we must make a two-fold distinction: on the one hand, the information-theoretical interpretation of the biological; and on the other, the attempt, grounded on the former, to actively steer. What is in question is whether the concept of coercive steering is in place in cybernetic biology.
FINK: Taken strictly, one cannot speak here of steering.
HEIDEGGER: At issue is whether an ambiguity presents itself in the concept of information.
FINK: Genes exhibit a determinate stamping and have, thereby, the character of a lasting stock [Langspeichern]. A human lives his life, which he apparently spends as a free being, through genetic conditioning. Everyone is determined by his ancestors. One also speaks of the learning ability of genes, which can learn like a computer.
HEIDEGGER: But how do things stand with the concept of information?
FINK: By the concept of information one understands, on one hand, informare, the stamping, impressing of form; and on the other, a technique of communication.
HEIDEGGER: If genes determine human behavior, do they develop the information that is innate to them?
FINK: In some measure. As to information, we are not dealing here with the kind of information that one picks up. What is meant here is