The lack of a rigorous account of biological information as a proximal causal factor in biological systems is a striking gap in the scientific worldview. In this chapter we outline a proposal to fill that gap by grounding the idea of biological information in a contemporary philosophical account of causation. Biological information is a certain kind of causal relationship between components of living systems. Many accounts of information in the philosophy of biology have set out to vindicate the common assumption that nucleic acids are distinctively informational molecules. Here we take a more unprejudiced approach, developing an account of biological information and then seeing how widely it applies.

In the first section, ‘Information in Biology’, we begin with the most prominent informational idea in modern biology – the coding relation between nucleic acid and protein. A deeper look at the background to Francis Crick's Central Dogma, and a comparison with the distinction in developmental biology between permissive and instructive interactions, reveals that ‘information’ is a way to talk about specificity. The idea of specificity has a long history in biology, and a closely related idea is a key part of a widely supported contemporary account of causation in philosophy that grounds causal relationships in ideas about manipulability and control. In the second section, ‘Causal Specificity: An Information-Theoretic Approach’, we describe the idea of ‘causal specificity’ and an information-theoretic measure of the degree of specificity of a cause for its effect. Biological specificity, we suggest, is simply causal specificity in biological systems. Since we have already argued that ‘information’ is a way to talk about biological specificity, we conclude that causal relationships are ‘informational’ simply when they are highly specific. The third section, ‘Arbitrariness, Information, and Regulation’, defends this identification against the claim that only causal relationships in which the relation between cause and effect is ‘arbitrary’ should count as informational. Arbitrariness has an important role, however, in understanding the regulation of gene expression via gene regulatory networks. Having defended our identification of information with specificity, we show in the final section, ‘Distributed Specificity’, that information is more widely distributed in biological systems than is often supposed. Coding sequences of DNA are only one source of biological specificity, and hence only one locus of biological information.

The making of surveys was always important to those who governed England. Collecting and processing information had long been a tried and trusted governing strategy, and medieval manorial record-keeping, with its lengthy surveys of tenants, holdings and obligations, provided solid grounding for later times. But beyond doubt, the practice of surveying became more vital in all government fields in the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and information cultures and systems became more sophisticated and widespread with the emergence of what Peter Burke calls the ‘paper state’.

Deep-seated, long-lasting change made the difference. The English state was transformed by the start of the eighteenth century. The apparatus of governance had to adapt, alter and grow in response to the seismic shifts of the two centuries after 1500: a population boom, religious revolution, economic and commercial transformations in town and country, empire, and root-and-branch reforms of financing and administering the state (to name just five). The precise nature of the ‘Tudor revolution in government’ remains debatable, but this sustained scope and scale of information use by the state had not been seen before. A full list might fill a short book, but we can start with Henrician muster counts; the mountain of paperwork in fiscal returns to the Great Subsidy (1524–5); Wolsey's corn surveys; enclosure commissions; a nationwide system to register births, marriages and deaths (1538); the Valor Ecclesiasticus, which took stock of Church wealth in the wake of Henry VIII's royal supremacy (1535); and a string of state-sponsored surveys in later decades.

The term buyō is a translation of the English “dance,” combining characters for two common terms, mai (舞) and odori (踊り). After theatre scholar and playwright Tsubouchi Shōyō (1859–1935) employed the term in his Shin gakugeki ron (New musical theatre theory, 1904), “buyō” was universally adopted, but in order to distinguish the classical Japanese repertoire from other dance forms, and as part of his larger project to develop a national drama (kokugeki), nihon (Japan) was appended. Nihonbuyo comprises both kabuki buyō and non-kabuki dances, mostly from the kamigata mai tradition of Osaka-Kyoto. Nihonbuyo performers are organized into schools, some headed by kabuki actors who adhere quite strictly to kabuki choreography, others by unaffiliated dancers who perform replications as well as adaptations of kabuki dance, in addition to new choreographies exclusive to nihonbuyo repertoires.

While nihonbuyo shares kabuki's dance repertoire, it has nonetheless developed a distinct identity. The majority of nihonbuyo instructors work outside the kabuki world; both male and female professionals teach amateurs of both genders. Since the Edo period (1603–1868), it has been an essential outlet for aspiring female performers, considered a “polishing school” for the arts of deportment and kimono-dressing, and, more recently, valued as a connection to Japanese heritage.

Historical overview

Nihonbuyo inherits movement styles from older dance forms derived from shrine, court, and folk dance. These may be analyzed as mai (circular), odori (leaping), and furi (mime).

The word mai comes from the verb mau (舞う), a contraction of mawaru (to rotate), signifying slow and deliberate circling movements. The body is held stiffly, the center of gravity low, knees bent slightly, while the soles of the feet are in continuous contact with the floor (suriashi). This strong relationship between dancer and floor is further emphasized by occasional stamping. The origins of mai can be traced back to the earliest forms of miko kagura in which shrine priestesses circle around to reach a state of trance, as well as bugaku, the stately court dance imported from China. Mai became the principal movement style in the noh theatre, appropriating popular kusemai in Kan'ami's time, then subsequently exerted a major influence on popular kabuki dance.