The purpose of this paper is to abstractly describe the notion of a generative mechanism that implements a code and to provide a number of examples including the DNA-RNA machinery that implements the genetic code, Chomsky’s Principles & Parameters model of a child acquiring a specific grammar given ‘chunks’ of linguistic experience (which play the role of the received code), and embryonic development where positional information in the developing embryo plays the role of the received code. A generative mechanism is distinguished from a selectionist mechanism that has heretofore played an important role in biological modeling (e.g., Darwinian evolution and the immune system). In biology, the alternative to selectionist mechanisms should be seen as generative mechanisms (not instructionist ideas).