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.