Like René Magritte's painting of a pipe entitled "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" — or "This is not a pipe" — what is called "the human genome" today in fact "doesn't exist," says Penn State Professor Ken Weiss at The Mermaid's Tale blog. The human genome is no more real than "the chair" or "the dog," he adds. Paraphrasing Plato, Weiss says that while we know dogs and chairs exist, they are only examples of such. And so it is with the human genome.