biosemiotics
| Semiotics |
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| General concepts |
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Biosemiotics · Code |
| Methods |
| Semioticians |
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Roland Barthes · Marcel Danesi |
| Related topics |
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Aestheticization as propaganda |
Biosemiotics (from the Greek bios meaning "life" and semion
meaning "sign") is a growing field that studies the production, action and interpretation of signs in the biological realm in an attempt to integrate the findings
of scientific biology and semiotics to form a new view of
Biosemiotics is
- biology interpreted as sign systems study
or, to elaborate, biosemiotics is a study of
- the signification, communication and habit formation of
living processes - semiosis (changing sign relations) in living nature
- the biological basis of all signs and sign
interpretation
To define biosemiotics as “biology interpreted as sign systems study” is to emphasize not only the close relation between
biology as we know it (as a scientific field of inquiry) and semiotics (the study of signs), but primarily the profound change of
perspective implied when life is considered not just from the perspectives of molecules and
Furthermore, by providing new concepts, theories and case studies from biology, biosemiotics attempts to throw new light on some of the unsolved questions within the general study of sign processes (semiotics), such as the question about the origin of signification in the universe. Here, signification (and sign) is understood in a very general sense, that is, not simply the transfer of information from one place to another, but the generation of the very content and meaning of that information in human as well as non-human sign producers and sign receivers.
Sign processes are thus taken as real: They are governed by regularities (habits, or natural rules) that can be discovered and explained. They are intrinsic in living nature, but we can access them, not directly, but indirectly through other sign processes (qualitative distinction methods, for instance) -- even though the human representation and understanding of these processes (in the construction of explanations) builds up as a separate scientific sign system distinct from the organisms’ own sign processes.
One of the central characteristics of living systems is the highly organized character of their physical and chemical processes, partly based upon informational and molecular properties of what came to be known in the 1960s as the genetic code. Distinguished biologists, such as Ernst Mayr, have seen these informational aspects as one of the emergent features of life as a process that distinguish life from anything else in the physical world, except, perhaps, man-made computers. However, as the informational teleology of computer programmes are derived, qua being designed by humans to achieve specific goals, the teleology and informational characteristics of organisms are intrinsic, qua being evolved naturally, through adaptation processes.
Traditional biology (and philosophy of biology) has seen such processes as
being purely physical and, being influenced by a reductionist and mechanist tradition, has adopted a very restricted notion of the physical as having to do with only
efficient causation. Biosemiotics is an attempt to use the concepts from
semiotics (in the sense of Peirce as the broad logical and
Biosemiotics sees the evolution of life and the evolution of semiotic systems as two aspects of the same process. The scientific approach to the origin and evolution of life has, in part due to the success of molecular biology, given us highly valuable accounts of the outer aspects of the whole process, but has overseen the inner qualitative aspects of sign action, and lead to a reduced picture of causality. Complex self-organized living systems are also governed by formal and final causality —- formal in the sense of the downward causation from a whole structure (such as the organism) to its individual molecules, constraining their action but also endowing them with functional meanings in relation to the whole metabolism; and final in the sense of the tendency to take habits and to generate future interpretants of the present sign actions. Here, biosemiotics draws also upon the insights of fields like systems theory, theoretical biology and the study of complex self-organized systems.
Particular scientific fields like molecular biology, cognitive ethology, cognitive science, robotics, and neurobiology deal with information processes at various levels and thus spontaneously contribute to knowledge about biosemiosis (sign action in living systems). However, biosemiotics proper is not yet a specific disciplinary research programme, but a general perspective on life that attempts to integrate such findings, and to build a semiotic foundation for biology. It may help to resolve some forms of Cartesian dualism that is still haunting philosophy of mind. By describing the continuity between body and mind, biosemiotics may also help us to understand higher forms of mind.
Apart from Charles Peirce (1939-1914) and Charles Morris (1901-1979), early pioneers of biosemiotics were Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944), Heini Hediger (1908-1992), and Giorgio Prodi (1928-1987); the founding fathers were Thomas Sebeok (1920-2001) and Thure von Uexküll (1908-2004). The contemporary period (as initiated by Copenhagen-Tartu school) include biologists Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche, Alexei Sharov, Søren Brier, Marcello Barbieri, Anton Markos, Howard Pattee, semioticians Frederik Stjernfelt, Floyd Merrell, John Deely, Myrdene Anderson, Lucia Santaella, Winfried Nöth, philosophers Guenther Witzany, et al.
Since 2001, there have been organised the annual international meetings in biosemiotics (Gatherings in Biosemiotics). The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies was established in 2005.
Bibliography
- Emmeche, Claus; Kalevi Kull and Frederik Stjernfelt. (2002): Reading Hoffmeyer, Rethinking Biology. (Tartu Semiotics Library 3). Tartu: Tartu University Press.
- Hoffmeyer, Jesper. (1996): Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. (special issue of Semiotica vol. 120 (no.3-4), 1998, includes 13 reviews of the book and a rejoinder by the author).
- Kull, Kalevi, eds. (2001). Jakob von Uexküll: A Paradigm for Biology and Semiotics. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. [ = Semiotica vol. 134 (no.1-4)].
- Jesper Hoffmeyer and Kalevi Kull (2003): Baldwin and Biosemiotics: What Intelligence Is For. In: Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning - The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
- Sebeok, Thomas A., and Umiker-Sebeok, Jean, (eds.) (1992): Biosemiotics. The Semiotic Web 1991. Berlin and New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
- Sebeok, Thomas A.; Hoffmeyer, Jesper; and Emmeche, Claus, eds. (1999). Biosemiotica. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. [ = Semiotica vol. 127 (no.1-4)].
- Witzany, Guenther (2006). The Logos of the Bios 1. Contributions to the Foundation of a three-leveled Biosemiotics. Helsinki: Umweb.
External links
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