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In-Depth Information
According to Jesper Hoffmeyer (2008), brains
are supplementary organs that grew relatively
late in evolution in a few species to support psy-
chological life. The bodily existence depends on
transfer of intracellular signals, for example of the
skin that makes a huge landscape of membranes
with ever reconstituting semiotically controlled
dynamics, and the semiotic mechanisms control
homeostasis and the psycho-neuro-endocrine
integration in the body.
Jesper Hoffmeyer wrote in 1993,
thus the study of representation, meaning, sense,
and the biological significance of sign processes
- from intercellular signaling processes to animal
display behavior to human semiotic artifacts such
as language and abstract symbolic thought” (Fa-
vareau, 2008, p. 10).
The data (such as physical dimensions or
electromagnetic properties) is meaningless
per
se
but is potential information for a living being,
which receives and records information. With this
approach, the ability to record, store, and process
information from the data contained in matter, and
then to convey it further may distinguish life from
inanimate objects. Complex, self-organizing living
systems display functional meanings that can be
studied with regard to biosemiosis - sign action in
living systems called by Thomas A. Sebeok (1991,
p. 22) the process of message exchanges. “Semio-
sis is the specific feature which distinguishes the
living from the inanimate” (Battail, 2009), as the
living world is the unique place where semiosis
takes place. Both information theorists and neu-
roscientists agree that any operation that involves
information needs to be physically implemented;
human thought is physically inscribed in neurons.
Information is the means by which ideas can reside
in the physical world, interact with it, and provide
the link between physical-chemical processes and
those involving meaning (Battail, 2009). Living
organisms contain symbolic information inscribed
into DNA molecules; information links abstract
and the concrete (Battail, 2011). Marcello Barbieri
(2010) asserts that biosemiotics put forward by
Thomas Sebeok as a non-human communication
system, and biolinguistics as developed by Noam
Chomsky, are in the case of language studying
the same phenomenon. The convergence of these
two domains may lead to a unified framework
for research with a new approach to the origin
of language.
Studies conducted in terms of biosemiotics
involve a growing number of varied domains
including, for example, architecture and cell
Biosemiotics can be defined as the science of
signs in living systems. A principal and distinc-
tive characteristic of semiotic biology lays in
the understanding that in living, entities do not
interact like mechanical bodies, but rather as
messages, the pieces of text. This means that the
whole determinism is of another type. … The
phenomena of recognition, memory, categoriza-
tion, mimicry, learning, communication are thus
among those of interest for biosemiotic research,
together with the analysis of the application of the
tools and notions of semiotics (text, translation,
interpretation, semiosis, types of sign, meaning)
in the biological realm. However, what makes
biosemiotics important and interesting for science
in general, is its attempt to research the origins of
semiotic phenomena, and together with natural
sciences, culture with nature, through the proper
understanding of the relationships between 'ex-
ternal and internal nature. (Hoffmeyer, 1993, p.
155; in Kull, 1999, p. 386)
Processes going in living systems do not inter-
act like mechanical bodies but rather as messages.
Sign processes in living organisms are intrinsic
to their highly organized physical and chemical
processes that go at all levels, from molecules,
cell organelles, tissues, organisms, to ecosystems.
As Donald Favareau states, “Biosemiotics is the
study of communication and signification observ-
able both within and between living systems. It is
