Linguistics, Semiotics, and Philosophy - Molecular Theory of the Living Cell - page 160

Table 6.2 A postulated relative importance of laws and rules in physics, biology, and linguistics
Physics
(law-based)

Biology (law-rule
complementarity-based)

Linguistics
(rule-based)

Laws (governing matter/energ y) +++++ +++ +

Rules (governing symbols or signs
carrying information )

+ +++ +++++

the predictable or determinism (the domain of physics) and the unpredictable or
creativity (the domain of evolutionary biology and linguistics; or the domain of rule-
governed creativity [Ji 1997a; Lyons 1992]). It seems likely that (1) rules wrought
by evolution or social conventions and (2) the physical laws of nature play equally
fundamental roles in biology in agreement with Pattee (2008) and Barbieri (2003).
We may refer to this idea as the complementarity between determinism and
nondeterminism (CDN). CDN so defined may be unique to biology as indicated by
the third column in Table 6.2 . CDN is related to the concept of matter-symbol
complementarity that has been advanced by H. Pattee (1982, 2001, 2008; Umerez
2001) over the past three decades, according to which all living systems embody two
complementary aspects - the physical law-governed energetic/material aspect and
the evolutionary rule-governed symbolic aspect . This idea was renamed as the von
Neumann-Pattee principle of matter-sign complementarity in Ji (1999b) to reflect
not only the history of the development of this important concept starting with von
Neumann but also its affinity to the more general notion of information/energy
complementarity embodied in the new biology-based philosophical framework
known as complementarism (see Sect. 2.3 , and Ji 1995). The theory of organic
codes proposed by Barbieri (2003) may be viewed as another species of the
biological theories based on the matter-symbol complementarity and the comple-
mentarity between determinism (matter) and nondeterminism (symbol, or codes)
(CDN). Furthermore, it is suggested in Sect. 6.1.3 that CDN is related to the
arbitrariness of signs , one of the 13 design features of human language, that may
have evolved to maximize the ability of messages to transmit information (Ji 1997a,
pp. 36-37). Nondeterminism , arbitrariness, and creativity may all reflect different
aspects of the same essential feature of the message source of a communication
system, that is, the freedom for a sender to choose different messages, which
maximizes when all messages have an equal probability for selection and hence
which message happens to be chosen is arbitrary (Ji 1997a, pp. 36-37).
If the content of Table 6.2 is correct, biology may be described as neither physics
nor linguistics but a combination of both . This same idea may be expressed as
follows:

Biology is a complementary union of physics and linguistics. (6.4)
Physics and linguistics are the complementary aspects of biology. (6.5)
Biology has two complementary aspects - physics and linguistics. (6.6)
Physics is law-based, linguistics is rule-based, and biology is based on both physical laws
and evolutionary rules.

(6.7)