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Biosemiotic Questions

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Abstract

This paper examines the biosemiotic approach to the study of life processes by fashioning a series of questions that any worthwhile semiotic study of life should ask. These questions can be understood simultaneously as: (1) questions that distinguish a semiotic biology from a non-semiotic (i.e., reductionist–physicalist) one; (2) questions that any student in biosemiotics should ask when doing a case study; and (3) still currently unanswered questions of biosemiotics. In addition, some examples of previously undertaken biosemiotic case studies are examined so as to suggest a broad picture of how such a biosemiotic approach to biology might be done.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., the examination of the primarily mechano-physicalist lineage in Hacking (1983), Keller (2002), Levins and Lewontin (2006); etc.

  2. This view is compatible with, and in some senses generalizes, the idea of Polanyi (1968) that the information in the DNA acts as a boundary condition for the physical processes in the cell.

  3. See, e.g., Andersen et al. (2000), Pattee (2007).

  4. See also Anderson et al. (1984), Hoffmeyer (1997); also, “Thesis 1” in Emmeche et al. (2002: 14).

  5. Cf. Short (1981), Searle (1993), Deely (2007), Hoffmeyer (1996a).

  6. On the relatedness between intentionality, biological needs, and the recognition of absence, see also Kull (2000a).

  7. The fundamental role of the processes of categorization by organisms can be demonstrated via the view of a species as a ‘communicative category’ that has been developed in studies examining the evolutionary role of various forms of recognition between organisms and species (e.g., the ‘recognition concept of species’ as developed by Paterson (1993), Lambert and Spencer (1995).

  8. On the biosemiotic concept of function, see Emmeche (2002).

  9. See Palmer (2004).

  10. Similarly to the concept of the ‘extended mind’ in cognitive approaches (Clark and Chalmers 1998).

  11. See Kull and Torop (2003).

  12. Eco (1979: 6) writes: ‘By natural boundaries I mean principally those beyond which a semiotic approach cannot go; for there is non-semiotic territory since there are phenomena that cannot be taken as sign-functions’. On multiple approaches to such a semiotic threshold, see Stjernfelt (2003, 2007).

  13. von Uexküll (1986a, b); Emmeche (1984, 2004); cf. Clarke (2003).

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Acknowledgements

We thank Terrence Deacon, Jesper Hoffmeyer, and Frederik Stjernfelt for productive conversations on the formulation of these biosemiotic questions.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, 50410, Tartu, Estonia

    Kalevi Kull

  2. Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies, Niels Bohr Institute, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Claus Emmeche

  3. University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore

    Donald Favareau

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  1. Kalevi Kull
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Kull, K., Emmeche, C. & Favareau, D. Biosemiotic Questions. Biosemiotics 1, 41–55 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-008-9008-2

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