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Biosemiotic Medicine: from an Effect-Based Medicine to a Process-Based Medicine

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Biosemiotic Medicine: from an Effect-Based Medicine to a Process-Based Medicine Special article Arch Argent Pediatr 2020;118(5):e449-e453 / e449 Biosemiotic medicine: From an effect-based medicine to a process-based medicine Carlos G. Musso, M.D., Ph.D.a,b ABSTRACT Such knowledge evidences the Contemporary medicine is characterized by an existence of a large and intricate increasing subspecialization and the acquisition of a greater knowledge about the interaction among interconnected network among the the different body structures (biosemiotics), different body structures, which both in health and disease. This article proposes accounts for a sort of “communication a new conceptualization of the body based on channel” among its elements, a true considering it as a biological space (cells, tissues, and organs) and a biosemiotic space (exchange of “dialogic or semiotic space” that is signs among them). Its development would lead conceptually abstract but experientially to a new subspecialty focused on the study and real, through which normal and interference of disease biosemiotics (biosemiotic pathological intra- and inter- medicine), which would trigger a process- based medicine centered on early diagnosis and parenchymal dialogs (sign exchange) management of disease. occur. Such dialogs determine a Key words: medicine, biosemiotics, diagnosis, balanced functioning of organ systems therapy. or the onset and establishment of http://dx.doi.org/10.5546/aap.2020.eng.e449 disease, respectively. The investigation and analysis of such phenomenon is the subject of a relative new discipline: To cite: Musso CG. Biosemiotic medicine: From an biosemiotics, which deals with the effect-based medicine to a process-based medicine. 1 Arch Argent Pediatr 2020;118(5):e449-e453. study of the natural world’s language. The objective of this article is to propose a new form of conceptualization of how live beings in general, and human beings in particular, are formed based on INTRODUCTION biosemiotics’ principles and also to Contemporary medicine is describe the potential benefits that characterized by a steep rise in this new perspective may bring to a. Instituto scientific knowledge, a phenomenon health care. Universitario del Hospital Italiano that has inexorably incited two de Buenos Aires, highly significant situations. Biosemiotics: Nature’s discourse Argentina. On the one side, an increasing In the early 20th century, biologist b. School of trend towards subspecialization, Jakob von Uexküll became the first Health Sciences, Universidad which is a direct result of human person to propose that every organism Simón Bolívar, inability to individually encompass establishes a vital information Barranquilla, the entirety of the vast scientific exchange with its environment Colombia. knowledge produced at present in (umwelt), which leads to an external E-mail address: a timely manner that would allow semiosis or information semiosis Carlos G. Musso, M.D.: for its effective implementation in process that von Uexküll called carlos.musso@ health care practice. On the other exosemiosis.1,2 Later, his son, medical hospitalitaliano.org.ar side, the progressive acquisition of doctor Thure von Uexküll, together Funding: an increasing knowledge about the with medical doctors Werner Geigges None. close dialogic interaction (semiosis) and Jörg Herrmann, extended that takes place among the different this concept to the inner body Conflict of interest: body cells, tissues, and organs, both (symptomatization semiosis), where None. in health (physiology-salutogenesis) information (sign) exchange takes Received: 3-26-2020 and disease (pathophysiology- place inside and among each of the Accepted: 5-20-2020 pathogenesis). different biological complexity levels e450 / Arch Argent Pediatr 2020;118(5):e449-e453 / Special article of the body: cells, tissues, organs, and organ unit is not a molecule in itself but its function as a systems. sign (Hoffmeyer).5,7 This process, which Thure von Uexküll et al. called endosemiosis, has vast semiotic proportions Biosemiotics: Levels of complexity if we consider that the human body alone is made Biosemiotics studies the natural world’s up of approximately 25 trillion cells, which is language by exploring its varying levels equivalent to more than 2000 times the world of complexity: from cellular semiotics population. Of course, both semiotic processes (cytosemiotics), where sign processes are (exosemiosis and endosemiosis) are delicately chemical, electrical, mechanical, and thermal, to coordinated, thus leading to a bidirectional vegetative semiotics (phytosemiotics), animal information flow between the body and its semiotics (zoosemiotics), and finally, human environment that Jakob von Uexküll called feedback semiotics (anthroposemiotics), at which level sign loop. Finally, Thure von Uexküll, together with processes can even reach, through words, the linguist Thomas Sebeok and medical doctor Giorgi representation of what is absent or even inexistent Prodi, standardized and extended these concepts (fantasy).7,8 In this regard, from an evolutionary and gave rise to a new interdiscipline: biosemiotics.1,3,4 perspective, biosemiotics is divided into three Semiotics is defined as the study of signs; major phases: an initial phase (primordial), where and a sign is anything that is used in place of a rudimentary biological semiosis is established something else and, since a sign is always tied with the emergence of life; a second phase to a meaning, semiotics also includes the study (hermeneutic), where beings with a nervous of meanings. Likewise, the association between system emerge and a more complex semiosis a sign and its meaning requires the presence of with certain level of interpretation is established; a third entity that establishes a relation between and finally, an advanced phase (symbolic) of them through a set of conventions or codes, which biological semiotics, where human beings appear is also a subject of study in semiotics. Finally, any and a language based on cultural codes is born.5 semiotic system requires, in addition to the sign- Therefore, in the biosemiotics universe, each meaning-code triad, a fourth factor that is the complexity level uses its own particular sign decoder.5,6 system; so, the system used by biosemiotics at Based on the preceding, biosemiotics is one level (e.g., tissues) is not necessarily the same defined as the study of signs, their meaning and used in the underlying level (e.g., cells) or in interconnecting codes in living systems. At the the overlying level (e.g., organs).1-4 However, it most essential level of life, such as cells, signs are is worth noting that, since the semiotic activity represented by the genotype; meanings, by the that takes place in each level of biological phenotype; codes, by the correspondence between complexity allows the semiotic activity to occur deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic at the remaining levels, it is therefore inferred acid (RNA) nucleotides; and decoders, by the that there is necessarily a conversion system in ribotype, i.e., the ribosome system responsible for place among the sign systems of the different DNA transcription and translation. levels that enables their dialog. The discovery of According to biosemiotics, as in the case of what would be the Rosetta Stone of biosemiotics, human language and mathematics, the rules i.e., the stone inscribed in three languages that governing semiosis in the biological world are allowed Champollion to decipher, by comparison, universal and predetermined, so they should be Egyptian hieroglyphs, is one of the greatest discovered by decoders in an exploratory manner. challenges of this discipline because it would Trifonov and other authors have stated that, in allow to decipher the equivalence (translation) addition to the typical genetic code, there are at between the different sign systems (languages) least twenty organic codes overlapping in the used at the different levels of the body’s biological genome. Other authors, like Peirce and Taborsky, complexity.1,9 have even proposed the concept pansemiosis, which It is worth pointing out that, when a molecule states that the semiosis process is inherent to the (e.g., a cytokine) plays a sign role in a biosemiotic universe functioning in general, thus governing process, analogous to the dyadic model of the even the inorganic level. In brief, biosemiotics is linguistic sing (word) proposed by Ferdinand de based on the idea that all live beings constitute a Saussure, such molecule-sign is considered to be semiotic system themselves, and semiosis is critical made up of an equivalent of what would be the for the phenomenon of life because its essential linguistic signifier (sound), which, in this case, Biosemiotic medicine: From an effect-based medicine to a process-based medicine / e451 would be the molecule-sign chemical structure (e.g., currently available about the dialogs (both peptide) and, on the other side, an equivalent of what normal and pathological) or crosstalks established would be the meaning of a linguistic sign (concept), between the different organs, e.g., between the which, in this case, would be the potential action of liver and the lung or the kidney and the liver, the molecule-sign (e.g., proinflammatory action). which take place through the nervous, endocrine, Finally, the object of the real world represented by and immune systems, is enough to develop a the linguistic sign (referent) would be, in this case, new discipline that furthers the study of these the actual effect of the molecule-sign’s action (e.g.,
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