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Biosemiotics: Communication and Causation (Information Included)

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Biosemiotics: Communication and Causation (Information Included) tripleC 7(2): 172-178, 2009 ISSN 1726-670X http://www.triple-c.at Biosemiotics: Communication and Causation (Information included) Juan Ramón Álvarez Professor of Logic and Philosophy of Science, Universidad de León, Spain Abstract: Pretensions of Biosemiotics as a unified approach to biological information are critically scrutinized within the study of different projects of semiotisation of nature and naturalization ot cultural processes. Main textual references and arguments are presented and critically pondered.Biosemiotics is here presented as an analytical method to study communication as founded in causality. Keywords: Biosemiotics, semiotisation, communication, causation, information, biology. 1. The Thing remembers that a biochemist, Marcel Florkin, “coined the term „biosemiotics‟ for the study of irst of all, thanks to the Organising semiosis (the production of signs) at the Committee for inviting me to participate in molecular level” (2008, p. 1.). He also notes this round table. My talk deals with and narrates how, from the side of linguistics, Biosemiotics, a trend in biological thought that Thomas Sebeok, after discovering the works has been steadily attracting attention and of the Estonian biologist Theodor von Uexküll, securing an institutional place, at least in the became convinced that he “had already world of scientific publications. A good provided abundant evidence of semiosis in reference thereof is a journal thus named and the animal world, and had been in fact the edited by Marcello Barbieri, a well known unintentional founding father of zoosemiotics” biologist, who has been developing a theory (Ibid.). And he finally concludes that the of the organic codes proper to living systems. biological and linguistic lines plus the line However, its place in biological academic followed in Physics by Howard Pattee curricula has not yet attained parallel converged at the turn of the century into a significance. unified, though pluralistic, discipline I thought it right to talk about Biosemiotics encompassing different schools that, in spite here because, as its supporters argue, the of the differences, share “the idea that idea of communication permeates and even semiosis is fundamental to life, that all living define the world of life. In a Congress about systems are semiotic systems.” (Ibid. p. 2) information in very different contexts a brief The Danish molecular biologist Jesper presentation of the semiotics of life, as it is Hoffmeyer provided at the beginning of the construed by biosemioticians, may contribute development of Biosemiotics the sharpest ideas of interest in the domain of Biology, expositions of this view‟s pretensions towards where the idea on information has been so a unified biological theory that would integrate fruitfully employed, and this employment very the two main trends of the Twentieth Century. vehemently discussed. They are, as Hoffmeyer see them in their Biosemiotics is a field where different uneven coexistence, the prevailing molecular traditions both from the natural and human and genetic reductionism and an underground sciences converge. In his editorial of the first less known trend, but at the long run of equal number of the anew founded journal, Barbieri CC: Creative Commons License, 2009. tripleC 7(2): 172-178, year 173 importance, “the semiotisation of nature” communication- are proper of all living beings. (Hoffmeyer, 1997). He is right for sure on the The conversion to this conviction of a semiotic latter, because von Uexküll‟s Umwelt theory scientist is eminently instantiated by the remained outside the main trend by virtue of Hungarian linguist Thomas Sebeok, who its founder antievolutionism and the great expressed his position in the following text at development of Molecular Biology that lead in the beginning of his article “Communication”: the Fifties to the discovery of the molecular structure of the units of heredity. Thus, on the “All living things -whole organisms as sidelines of evolutionary theory and molecular well as their parts - are interlinked in a genetics, this underground and marginal highly ordered fashion. Such order, or semiotisation of nature that ends up called by organization, is maintained by the name „Biosemiotics‟ does not emerge until communication. […]In the broadest way, the last quarter of the century was passing communication can be regarded as the away. transmission of any influence from one The biosemiotical tradition, as a part of a living system to another part, semiotisation of nature, gets its inspiration thus producing change. It is messages from the works of von Uexküll, who developed that are being transmitted. … .The the theory that every organism has its own process of message exchanges, or surrounding world (its own Umwelt) semiosis, is an indispensable dependent so much upon its environment as characteristic of all terrestrial life forms. It on its body plan. The Umwelt is twofold: it is this capacity for containing, replicating, includes a set of meaningful elements (the so and expressing messages, of extracting called Merkwelt) as well as a set of causal their signification that, in fact, elements (contrastingly called Wirkwelt). This distinguishes them more from the theory was formulated in the early Twentieth nonliving - except for human agents, Century -in fact in Uexküll, (1909) - and was such as computers and robots that can developed in successive works. Its impact and be programmed to simulate acknowledgement in biology and philosophy communication - than any other traits did not take place until the recovery, by a often cited. The study of the twin biological thought that had adopted (in its processes of communication and methodology and even in its ontology) signification can be regarded as semiotic sciences‟ basic concepts such as ultimately a branch of the life science, or information, code, transmission, etc. John as belonging in large part to nature, in Deely (2004a) has profiled von Uexküll as a some part to culture, which is, of course, cryptosemiotician who was rescued when the also a part of nature. (Sebeok, 1994, time was ripe. When the time came for the Web). adoption of semiotic elements in biological No wonder that the same John Deely sciences, which are different from, but are not (2004b) who considered von Uexküll a disconnected of the semiotic sciences, it is cryptosemiotician, calls Sebeok a biologist easy to understand that the underground manqué. current, hitherto not recognised at all, got at least a minimum of attention from biologists 2. The Thought trained in the prevailing trend, such as Emmeche, Sharov, Kull, and Hoffmeyer The process of communication –an himself. exchange of messages from a transmitter to a Yet, Biosemiotics did not gain recognition receiver- understood as the transmission of only because of the leaning of some biologists any influence from one system to another one and philosophers toward the principles and (or from a part of a system to another one concepts of semiotic sciences, but also, to a within the system) identifies, in its basic form, good extent, by the conviction of distinguished communication and causation (and, thus, scholars of the semiotic sciences who saw, message transmission and causal influence). across the kinds of sciences, that certain Sebeok‟s turn does not go from causes to processes –especially those of signs, but rather from signs to causes. The CC: Creative Commons License, 2009. 174 Juan Ramón Álvarez semiotisation of nature brought to attention by need to biologically naturalise the relation of Hoffmeyer is, at the same time, a semiosis (Álvarez, 2007). naturalisation of semiosis (and, by extension, As Vehkavaara (1998) has convincingly of culture as a system of symbolic forms in shown, the dominant wing –and in particular Cassirer‟s sense). I have dealt in detail with Hoffmeyer- has misconstrued the Peircean this subject in Álvarez (2007). triad confusing interpretant (effect produced in The ground of this semiotisation of nature is the interpreter) with the interpreter (the the assimilation, in its basic and simplest subject), generating a different triad that form, of communication to causation in living seems to bear a great similarity with Morris‟ systems. In Sebeok‟s own words - semiotic set {signs, objects subjects}. “communication can be regarded as the Vehkavaara (1998, 2003) means to correct transmission of any influence from one part of the confusion and at the same time to a living system to another part, thus producing introduce the interpreter, taking as a better change” (see quotation above). However, scheme the one sketched by Sharov, and there is a concept of communication as causal modified by himself (1998). Two examples are influence of general extension, the change of illustrated in the following table 1: state produced in a system S2 by the change A of state in a system S1. In this assertion I am Object ..…………………………. Representant taking the “realist” interpretation of the relation Ancestor…………………………. ADN S1(e1 e2) S2(e1 e2) as causation. The elementary form of communication is plain Descendant (Interpretant) physical causation: there is no communication Cell (Interpreter) without an underlying causal connection. This suffices to apply the same criterion to B biological contexts. Object ………………….……….. Representant Traditional Biosemiotics has been most of Environment…………Differential reproduction all a Peircean semiotics of the living, at least in what Vehkavaara (2003) calls “the Genic frequency (interpretant)
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