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Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. the New Biological Synthesis

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Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. the New Biological Synthesis tripleC 5(3): 104-109, 2007 ISSN 1726-670X http://tripleC.uti.at Review: Marcello Barbieri (Ed) (2007) Introduction to Biosemiotics. The new biological synthesis. Dordrecht: Springer Günther Witzany telos – Philosophische Praxis Vogelsangstr. 18c A-5111-Buermoos/Salzburg Austria E-mail: [email protected] 1 Thematic background without utterances we act as non-uttering indi- viduals being dependent on the discourse de- Maybe it is no chance that the discovery of the rived meaning processes of a linguistic (e.g. sci- genetic code occurred during the hot phase of entific) community. philosophy of science discourse about the role of This position marks the primary difference to language in generating models of scientific ex- the subject of knowledge of Kantian knowledge planation. The code-metaphor was introduced theories wherein one subject alone in principle parallel to other linguistic terms to denote lan- could be able to generate sentences in which it guage like features of the nucleic acid sequence generates knowledge. This abstractive fallacy molecules such as “code without commas” was ruled out in the early 50s of the last century (Francis Crick). At the same time the 30 years of being replaced by the “community of investiga- trying to establish an exact scientific language to tors” (Peirce) represented by the scientific com- delimit objective sentences from non-objective munity in which every single scientist is able the ones derived one of his peaks in the linguistic place his utterance looking for being integrated turn. in the discourse community in which his utter- ances will be proven whether they are good ar- 1.1 Changing subjects of knowledge guments or not. Definitively the solus ipse sub- ject of knowledge was replaced by the “indefinite The crucial steps of early Wittgenstein and community of investigators” which doesn’t not scholars of logical empiricism to delimitate scien- produce ever lasting knowledge principles about tific sentences from non-scientific ones, the fol- scientific areas, but try to get forward in discur- lowing failure of all trials to establish a scientific sive truthfulness “in the long run” (Peirce) princi- language of theory which would be coherent with pally ending with human species in an “ultimate the language of observations, or to define a sci- opinion” (Peirce) of the things which are dis- entific language which could be able to depict cussed. objective reality in a one to one fashion, lead to the unescapeable effort to get clear how we can 1.2 Anthropomorphistic use of language me- define human language according to its main tapher in early molecular biology principles; i.e., all three semiotic levels of rules not only from the (objective) observer perspec- The code-metaphor introduced on modern biol- tive but even more from the (subjective) perspec- ogy therefore was an escape of pure physics tive of participants. This would be coherent to the and chemistry because it introduced certain fea- evidence, that without utterances we can not in- tures of languages into the description of chemi- tegrate our position into any discourse. Even cal structures. What seemed to be an obvious CC: Creative Commons License, 2007. tripleC 5(3): 104-109, 2007 105 anthropomorphism was the introduction of lin- This knowledge marked the importance of epi- guistic terms on biological sciences and medi- genetics, i.e. of environmental influences on pro- cine when they used phrases like “communica- tein level which can influence via second mes- tion within cells”, “communication between cells”, sengers the amino acid level, even in coding “genetic code”, “genetic text sequence”, “chemi- functions (which would be a neo-lamarckian per- cal messengers”, “neuronal communication”, spective). For long this view has been ignored or “hormonal communication”, “transcription of the in the realm of Neo-Darwinism dogmatically ta- nucleic acid language”, “amino acid language”, booed, it now becomes more and more impor- “translation of RNA in DNA”, “Letter pairs of tant. Now we know that in the human genome DNA”, and so on. only 3 % of the complete genetic data-set are protein coding sequences. The formerly termed The investigations of biological disciplines and “junk DNA”, the noncoding DNA sequences, is subdisciplines according the knowledge of the now being recognized as higher order regulatory genetic code are legendary. It led to the most functions which are crucial for an appropriate de- developing field of science we know today. termination of the protein coding sequences. The It started the first 3 decades that main investi- difference in the protein coding sequence be- gation focused on the “molecular syntax” tween human and mouse is only 12 %, so the (Manfred Eigen), i.e. the combinatorial patterns differences depend on the higher order regula- of nucleic acids and its corresponding protein tory functions. acid sequences which determined protein struc- tures being the constituents of both of any uni- 1.4 Superficial and deep grammar of genome cellular until most complex multicellular organism storage medium and its developmental substeps. This lead to the complete deciphering of the human genome in This different development in the awareness of late 1990ies. But immediately it became clear different levels of nucleic acid storage medium that the knowledge of a complete sequence or- DNA is important because it marks the difference der of an organism doesn’t mean to know the of nucleic acid language to a one to one depic- complete meaning function which is really inher- tion of meaning functions in the genetic code. ent in the genome storage medium. Obviously there is a superficial grammar (which in the case of the human genome is deciphered 1.3 Genetic expression is no one way since the human genome project) and a hierar- chical network of higher order regulatory func- This marks a development which arose in early tions which could be termed as a genome-editing 1980ies where it became clear more and more, MetaCode (Witzany 2006) characterized by the that behind the superficial grammar of molecular strong hierarchical interdependency of all higher syntax there is something like a deep grammar order regulatory modules which we are far away of regulation networks which determines the to know in all details. meaning function of a nucleic sequence order. According to the general features of any real Interestingly this structure of language features language – a real language is a sign system was detected in the early 60s also in human lan- which functions according to the complementary guage according to the change of linguistic turn syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules – there to pragmatic turn in the theory of science discus- are several levels of higher order regulatory sion when reflecting on the validity claims being functions which are decisive for the expression held with any utterance in speech acts which and replication patterns of nucleic acid se- showed both: quences: it means that different environmental a) that speech acts are apriori social ac- influences, i.e. the situational context an organ- tions i.e. intersubjective actions which ismic individual is interwoven, determines the avoid the omnipresent problem of phi- higher order regulation of replication patterns. losophies of consciousness how to make This means that of the defined nucleic acid order the move from a state of private (solus sequence it is possible to express a great variety ipse) consciousness (sender/coding- of different expression patterns which may be receiver/decoding narrative) to a state of even contradictory: from the same nucleic acid mutual agreement and mutual coopera- order it is possible to produce different protein tion; meanings. And these different protein meanings b) that pure analyses of language and lan- may even derive without altering the genetic guage like structures based on syntactic code or being inheritable. Under certain circum- or syntactic/semantic investigations are stances these alterations may even be heritable not able to extract illocutionary meanings at all. hidden in the pragmatic (situational) con- texts which determines different mean- © Vienna University of Technology 2003. Witzany, Günther 106 ings of identical syntactic data-sets (Wit- and a linguistic/semiotic approach to nucleic acid zany 2000). language and protein language. Biosemiotics in- tegrates these approaches by investigating a va- It is obvious that the language games which are riety of organic codes, which means that the de- played in recent research are not fully compati- cisive difference between life and non-life is the ble. On the one side biological sciences (which generation and use of codes. define themselves as natural sciences investigat- ing observations according to the universal natu- 3 The contributions ral laws of physics and chemistry) which now have to deal with linguistic rules with features The book is divided into three parts. which cannot be deduced of natural laws. On the other side a coherent language and communica- Part 1 – “Historical Background” with contribu- tion theory which is limited to the human self- tions by Donald Favareau (The Evolutionary His- understanding. tory of Biosemiotics), Tuomo Jämsä (Semiosis in Evolution), Marcello Barbieri (Has Biosemiotics 2 The new player in this universal discourse: Come of Age? and Postscript). Biosemiotics Part 2 – “Theoretical Issues” with contributions At this point a new discipline holds validity claims by Howard Pattee (The Necessity of Biosemiot- in
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