• TOWARDS [ ASEMIOTIC ' BIOLOGY Life is the Action of Signs Imperial College Press TOWARDS A SEMIOTIC BIOLOGY Life is the Action of Signs P771tp.indd 1 5/3/11 5:22 PM TOWARDS A SEMIOTIC BIOLOGY Life is the Action of Signs Sense world s si interpretant io m e s Receptor Sense net Carrier of a feature sign Internal world Object Opposite structure Effect net Carrier of an effect representamen object Effector Effect world Editors Claus Emmeche University of Copenhagen, Denmark Kalevi Kull University of Tartu, Estonia Imperial College Press ICP P771tp.indd 2 5/3/11 5:22 PM This page is intentionally left blank Published by Imperial College Press 57 Shelton Street Covent Garden London WC2H 9HE Distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. TOWARDS A SEMIOTIC BIOLOGY Life is the Action of Signs Copyright © 2011 by Imperial College Press All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher. For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. In this case permission to photocopy is not required from the publisher. ISBN-13 978-1-84816-687-5 ISBN-10 1-84816-687-7 Typeset by Stallion Press Email: [email protected] Printed in Singapore. XiaoLing - Towards a Semiotic Biology.pmd 1 4/27/2011, 3:19 PM May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm Contents Preface ix List of Contributors xi Chapter 1: Why Biosemiotics? An Introduction to Our View on the Biology of Life Itself 1 Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche and Jesper Hoffmeyer Part I: Biosemiotic Approach: General Principles Chapter 2: Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology 25 Kalevi Kull, Terrence Deacon, Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer and Frederik Stjernfelt Chapter 3: Biology Is Immature Biosemiotics 43 Jesper Hoffmeyer Chapter 4: Biosemiotic Research Questions 67 Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche and Donald Favareau Chapter 5: Organism and Body: The Semiotics of Emergent Levels of Life 91 Claus Emmeche v May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm vi Contents Chapter 6: Life Is Many, and Sign Is Essentially Plural: On the Methodology of Biosemiotics 113 Kalevi Kull Part II: Applications Chapter 7: The Need for Impression in the Semiotics of Animal Freedom: A Zoologist’s Attempt to Perceive the Semiotic Aim of H. Hediger 133 Aleksei Turovski Chapter 8: The Multitrophic Plant–Herbivore– Parasitoid–Pathogen System: A Biosemiotic Perspective 143 Luis Emilio Bruni Chapter 9: Structure and Semiosis in Biological Mimicry 167 Timo Maran Chapter 10: Semiosphere Is the Relational Biosphere 179 Kaie Kotov and Kalevi Kull Chapter 11: Why Do We Need Signs in Biology? 195 Yair Neuman Part III: Conversations Chapter 12: Between Physics and Semiotics 213 Howard H. Pattee and Kalevi Kull May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm Contents vii Chapter 13: A Roundtable on (Mis)Understanding of Biosemiotics 235 Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, Anton Markoš, Frederik Stjernfelt, Donald Favareau Chapter 14: Theories of Signs and Meaning: Views from Copenhagen and Tartu 263 Jesper Hoffmeyer and Kalevi Kull Acknowledgements 287 Name Index 289 Subject Index 297 This page is intentionally left blank May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm Preface Understanding life will never be an easy task. But it is always a fascinating exercise. Our path in this search to understand the life processes has led us, as biologists, to a semiotic view. Life processes are not only significant for the organisms they involve. Signification, meaning, interpretation and information are not just concepts used and con- structed by humans for describing such processes. We conclude that life processes themselves, by their very nature, are meaning-making, informational processes, that is, sign processes (semioses), and thus can be fruitfully understood within a semiotic perspective. This book presents a series of essays written collectively or under a mutual influence by biosemioticians who have gathered at seminars and meetings held in Copenhagen and Tartu, as well as in some other corners of the world. The selection of texts here does not cover the entire scope of views that have been developed in the last couple of decades under the name of biosemiotics or semiotic biology.As in general semiotics, in biosemiotics we can find several theoretical preferences repre- sented by different scholars. The Copenhagen and Tartu groups are close to each other and share many of their theoretical views. For several of the texts presented here, earlier versions have been published in different places. In these cases they are re-edited, with some sections appearing for the first time. The introductory article is written especially for the current volume. The rest of the book is organised into three parts. Part I focuses on the main con- ceptual issues. Part II provides examples of more data-driven and ix May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm x Preface applied research. Part III includes discussions presented in dialogic format, providing self-reflections of the field. The whole of this book seems to us to be a small step forward in a long process, in which different groups of biologists work to develop a more adequate paradigm for a scientific grasp of life. To this process belong the meetings of the Theoretical Biology Club of the 1930s in Cambridge, the Towards a Theoretical Biology symposia at Lake Como in 1968–1972, and the Gatherings in Biosemiotics in Copenhagen, Tartu, and several other places, since 2001. The lat- ter could not happen without the earlier efforts of Thomas Sebeok, Thure von Uexküll, and Jesper Hoffmeyer. There have been, of course, similar events before, and we look forward to the ones in the future. Understanding life is a life’s delight. Helpful, too. Claus Emmeche Kalevi Kull Spring 2010, Copenhagen and Tartu May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm Contributors Luis Emilio Bruni Department of Media Technology and Engineering Science, Faculty of Engineering, Science and Medicine, Aalborg University, Lautrupvang 15, 2750 Ballerup, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] Terrence Deacon Department of Anthropology, University of California, USA e-mail: [email protected] Claus Emmeche Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies, Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Blegdamsvej 17, 2100 Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] Donald Favareau University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore, Singapore e-mail: [email protected] Jesper Hoffmeyer Department of Molecular Biology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] xi May 3, 2011 16:59 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-fm xii Contributors Kaie Kotov Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, 50410 Tartu, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] Kalevi Kull Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, 50410 Tartu, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] Timo Maran Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tiigi 78, 50410 Tartu, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] Anton Markoš Department of Philosophy and History of Science, Faculty of Sciences, Vinicna 7, Charles University, CZ 128 00 Praha 2, Czech Republic e-mail: [email protected] Yair Neuman Ben Gurion University, Israel e-mail: [email protected] Howard H. Pattee 1611 Cold Spring Road, Williamstown, MA 01267, USA e-mail: [email protected] Frederik Stjernfelt Center for Semiotics, Aarhus University, Denmark e-mail: [email protected] Aleksei Turovski Tallinn Zoo, Tallinn, Estonia e-mail: [email protected] May 3, 2011 16:56 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-ch01 Chapter 1 Why Biosemiotics? An Introduction to Our View on the Biology of Life Itself Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche and Jesper Hoffmeyer Summary. This chapter introduces the very idea of a semiotic biology. Here, one needs to know what semiosis, the action of sign, is, and why semiotics, the study of signs processes, provides a strong conceptual toolbox to approach a more complete theo- retical biology. Sebeok’s thesis that living systems are constituted as sign systems is a key point of departure for the emergent sci- ence of biosemiotics. The history of semiotics in the 20th century has been influenced deeply by structuralism in linguistics, and this “semiology” is related to a similar structuralist movement in the- oretical biology. This, together with a variety of approaches that emphasize the properties of relation, signification, wholeness and contextuality, can be seen as forerunners to a more fully developed semiotic biology,that sees living creatures not just as passively sub- jected to universal laws of nature, but also as active systems of sign production, sign mediation and sign interpretation, that harness the physical laws in order to live and sometimes to make a more complex living. Such a biology is not in conflict with present-day biological research, but it promises to be a good guide towards a theoretical biology that does not turn the emergence of life — and with it, meaning and intentionality — into an incomprehensible mystery. Thus, biosemiotics would provide the basis for linking general biology with general linguistics. 1 May 3, 2011 16:56 9in x 6in Towards a Semiotic Biology b1086-ch01 2 K.