This book presents programmatic texts on biosemiotics, written collectively by world leading scholars in the field (Deacon, Emmeche, Favareau, Hoffmeyer, Kull, Markoš, Pattee, Stjernfelt). In addition, the book includes chapters which focus closely on semiotic case studies (Bruni, Kotov, Maran, Neuman, Turovski). According to the central thesis of biosemiotics, sign processes characterise all living systems and the very nature of life, and their diverse phenomena can be best explained via the dynamics and typology of sign relations. The authors are therefore presenting a deeper view on biological evolution, intentionality of organisms, the role of communication in the living world and the nature of sign systems — all topics which are described in this volume. This has important consequences on the methodology and epistemology of biology and study of life phenomena in general, which the authors aim to help the reader better understand. Contents:Why Biosemiotics? An Introduction to Our View on the Biology of Life Itself (Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche & Jesper Hoffmeyer)Biosemiotic Approach: General Principles:Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology (Kalevi Kull, Terrence Deacon, Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer & Frederik Stjernfelt)Biology is Immature Biosemiotics (Jesper Hoffmeyer)Biosemiotic Research Questions (Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche & Donald Favareau)Organism and Body: The Semiotics of Emergent Levels of Life (Claus Emmeche)Life is Many, and Sign is Essentially Plural: On the Methodology of Biosemiotics (Kalevi Kull)Applications:The Need for Impression in the Semiotics of Animal Freedom: A Zoologist's Attempt to Perceive the Semiotic Aim of H Hediger (Aleksei Turovski)The Multitrophic Plant-Herbivore-Parasitoid-Pathogen System: A Biosemiotic Perspective (Luis Emilio Bruni)Structure and Semiosis in Biological Mimicry (Timo Maran)Semiosphere is the Relational Biosphere (Kaie Kotov & Kalevi Kull)Why Do We Need Signs in Biology? (Yair Neuman)Conversations:Between Physics and Semiotics (Howard H Pattee & Kalevi Kull)A Roundtable on (Mis)Understanding of Biosemiotics (Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, Anton Markoš, Frederik Stjernfelt & Donald Favareau)Theories of Signs and Meaning: Views from Copenhagen and Tartu (Jesper Hoffmeyer & Kalevi Kull) Readership: Semioticians, biologists and those interested in the philosophy of science. Keywords:Biosemiotics;Theoretical Biology;Semiosis;Biocommunication;Semiotics;Philosophy of Biology;EthologyKey Features:This is a unique collection of the major recent contributions by the leading scientists in the field of biosemioticsThis volume will for the first time present a collective view of the group of scholars who have built the current understanding of biosemiotics (i.e. the community of researchers emanating from the major biosemiotic centers of Copenhagen and Tartu into other places worldwide)

This book presents programmatic texts on biosemiotics, written collectively by world leading scholars in the field (Deacon, Emmeche, Favareau, Hoffmeyer, Kull, Marko?, Pattee, Stjernfelt). In addition, the book includes chapters which focus closely on semiotic case studies (Bruni, Kotov, Maran, Neuman, Turovski). According to the central thesis of biosemiotics, sign processes characterise all living systems and the very nature of life, and their diverse phenomena can be best explained via the dynamics and typology of sign relations. The authors are therefore presenting a deeper view on biological evolution, intentionality of organisms, the role of communication in the living world and the nature of sign systems - all topics which are described in this volume. This has important consequences on the methodology and epistemology of biology and study of life phenomena in general, which the authors aim to help the reader better understand.

This book presents contexts and associations of the semiotic view in biology, by making a short review of the history of the trends and ideas of biosemiotics, or semiotic biology, in parallel with theoretical biology. Biosemiotics can be defined as the science of signs in living systems. A principal and distinctive characteristic of semiotic biology lies in the understanding that in living, entities do not interact like mechanical bodies, but rather as messages, the pieces of text. This means that the whole determinism is of another type.

Combining research approaches from biology, philosophy and linguistics, the field of Biosemiotics proposes that animals, plants and single cells all engage in semiosis – the conversion of objective signals into conventional signs. This has important implications and applications for issues ranging from natural selection to animal behavior and human psychology, leaving biosemiotics at the cutting edge of the research on the fundamentals of life. Drawing on an international expertise, the book details the history and study of biosemiotics, and provides a state-of-the-art summary of the current work in this new field. And, with relevance to a wide range of disciplines – from linguistics and semiotics to evolutionary phenomena and the philosophy of biology – the book provides an important text for both students and established researchers, while marking a vital step in the evolution of a new biological paradigm.

Recent debates surrounding the teaching of biology divide participants into three camps based on how they explain the appearance of the human race: evolution, creationism, or intelligent design. Biosemiotics discovers an intriguing higher ground respecting those opposing theories by arguing that questions of meaning and experiential life can be integrated into the scientific study of nature. This groundbreaking book shows how the linguistic powers of humans imply that consciousness emerges in the evolutionary process and that life is based on sign action, not just molecular interaction. Biosemiotics will be essential reading for anyone interested in the nexus of linguistic possibility and biological reality.

This book invites readers to embark on a journey into the world of agency encompassing humans, other organisms, cells, intracellular molecular agents, colonies, populations, ecological systems, and artificial autonomous systems. We combine mechanistic and non-mechanistic approaches in the analysis of the function and evolution of organisms, their subagents, and multi-organism systems, and in this way offer a theoretical platform for integrating biosemiotics with both natural science and the humanities/social sciences. Agents are autonomous systems that incorporate knowledge on how to make sense of their environment and use it to achieve their goals. The functions of all agents are supported by mechanisms at the lowest level; however, the explanatory power of mechanistic analysis is not sufficient for complex agents. Non-mechanistic methods rely on the goal-directedness of agents whose dynamics follow self-stabilized dynamic attractors. The properties of attractors depend on stable or slowly changing factors, and such dependencies can be interpreted as sign relations if they are adaptive in nature. Agents can replace or redirect mechanisms on demand in order to preserve their functions; for performing higher-level semiotic functions, mechanisms are thus only means. We assume that mechanism and semiosis are not mutually exclusive, and that simple agents can interpret signs mechanistically. This assumption allows us to extend semiotic analysis to all agents, including ribosomes in cells, computers, and robots. This book challenges established traditions in natural science and the humanities/social sciences: semiotics no longer appears as restricted to humans and rational thinking, and biology is no longer limited to rely exclusively on mechanistic reasoning.

The first international volume on the topic of biosemiotics and linguistics. It aims to establish a new relationship between linguistics and biology as based on shared semiotic foundation.