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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Lebensstil
- Serie: Astrobiology Perspectives on Life in the Univers
- Sprache: Englisch
Pathways to the Origin and Evolition of Meanings in the Universe The book explains why meaning is a part of the universe populated by life, and how organisms generate meanings and then use them for creative transformation of the environment and themselves. This book focuses on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of biology, semiotics, philosophy, ethology, information theory, and the theory of evolution. Such a broad approach provides a rich context for the study of organisms and other semiotic agents in their environments. This methodology can be applied to robotics and artificial intelligence for developing robust, adaptable learning devices. In this book, leading interdisciplinary scholars reveal their vision on how to integrate natural sciences with semiotics, a theory of meaning-making and signification. Developments in biology indicate that the capacity to create and understand signs is not limited to humans or vertebrate animals, but exists in all living organisms - the fact that inspired the integration of biology and semiotics into biosemiotics. The authors discuss the nature of semiotic agents (organisms and other autonomous goal-directed units), meaning, signs, information, memory, evolution, and consciousness. Also discussed are issues including the origin of life, potential meaning and its actualization, top-down causality in physics and biology, capacity of organisms to encode their functions, the strategy of organisms to combine homeostasis with direct adaptation to new life-cycle phases or new environments, multi-level memory systems, increase of freedom via enabling constraints, creative modeling in evolution and learning, communication in animals and humans, the origin and function of language, and the distribution and transfer of life in space. This is the first book on biosemiotics in its global conceptual and spatial scope. Biosemiotics is presented using the language of natural sciences, which supports the scientific grounding of semiotic terms. Finally, the cosmic dimension of life and meaning-making leads to a reconsideration of ethical principles and ecological mentality here on earth and in space exploration. Audience Theoretical biologists, ethologists, astrobiologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers, phenomenologists, semioticians, biosemioticians, molecular biologists, linguists, system scientists and engineers.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgments
Part I: THE NATURE OF MEANING AND ITS COMPONENTS
1 Introduction: Towards Integrating Studies of Meanings with Science
1.1 Crossing the Great Paradigm Divide
1.2 What is Meaning?
1.3 The Origin of Life
1.4 Semiotic Agency
1.5 Mind and Consciousness
1.6 Semiogenesis and Learning
1.7 Global Dimensions of Biosemiosis
1.8 Conclusions
Declaration
References
2 Pathways to the Understanding of Signs and Meanings in the Biosphere: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Part One: A Brief History of the Conceptualization of Signs and Meanings in the Natural Sciences
2.3 Part Two: Towards a Future Science of Signs and Meaning
12
2.4 Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Declaration
References
3 Is it a Janus-Faced World After All? Physics is Not Reductionist
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Top-Down Causation in Biology
3.3 Top-Down Causation in Physics and Chemistry
3.4 Multilevel Probabilistic Systems
References
4 Semiotic Ground and the Hierarchic Nature of Information
4.1 From Information to Semiosis: Why We Can’t Seem to Even Start
4.2 Three Embedded Information Theories
4.3 Computation and Structural Information
4.4 Semiotic Grounding
4.5 A Possible Bridge?
4.6 Preliminary Conclusions
References
5 Ontology and Semiotics of Memory
5.1 Semiotic Realism versus Semiotic Constructivism
5.2 Protosemiosis: Recording Without Reading or ‘Heritability’ of the Universe Before Earth
5.3 Biological Memory: Between a Particle and a Wave
5.4 Social Memory: From Nature to Nurture
5.5 Memory and the Origin of Language
5.6 Conclusions
Declaration
References
6 Meanings, Their Hierarchy, and Evolution
6.1 Introduction
6.2 Hierarchogenesis and Its Stages During the General Evolution of the Universe
6.3 Potential Meanings During the Abiotic Period of the Evolution of the Universe
6.4 Evolution of Meanings in the Biological Systems
6.5 The Evolution of Meanings in Human Societies and the Relationship between Hierarchies of Substance and Semantics
Declarations
Acknowledgments
References
7 Semiotics of Potential Meanings
7.1 Introduction
7.2 Form in the Philosophy of Idealism
7.3 Semiotic Agency in Biosemiotics
7.4 Signs and Meanings as Semiotic Tools
7.5 Conceptualizing Potential Meanings and Signs
7.6 Potential Meanings and Complexity of the Non-Living World
7.7 Actualization of Potential Meanings by Organisms
7.8 Potential Signs and Meanings in Human Life
Declaration
Acknowledgments
References
8 A Constructivist Approach to Meanings in the Universe
8.1 Do We Ask the Right Kinds of Questions?
8.2 The Epistemological Trap of Language
8.3 The Observer, the Observed, and the Problem of Interpretation
8.4 Meaning and the Mindful Observer
References
Part II: MEANINGS IN THE EVOLUTION OF LIFE
9 Chemical Origins of Life, Agency, and Meaning
9.1 Conflicting Paradigms in Studying the Origin of Life
9.2 Physicochemical Evolution
9.3 Hypothetical Primordial Soup
9.4 Life Emerged in the Form of Molecular Agency
9.5 Lipid World as a Habitat for Self-Reproducing Catalytic Agents
9.6 Semiotics of Heredity
9.7 Evolvability of Molecular Agents
9.8 Emergence of Unlimited Heredity and Cell Membrane
9.9 How Old is Life?
9.10 Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Declaration
References
10 Evolution of Biomolecular Communication
10.1 Introduction
10.2 A Biphasic Model of Evolutionary Growth
10.3 Communication
10.4 Learning Demands Communication
10.5 Biological Vocabularies and Their Evolution
10.6 Persistence, the Evolutionary Master
10.7 Laws of Language in Biological Communication
10.8 Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Declaration
References
11 Meaning Relies on Codes but Depends on Agents
11.1 Introduction
11.2 Organic Codes and Cellular Core Functionalities
11.3 Codes Control Other Codes
11.4 Coding the Mind: Neural Codes Enable Perception and Cognition
11.5 Meaning
in
or
from
Codes?
11.6 Meaning
with
or
without
Interpretation?
11.7 Critical Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Declaration
References
12 Evolutionary Growth of Meanings in the Relational Universe of Intercommunicating Agents
12.1 Introduction: Agency and Meaning
12.2 Physical Background of the Agential Nature
12.3 Meaningful Information in Autopoietic Systems
12.4 Generation of New Meanings in the Evolutionary Process
12.5 The Growth of Meanings in the Evolutionary Transition from Biological to Social Systems
12.6 Conclusion
Declaration
References
Part III: MEANINGS IN ORGANISM BEHAVIOR AND COGNITION
13 The Sentient Cell
13.1 Introduction
13.2 The Issues
13.3 The Last Word
References
14 A Hypothesis about How Bacterial Cells Sustain and Change Their Lives in Response to Various Signals
14.1 Introduction
14.2 The Hypothesis
14.3 The Evidence
14.4 Using Semiotics to Explain Cues and Signals in Bacteria
14.5 Discussion
Declaration
Acknowledgment
References
15 Self-Reinforcing Cycles and Mistakes: The Emergence of Subjective Meaning
15.1 Introduction
15.2 Subjective versus Relatively Objective
15.3 How Symbols Are Used by Brainless Living Systems
15.4 How Indexes Are Used by Brainless Living Systems
15.5 How Icons Are Used by Brainless Living Systems
15.6 The History of Directionality and Originality as Concepts in Evolutionary Science
15.7 Looping Signal Pathways, Oscillators and Turing Switches as Sensors
15.8 Conclusions
Declaration
References
16 On the Energy-Based Limitations of the Information Capacity and Information Processing Rates in the Human Brain
16.1 Introduction
16.2 The Neuron: The Brain’s Functional Unit
16.3 General Power Consumption Considerations
16.4 Energy Cost of Information Processing
16.5 The Brain’s Time Scale Hierarchies and Information Processing Rates
16.6 The Ion Channels
16.7 Discussion
16.8 Conclusions
Acknowledgments
Declaration
References
17 The Peculiar Case of Danger Modeling: Meaning-Generation in Three Dimensions
17.1 Introduction
17.2 Models In, Models Out
17.3 Modeling, Coupled with Semiosis
17.4 Danger Modeling
17.5 The Three Dimensions: Further Comments
Declaration
References
Part IV: MEANINGS IN HUMANS AND BEYOND
18 Anchors of Meaning: The Intertwining of Signs, Abduction, and Cognitive Niches
18.1 Humans as Ecological Engineers and Chance Seekers: The Role of Abduction
18.2 Semiotic Brains Construct Cognitive Niches
18.3 Cognitive Niches Construction Expresses an Evolutionary Sense of Purposefulness
18.4 Anchors of Meaning: External Semiotic Representations and the Disembodiment of the Mind
18.5 Material Anchors for Conceptual Blends
18.6 Conclusion
Declaration
References
19 Levels of Translation, Levels of Freedom?
19.1 Introduction
19.2 Conceptualizing Translation
19.3 Levels of Translation and Complexity
19.4 The Paradox: Levels of Translation and Levels of Freedom
Acknowledgments
Declaration
References
20 Towards a Biosemiotic Account of Memes as Units of Cultural Replication and Interpretation
20.1 Introduction
20.2 What Is a Meme?
20.3 Memes as Signs
20.4 Memes as Logonomic Signs
20.5 Memes as Secondary Subagents
20.6 Memes as Tardo-Signs
20.7 Conclusion: Memes as Tardo-Semiotic Subagents and Sixty-Five Other Conceptualizations of Memes
Funding
References
21 Astrobiosemiotics and Its Frontier with Astrobiology
21.1 Introduction: Astrobiology and Its Frontier with the Humanities, Especially Biosemiotics
21.2 Philosophical Overlapping of Humanities and Astrobiology
21.3 Three Remarkable Frontiers of Astrobiology: Semiotics, Biosemiotics and Astrobiosemiotics
21.4 Is It Reasonable to Suppose a First Contact Will Influence Astrobiosemiotics?
21.5 Astrobiosemiotics after Contact: A Tentative Framework
21.6 Conclusions
Acknowledgments
References
22 Time Horizons and Biosemiotic Adaptation: Taking Seriously Variable Temporalities in the Evolution of Possible Life Forms
22.1 Introduction
22.2 Time as Model and Life
22.3 Semiotic Understandings of Time as Adaptation
22.4 Temporal Horizons
22.5 Dimensionality in Biosemiotics
22.6 Conclusion
Declaration
References
Index
Also of Interest
End User License Agreement
List of Tables
Chapter 3
Table 3.1 Purported holisms spanning levels in physics.
Chapter 6
Table 6.1 Defining a hierarchical level based on its four conditions (prerequi...
Table 6.2 Hierarchogenetic branches in the main material evolution of the univ...
Table 6.3 Three triplets of the spatiotemporal semantic hierarchy of multicell...
Chapter 7
Table 7.1 Features of proper meanings and signs and potential meanings and sig...
Chapter 10
Table 10.1 The three drivers of persistence.
Chapter 14
Table 14.1 Examples of hyperstructures in bacterial cells.
Chapter 16
Table 16.1 Hierarchy of information processing elements.
Table 16.2 Hierarchical organization of the information processing elements in...
Chapter 19
Table 19.1 Hoffmeyer and Stjernfelt’s levels of semiosis [19.12].
Chapter 20
Table 20.1 Definitional options distinguished based on different understanding...
Table 20.2 Possible semiotic conceptualizations of the notion of meme.
Chapter 21
Table 21.1 Short biographies of scientists mentioned in the text.
Table 21.2 Glossary.
List of Illustrations
Chapter 3
Figure 3.1 The evolutionary transition from myoglobin to hemoglobin, a “novel”...
Chapter 6
Figure 6.1 Semantic prism.
Figure 6.2 Hierarchogenetic steps and branches in the main material evolution ...
Figure 6.3 Alternative biological hierarchies: (left) hierarchy starting with ...
Figure 6.4 Dynamic of the successive steps of the main material hierarchogenes...
Figure 6.5 Three telescopes testing nature’s laws in 3 distant galaxies. (Imag...
Figure 6.6 Hierarchies of human semantics: (top) such hierarchy beginning with...
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1 Colonization of the surface of oil droplets by coenzyme-like replic...
Figure 9.2 Replicator-niche coupling model: Coenzyme-like replicators (CLR) in...
Figure 9.3 The increase of genome complexity of organisms with time (billions ...
Chapter 10
Figure 10.1 The biphasic model of evolution explained in relation to various p...
Figure 10.2 Two phases in the history of an engineering object and a biomolecu...
Figure 10.3 The ribosome as a biphasic communication system: (a) Shannon’s mod...
Figure 10.4 An evolving network describing the organization of structural doma...
Figure 10.5 Evolution of molecular functions: A phylogenomic tree of GO terms ...
Figure 10.6 Exploring the pragmatics of biomolecular communication with triang...
Chapter 14
Figure 14.1 Competitive coherence model implemented as a simple neural network...
Figure 14.2 Control of the bacterial cell cycle by hyperstructures and competi...
Chapter 17
Figure 17.1 The revised complete Peircean triad of semiosis (from [17.31], p. ...
Figure 17.2 The growth of signs and semiosis (from [7.31], p. 407).
Chapter 18
Figure 18.1 Examples of ecological niche construction through which organisms ...
Figure 18.2 Cognitive niche construction is the process by which human animals...
Figure 18.3 Diagrammatic demonstration (or discovery, in the case of the ancie...
Figure 18.4 The lion man.
Chapter 19
Figure 19.1 The nested nature of dynamic processes.
Chapter 20
Figure 20.1 Definitional options that are available in semiotic conceptualizat...
Guide
Cover Page
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Preface
Acknowledgements
Table of Contents
Begin Reading
Index
Also of Interest
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Scrivener Publishing100 Cummings Center, Suite 541JBeverly, MA 01915-6106
Astrobiology Perspectives on Life in the Universe
Series Editor: Richard Gordon and Joseph Seckbach
Scope: In his 1687 book Principia, Isaac Newton showed how a body launched atop a tall mountain parallel to the ground would circle the Earth. We are both old enough to have witnessed the realization of this dream in the launch of Sputnik in 1957. Since then our ability to enter, view and understand the Universe has increased dramatically. A great race is on to discover real extraterrestrial life, and to understand our origins, whether on Earth or elsewhere. We take part of the title for this new series of books from the pioneering thoughts of Svante Arrhenius, who reviewed this quest in his 1909 book The Life of the Universe as Conceived by Man from the Earliest Ages to the Present Time.
“Astrobiology Perspectives on Life in the Universe” volumes will each delve into an aspect of this adventure, with chapters by those who are involved in it, and careful observers and assessors of our progress.
Publishers at ScrivenerMartin Scrivener ([email protected])Phillip Carmical ([email protected])
Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe
Edited by
Alexei A. Sharov
Elixirgen Scientific, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
and
George E. Mikhailovsky
Global Mind Share, Norfolk, Virginia, USA
This edition first published 2024 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, USA and Scrivener Publishing LLC, 100 Cummings Center, Suite 541J, Beverly, MA 01915, USA© 2024 Scrivener Publishing LLCFor more information about Scrivener publications please visit www.scrivenerpublishing.com.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
ISBN 978-1-119-86509-4
Cover image: The EditorsCover design by Russell Richardson
This book is dedicated to the memory of the founders of biosemiotics, including Jakob von Uexküll, Thomas Sebeok, Gregory Bateson, and Jesper Hoffmeyer. We gratefully remember Alexander Levich, the founder of the Theoretical Biology research group at Moscow State University, where our scientific interests have been formed.
Preface
A century ago, in the 1920s, Jakob von Uexküll discovered a new and very unusual aspect of nature, which later took shape in a new scientific discipline—biosemiotics. He demonstrated that signs and meanings exist not only in human minds and texts, but also in various living organisms that arose and have existed long before the first humans appeared. In the 1960s, Howard Pattee, Allen Newell and Herbert Simon independently rediscovered the existence of meaning in the activity of living organisms as well as in artificial intelligence agents. At the same time, the value of Uexküll’s ideas had been acknowledged by the English-speaking scientific community, including by Thomas Sebeok and Gregory Bateson. Furthermore, over the last half of the century, biosemiotics has been developing intensively, and achieving interesting and significant results. However, it still has a long way to go, and this book was conceived as the next important step on this path.
The chapter authors of this book consider the origin and evolution of signs and meanings in various natural and artificial systems from different angles. Meaning is often defined as a signified associated in language with a signifier in the sense of Ferdinand de Saussure, or semantics in the sense of Charles Morris. In communication theory, meaning is the content and value of messages or information. In biosemiotics, signs and meanings are considered in a much wider sense than in linguistics, and include non-mental signification. A biosemiotic sign is a tool that thanks to its form rather than matter or energy prompts an agent (e.g., organism, cell, or protein) to perform some meaningful activity or change, which tends to be beneficial to the agent itself and/or associated agents (progeny, superagents). Such activity or change in response to a sign is equivalent to what biologists call adaptation. For example, cold temperature makes the skin of mammals grow a thicker fur, which protects an animal from cold. Besides semantics (the type of activity or change), adaptation includes a utility component, which belongs to pragmatics in the sense of Charles Morris. Semantics and pragmatics are two necessary and interdependent components of meanings, although in some cases we focus on either semantics or pragmatics separately. Note that syntax, one of the three components of semiotics according to Morris, is not a part of meaning, although syntax of a message (or other sign) affects its meaning.
All semiotic agents can perform meaningful actions by interpreting signs but not all of them can acquire new meanings (e.g., a ribosome). Meaning is not a material component of an agent, but rather a dynamic organization or form that supports a capacity (or affordance) of an agent to act adaptively and robustly in changing environments. Meaning can be encoded, for example, in a computer algorithm or in a text and get transferred in such a frozen state to other agents.
Biosemiotics assumes that meanings exist only in living systems, but to explain the origin of life equipped with some primordial meanings it is necessary to consider precursor conditions in non-living systems that can be interpreted as potential meanings. For example, Howard Pattee envisioned that life originated from “primitive geochemical matter cycles,” where “it is the constraints of the primeval ecosystem which, in effect, generate the language in which the first specific messages can make evolutionary sense.”1 In fact, many causal relationships can be interpreted as potential meanings. For example, the birth of a star is caused by the ignition of a thermonuclear reaction, and thus, the appearance of a star means that a thermonuclear reaction began there. The cause of the event of a new star’s appearance is simultaneously its meaning in relation to a hypothetical observer (e.g., a human astrophysicist). Such meanings exist in potential (i.e., unmanifested) form until competent agents appear who recognize their utility.
John Deely2 discussed a similar example, where a fossilized bone underground is a sign of a dinosaur even if it is not observed. This sign, however, does not signify, and thus, to avoid confusion, we call it a “potential sign.” Living organisms can get additional affordances by converting potential signs into actual form and integrating new meanings into their Umwelten (subjective worlds). Analysis of potential signs allows us to explore adjacent possible meanings that have not been actualized yet. It does not imply pansemiosis or panpsychism because potential signs do not signify unless they are sensed and interpreted by semiotic agents.
The emergence of living organisms and their spread in the Universe led to the transformation of some potential meanings into a manifested form, in other words, to their actualization. However, the actualization of potential meanings occurs only in certain kinds of organisms that can utilize these meanings. For example, the actual position of the sun in the sky does not matter to many plants and animals,3 but it makes sense for a sunflower that turns its inflorescence to follow it. In this way, the sun plays the role of a sign for a sunflower, which interprets it as a spatial direction to follow. Expected benefits from turning to the sun include attracting pollinators (bees and flies), evaporating water on seeds which prevents fungal infection, and better photosynthesis. The more complex an organism is, the more actualized meanings it has, and the more complex connections established between these meanings become. The most highly organized animals, and especially humans, have an extremely complex organization of signs and meanings. Their appearance as a result of evolution led to the emergence of more and more complex systems of reflexes and, finally, to consciousness characterized by active learning and self-awareness.
Currently, there is no consensus on the relation between sign properties and meanings. Many molecular biologists believe that heritable features of organisms are meanings encoded in the sequence of nucleic acids in living cells. Similarly, the structuralist school in linguistics assumes that meanings are embedded in the relational structure of human language. The opposite view of the interpretational school of semiotics assumes that meanings emerge via interpretation processes, and in this respect, they do not necessarily depend on the properties of sign vehicles (i.e., material carriers of signs). The extreme version of this view is unlimited relativism, where anything can be a sign of anything else for some agent. These two approaches are often combined, as in the theory of Peirce, who considered the meaning of symbols as conventional in contrast to the meaning of icons and indexes that depend on the features or correlations of sign vehicles.
We approach the dualism of structural vs. interpretational meaning from the position of the theory of semiotic agency. Semiotic agents are organisms, cells, autonomous cell components, families, colonies, species, ecological consortia, human organizations, nations, and autonomous human artifacts. Agents perform their functions via semiotic processes, such as sensing and interpretation of signs, as actions or representations, production and manipulation of signs, and/or communication (exchange of signs between interacting agents and subagents). The structural approach to meanings is most relevant for production and manipulation of signs by agents because it results in a construction of sign vehicles that somehow represent pre-existing meanings for certain agents, whereas the interpretational approach is most relevant for categorization and learning, where meanings are inferred from sign vehicles by agents in the context of their memory and the environment. Obviously, communication requires both approaches: structural and interpretational.
An important aspect of semiosis is semiogenesis, which is the emergence of new meanings. It can be either spontaneous or triggered by external or internal disturbance (e.g., mutations). New meanings are established as a result of the repeated interpretational activities (including misinterpretation) of agents in their adaptive evolution, development, and behavior. Mutations are not primary causes of evolutionary novelties, but some mutations are interpreted creatively by cells and/or their subagents based on their innate competence acquired in preceding evolution. Some adaptations emerge due to physiological and behavioral plasticity and are then stabilized by genetic accommodation. In cognitive animals and humans, new meanings emerge mostly by learning of new behaviors, concepts, and models of the world.
This book will be of interest not only to biosemiotcians, but also to specialists in the evolution of signs and matter, philosophers studying the dialectics of potential and actual, as well as to anyone interested in the role of the observer and agency in biology and other natural sciences (including physics) and the origin and evolution of the Universe as a whole.
Editors: Alexei A. Sharov and George E. MikhailovskyDecember 2023
Notes
1
Pattee, H.H. (1969), How does a molecule become a message?
Developmental Biology Supplement
3, 1-16.
2
Deely, J. (1992), Semiotics and biosemiotics: Are sign-science and life-science coextensive? In:
Biosemiotics. The semiotic web 1991.
T.A. Sebeok and J. Umiker-Sebeok, (eds.) Mouton de Gruyter, New York: 45-75.
3
However, the presence of sun is essential for all photosynthetic plants and most animals with diurnal activity, and the length of the day (photoperiod) is an important cue that is used by many animals and plants to regulate metabolism, physiology, development, and reproduction.
Acknowledgments
We thank all the authors for their collaboration and submitting wonderful manuscripts, and the reviewers who worked hard to evaluate contributions and provide important suggestions for improvement. Also, we want to thank participants of the biosemiotics research community, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, and in particular, Kalevi Kull, Donald Favareau, Morten Tønnessen, Marcello Barbieri, and Terrence Deacon. Many thanks to book series editors, Richard Gordon and Joseph Seckbach, and Wiley-Scrivener for publishing the book.
Part ITHE NATURE OF MEANING AND ITS COMPONENTS
1Introduction: Towards Integrating Studies of Meanings with Science
Alexei A. Sharov
Elixirgen Scientific, Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Online resources:
https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=RcOv5TMAAAAJ&hl=en
https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Alexei-Sharov
http://alexei.nfshost.com
1.1 Crossing the Great Paradigm Divide
Human knowledge is deeply divided into natural sciences that pursue mechanisms and their modeling, and the humanities that are focused on meaning, value, communication, and interpretation. This book is conceived as a dialogue between interdisciplinary scholars on how to cross this great paradigm divide and contribute to integration of natural sciences with semiotics, a theory of meaning-making and signification, also known as semiosis. Developments in biology clearly indicate that semiosis is not limited to humans or vertebrate animals, but exists in all living organisms [1.3][1.38], and this fact inspired integration of biology and semiotics into biosemiotics. In order to function and survive, all organisms strive to capture the meaning of their environments and their own activities. According to the theory of meaning proposed by Jakob von Uexküll [1.80], animals develop species-specific models of their environment (umwelten) that link environmental cues with living functions. An elementary unit of such a model is a functional circle that includes sensing, perception, and action, all integrated into a self-sustaining loop [1.78][1.79]. This introduction chapter overviews other chapters of the book in light of major concepts of biosemiotics.
Terminology is one of the challenges in studying meanings because biosemiotics has to overcome the anthropocentric nature of all terms related to signs, meanings, agency, mind, consciousness, communication, learning, and knowledge. There is no easy solution because if the meaning of terms is expanded to all living organisms, then the differences between types of semiosis in various taxonomic groups can be lost. An alternative strategy of using parallel sets of terms for each taxonomic group is also problematic because such terminology would be awkward for broad evolutionary studies. Another problem with terms is related to the difference between the first-person experience (i.e., in object agent) and third-person experience (i.e., in meta-agent) [1.76]. For example, a human researcher (meta-agent), considers glucose molecules as signs that can be perceived by bacteria searching for metabolic resources. But a bacterium (object agent) does not “know” that glucose exists outside; it simply responds to incoming signals from chemoreceptors and changes its activity according to its inherited program [1.70]. Biosemiotics certainly needs a set of generic terms applicable to all organisms and its subagents, and it can be based only on meta-agent understanding. Such a set includes “sign,” “interpretation,” “semiosis,” and “agency” [1.38]. The range of application of other terms, for example, “meaning,” “mind,” “consciousness,” and “learning,” is still debated and there is no consensus.
Donald Favareau and Kalevi Kull [1.21] present a historical overview of how signs and meanings are conceptualized in the natural sciences. Ancient studies of signs mostly considered conditions when evident facts can be used to predict the non-evident, and then used to guide human actions to change the outcome (e.g., cure a patient or succeed in other goal-directed activity). One of the early achievements was recognition of deep contextuality of any predictions by Sextus Empiricus (2-3rd century), a supporter of the school of Pyrrhonial skepticism. He assumed that objects change with time and in response to various factors; and human impressions of objects depend on position, activity, and beliefs. Hence, judgments need to be suspended until the validity of induction is carefully verified. Notably, Sextus disagreed with the notion that knowledge is not achievable, which was a typical belief (according to his writings) in the school of Academic skepticism of that time.
The great paradigm divide emerged during the age of Enlightenment (17–18th centuries), when the whole domain of science was restructured to eliminate any cognitive elements (res cogitans) and focus on intrinsic properties of things (res extensa), which were assumed fully objective and verifiable. This worldview was typical for physics and chemistry, but it also influenced the development of biology and supported mechanistic mentality and the heuristic of reductionism. However, the need for the theory of signs and meanings reemerged in the contemporary science and resulted in the development of semiotics theories that were initially associated with the humanities (i.e., philosophy, linguistics, and psychology), but recently spread to biology, cybernetics, and other sciences. Favareau and Kull [1.21] describe in detail the general semiotic theory and its further development in biosemiotics, which has advanced in formulating such terms as sign, interpretation, semiotic agency, umwelt, semiosphere, scaffolding, and habit. In contrast to the mechanistic metaphor of computation, biosemiotics considers semiotic modeling which is embodied, anticipatory, and supported by a hierarchy of meanings. Favareau and Kull pay special attention to the problem of semiotic realism presented as a middle path between radical skepticism and naïve realism. They follow Peirce’s notions of pragmatic maxim and final interpretant “toward which the actual tends” [1.54], CP 5.312, as guiding principles. In conclusion, “it is thus through signs that we are more fully joined to the world” [1.21] (italics original).
Bashir Ahmad and Richard Gordon [1.1] show that the old reductionist heuristic in science, stating that higher-level phenomena can be reduced to the processes occurring at lower levels, fails as physical reality is studied at progressively smaller scales and “the burden of proof on smaller entities became ever larger.” The problem is not limited to the immense combinatorial complexity of combinations at the lower level, but in addition, higher-level emergent phenomena actually change what happens at a lower level. Examples of top-down causation are most numerous in living systems, where catalytic biomolecules enable chemical reactions and quantum effects that never occur in the non-living nature. Ahmad and Gordon present numerous examples of such non-reductionist effects in physics that include the second law of thermodynamics (increasing of entropy), rounding of liquid drops, percolation, gravity, and superconductivity. Following Arthur Koestler [1.36], they argue that each hierarchical level has its own rules of operation and these rules have bi-directional effects on both lower and higher levels; thus, physics is not reductionist and the world needs to be explained by Janus-faced1 hierarchies.
The theories of information [1.62] and cybernetics [1.83] were thought to provide a link between natural sciences and human communication, but the term “information” is interpreted differently on each side of the paradigm divide. Terrence Deacon [1.18], p. 71, describes the difference:
At one extreme, abstraction of the formal concept of information from its referential and normative properties in everyday use and in the many areas of natural science— such as biology and cognitive neuroscience, where these nonquantifiable properties are relevant—has led to generations of efforts to formally incorporate these properties, but without widespread acceptance. At the other extreme, semiotic theories, which take issues of reference and interpretation as their focus, have largely remained confined to discussions in the humanities and social sciences, and efforts to formalize these theories have also gained limited widespread acceptance.
Deacon further explains that physicists and engineers are interested in the transmission of information no matter what it means for the end user. In contrast, biology and psychology analyze information in the context of function and reference, and linguists are interested in symbolic relations between words and their meanings. To integrate these aspects of information, Deacon turns to the semiotic theory of Charles Morris, who distinguished syntax, semantics and pragmatics as three aspects of semiosis. Deacon generalizes these aspects to make them applicable beyond human language and describes them as “medium or signal properties (with syntax as a special case), referential properties (with meaning as a special case), and normative or functional properties (with pragmatics as a special case)” [1.18], p. 75. In simple cases (e.g., in icons and indexes), interpretation is mediated by medium/signal properties and yields referential properties. But symbols require additional conventional and socially shared rules that integrate all three levels of semiosis.
Deacon addresses the problem of semiotic grounding, which “is the property of ‘aboutness,’ the non-intrinsicality of reference” [1.18], p. 77. He argues that “[s]ign vehicle properties don’t therefore determine reference, instead they serve as affordances that aid the interpretation process.” The two major classes of such affordances are: “(i) shared formal properties between sign vehicle and object (iconicity), and (ii) some physical-temporal correlation or contiguity between sign vehicle and the object of reference (indexicality).” In contrast, symbolic reference is not linked on the features of a sign vehicle but instead relies on “a kind of iconicity between different interpretive habits in a community of symbol users” (ibid., p. 79).
To develop a unified approach to the studies of physical, biological and social systems, Anton Sukhoverkhov and Arran Gare [1.73] delineate three domains of information (or “memory”) in the universe: physical, biological, and social.2 Following Nöth and Deely, they consider physical “virtual signs” that carry information about past events no matter if they are observed or not. These signs constitute physical memory that can be used to reconstruct the past or make prediction of the future. At the second level, biological memory connects physical reality with internally represented reality, such as objects or mental associations. Finally, the third level is represented by social memory that stores collective experience in symbols, myths, inferences (e.g., causation models), and social activity. Social memory and language supports modeling functions such as production of resources and dwelling structures. This conceptual framework is then applied to describe the origin and evolution of human language.
A similar monistic approach to meaning is proposed by George Mikhailovsky [1.46], who considers a hierarchy of meanings that integrates the physical world, living organisms, cognition, and the noosphere of human social systems. In the physical world, meanings take the form of symptoms (meaning-in-itself) that potentially can be interpreted by organisms. In organisms, meanings represent intentions that connect perception with action; and in human language, meanings are expressed in words and other symbols. The qualitative changes of systems occur via adding new levels of hierarchy, a process called hierarchogenesis. Mikhailovsky describes 15 hierarchogenic steps in the evolution of the world, which are further grouped into cosmic (six steps from quark-gluon plasma to galaxies) and substantive (nine steps from heteroatomic molecules to noosphere) branches. The latter branch includes the origin of life, prokaryotic cells, eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms, agroecosystems, and nations/states. Qualitative steps in the evolution of meanings includes actualization of potential meanings, the rise of judgments, paradigms, and worldviews. These two components of evolution (substance and semantics) show a tendency of conversion, especially since the end of the last century.
Mikhailovsky then introduces the new term “eventity”— a shorthand for “evolving entity” which can be represented by a sequence of events constituting its evolution.3 Meanings exist only in eventities, since any meaning presupposes conditioning either by a preceding (causality) or a consequent (purposiveness) event. Abiotic eventities, such as stars, contain only potential meanings, while living eventities (agents) can actualize the meanings of other eventities as well as their own. Mikhailovsky identifies a nine-level structural semantic hierarchy of living eventities consisting of three triplets (“word” – “text” – “phrase”) for several hierarchical steps of general evolution. In addition, he delineates the behavioral semantic hierarchy of living beings spanning from elementary meanings through judgments and paradigms to complex worldviews. The first two belong to biosemiotics, and the last two are unique to humans. In this way, both types of semantic hierarchy are intertwined with several later steps of general hierarchogenesis.
In contrast to Sukhoverkhov, Gare, and Mikhailovsky, who assume that meaning or information exists even in the physical world without life, Alexei Sharov [1.68] takes a biosemiotic approach to the ontology of meanings, according to which meanings exist only due to their relation with interpreters: living organisms and life-dependent semiotic agents. The latter category of agents includes ribosomes and functional proteins in living cells, and autonomous human artifacts (computers and robots). However, according to Sharov, the relation between meanings and interpreters can be actual or potential, and thus, actual meanings are those that are currently interpreted by semiotic agents, whereas potential meanings are those that are interpretable (i.e., knowable) by some agents, which are currently either not present or not active. In physics, potentiality is described as a field that can be measured at any point in space by an appropriate device. Sharov proposes that potential meaning can be similarly presented as a semiotic field measurable by some competent semiotic agent if it is placed near the meaning carrier. Natural resources are potential meanings that existed long before the origin of life, but they are recognized as “potential meanings” only retrospectively, after the emergence of organisms capable of sensing and using these resources for their own benefit. Sharov wrote:
Such ontology of meanings is agency-dependent, similar to radical constructivism [1.77], but in addition, meanings are pragmatic and become corrected through repetition of the corresponding functional cycle. It is initially subjective but can spread via interaction and communication and become objective within the community of agents. Such collective knowledge is updated with the emergence of each new kind of agency: first, actual meanings are updated in space and time proximity of these new agents, and second, potential meanings are updated in the whole universe, as well as in the reconstructed past, and in the projected future [1.68], p. 150.
Alexander Kravchenko [1.37] develops the ontology of meanings starting from principles of radical constructivism, which “highlights the crucial role of the observer in constructing a universe as ‘objectivity in parentheses.’” However, the theory of constructivism is traditionally applied to humans and therefore it is inherently anthropocentric. To overcome this limitation, Kravchenko extends this approach to non-human organisms, which, according to biosemiotics, are capable of perception and purposeful behavior. Also, in contrast to radical constructivism which treats meanings as artificial constructs, Kravchenko considers meaning as a “value-based relationship between the organism and its world of experience,” following Zlatev [1.85]. In other words, meaning integrates the observer and the observed in the process of normative-controlled iterative interaction. In the case of humans, these relationships are encoded in language, and thus, meanings cannot be fully separated from the historically developed word use:
Much, if not all, of what we think we, as observers, know about the world, is the result of our operations of distinction we make in language, or naming – specification of an entity by operationally cleaving it from a background. Once such a distinction is made, a thing with the properties that the operation of distinction specifies is added to the enlanguaged world. […] and there are as many realities as there are observers [1.37], p. 171.
Kravchenko notes that the actual and potential are ontologically different, although in language we claim both of them as “existing.” In this respect, “‘past’ and ‘future’ are mental constructs that belong to the present just as any other act of thinking” [1.37] (italics mine). However, in contrast to biosemiotics tradition, he rejects using the notion of “sign” from the position of a third-person observer. As a result, he proposes to apply this notion only if an organism can categorize a thing as a “sign.” In particular, Kravchenko disagrees with Maritain [1.44], p. 53, that all animals “make use of signs without perceiving the relation of signification.”
1.2 What is Meaning?
Meanings or ideas are generally considered as components of mind that comprise human understanding and knowledge [1.39], Book II, chapters I, XII. These components are brought to our attention by sensing, perception, reflection, contemplation, and by interpreting words and other language units. In linguistics, meaning appears as a signified associated with a signifier, which is a sound pattern of a word [1.17]. Gottlob Frege noticed that meanings, besides being mental components, also refer to objects in the real world. Thus, he distinguished two aspects of meaning: reference and sense[1.23], a dichotomy that is similar to opposing of object and concept. Then, Charles Peirce proposed a triadic sign relation: “I define a sign as anything which is so determined by something else, called its Object, and so determines an effect upon a person, which effect I call its interpretant, that the later is thereby mediately determined by the former” [1.55], EP2.478. One contemporary understanding of Peirce’s sign is that object is akin to a signified or reference, and interpretant is a relation between the sign vehicle and its object [1.4]. In other words, the object and interpretant are two aspects of meaning communicated by the sign. Peirce assumed that sign relations are grounded in transcendental logic, and thus, they can be non-human and even non-mental. Hence, he applied it to habits of animals and plants (e.g., sunflower [1.54], CP 2.274).
But if meaning is not necessarily mental, then what is it? The authors of this book propose different answers. Favareau and Kull [1.21], p. 28, assume “that ‘meaning’ is always and everywhere, a function of sign relationships,” understood as Peirce’s triadic relations and functional circles of von Uexküll [1.80]. In other words, meaning integrates a knower (semiotic agent) with something known. Mikhailovsky considers meaning as a “component of the world that takes the form of indicator or symptom in the non-living world, intention of organism action, or something expressed in words or other symbols [in human language]” [1.46], p. 101.
According to Sharov [1.68], p. 137, “meaningful things, processes, or relations are those that have significance for organisms as indicated by either behavioral choice or regulation of innate habits and processes.” Some meanings are intrinsic to non-living things (e.g., gravity, chemical valence, or catalysis); they exist in a potential form until discovered by agents, and then turn into actual meanings, as they gain agent-related normativity. Other meanings are products of evolution or learning, which are established by agents for their specific purposes. Neo-Darwinism reduces significance to a single variable—fitness (a combination of survival and reproduction rates). However, Caetano-Anollés [1.13] discusses additional dimensions of significance: economy (e.g., efficiency of metabolic reactions), mechanisms that support flexibility of function and behavior (umwelt), and robustness (e.g., preparedness for unperceived and unknown). According to Sharov [1.68], meanings outlive their carrier-organisms because due to semiosis, meanings are transferred among agents and overcome the limitations of individual matter-energy systems: “meanings once actualized keep existing and evolving.”
Abir Igamberdiev [1.32], p. 266, connects meaning with final causation: “Meaning in the action of agent refers to the Aristotelian final cause, which, in his views, retrocausally directs the development of the system shaped by the material, the efficient, and the formal causes.” He applies this notion to three levels of agency organization: autopoietic closure, evolution, and social systems. The normative nature of meaning is also recognized by Kobus Marais [1.43], p. 6: “[…] significance is related to the interest of the organism and, therefore, always normative, and […] this significance can grow in complexity, from a choice to eat or being eaten, to a large and complicated cognitive system like ‘the law.’”
Alexander [1.2], p. 327, explores meaning in the context of subjective-objective duality:
I start with the assumption that the concept of meaning implies a subjective perspective of a living system. Because binary logic may suggest to some that subjective meaning is the opposite of objective, I counter with the argument that subjectivity is better understood as relative objectivity. Subjectivity arises with the formation of internal biosemiosic relations […] There are different levels of subjectivity; inherited or habitual and newly formed. Subjectivity is essentially selfhood, and subjective interpretations about the qualities of sign-vehicles are generally made for the sake of, or rather with the effect of, maintaining the self.” (italics original)
Alexander considers three aspects of sign: sign vehicle, the response, and the object, which resemble but are not identical to Peirce’s triadic relation. In particular, the object is defined as “the effect that the response has on the living system’s ability to respond to the sign vehicle in that way. […] the ultimate object of any semiosic process is reinforcing the conditions that allow that sign reading to recur.” She further argues that biosemiosic meaning is dynamic and appears in two modes: directionality and originality. The former preserves the core aspects of the meaning despite ever-changing conditions or context, and the latter adds new components of meaning.
Marais [1.42] presents meaning as a process that includes two complementary aspects: interpretation and translation, which are inseparable as particle and wave aspects of light. He explains the difference between these two: “translation refers to a constraint-centered observation of semiosis while interpretation refers to an interpreter-centered observation.” The importance of translation in biology resonates with the theory of organic codes, where meaning appears as a result of translation from one world of information units (e.g., triplets of nucleotides in mRNA) to another world (e.g., amino acids in peptides) [1.6]. Furthermore, Marais connects his understanding of translation with the theory of semiosphere developed by Yuri Lotman. He proposes that the evolution of meaning is powered by alternative translation (cf., Alexander’s notion of misinterpretation [1.2]), where new interpretants provide additional degrees of freedom of functional responses of agents. Because new translations appear possible due to additional constraints, the evolution of meanings follows a paradox, where “an increase in freedom is only to be achieved through an increase in constraint” [1.42], p. 416.
In his chapter, Robert Prinz [1.56] reviews the relationship between meanings, agents, and codes in biosemiotics and in a more mechanistic theory of organic codes (also known as code biology), developed mostly by Marcello Barbieri [1.6][1.7][1.8][1.9][1.10]. The main idea of the theory of organic codes is that
“Biological codes in this framework are arbitrary connection rules established in evolution through an adaptor that mediates between two other molecules of different type and cannot be explained based solely on physical or chemical laws. All codes in the narrow (Barbierian) sense thus consist of a set of adaptors that map a set of components from one independent world to a set of components from another independent world.” [1.56], p. 245.
The notion of organic code provides a useful terminology for describing molecular-level translation processes in living systems such as protein synthesis, protein transport and degradation, mRNA splicing, DNA repair, signal transduction from membrane receptors to the nucleus, and many other molecular processes in cells [1.56]. These coding processes are mediated by adapters (e.g., aminoacyl tRNA synthetase in the genetic code) that specifically bind to coding units (e.g., triplets of nucleotides) and provide links to corresponding molecules of another type (e.g., amino acids). Translation is physically executed by a molecular agent, which Barbieri calls codemaker,4 such as ribosome. Prinz provides an overview of various codes in living systems, including organic codes (at the molecular level) and neural codes (at the level of neurons and neural networks). These types of codes are further divided into structural and regulatory. Prinz argues that Barbieri erroneously ascribes meaning to material molecules (e.g., proteins) or larger units constructed in the course of the code execution. What is missing in Barbieri’s theory is the role of these molecules in the life of cells and multicellular organisms, which are higher-level agents. Prinz [1.56], p. 256, proposes extending the code biology theory to the level of organism agents, where meanings appear subjective and agent-dependent:
The outputs of coded processes are meaningful to the underlying system in terms of persistence, propagation, and survival—necessitating at the same time choices between response options. Meaning reveals two sides here: it is objective through the artifacts or outputs of coded processes, and subjective through the consequences of their readout (or interpretation) by its carrier.
To summarize these approaches: (i) meanings are always associated with agency and its goal-directedness, (ii) meanings are features and relations that are significant for organisms and other kinds of semiotic agents, (iii) by semiosis, meanings are transferred to other agents or subagents, and (iv) meaning keeps changing via evolution, development, and learning through the cycle of translation processes.
1.3 The Origin of Life
How to distinguish semiosis from non-semiotic physical and chemical processes? This question poses a serious challenge because semiotic agents do not contain any supernatural processes that are not physical and chemical, and yet, semiosis is a qualitatively different phenomenon. As the phenomenon of entropy increase in thermodynamics cannot be explained at the level of micro-states, the phenomenon of semiotic agency is associated with higher-level macro-processes that appear to be collectively meaningful. Self-organizing non-equilibrium systems, such as dissipative structures, hurricanes, or flames, somewhat resemble living organisms because they preserve their non-equilibrium state despite perturbations, which is similar to homeostasis in living cells. Some of them can even reproduce (e.g., a flame can split and continue burning in different directions). But this similarity is mostly superficial because self-organizing systems are not goal-directed and their non-equilibrium state is not encoded. Sharov and Tønnessen wrote: “Physical self-organized systems eventually stop functioning without affecting any future self-organizing events, whereas living systems produce the next generation of living systems of the same kind” [1.69], p.127. Similarly, Sukhoverkhov and Gare wrote: “For the origin of life, living systems need, as a prerequisite, chemical autocatalytic circles (sets) with some stable memory-like structures” [1.73], p. 90. A hurricane cannot pass its experience to its progeny hurricanes to increase their stability and spread. Simple self-production (e.g., randomly breaking crystals or division of lipid-world vesicles) is also not sufficient to display goal-directedness. These systems have no means to accumulate memory of their past experience and reuse it to become more efficient in the future.
Although physicochemical self-organized systems do not qualify as living agents, they should have supported the origin of life because living systems could not emerge in a simple environment, such as uniform gas cloud. Howard Pattee [1.53], p. 3, was the first to note that molecules become messages only in a complex and meaningful environment: “[…] the first ‘messages’ were expressed not in the highly integrated and precise genetic code that we find today, but in a more global set of geophysical and geochemical constraints, which we could call the primeval ‘ecosystem language.’” Similarly, John Deely argued that the complexity of environments is increased by “virtual semiosis,” which at some point in history ignited the origin of life [1.19], p. 61. This idea is consistent with the emerging relational paradigm in physics, where complex objects are treated as ontolons, units of dynamic change, which play the role of primitive observers that keep traces of previous interactions [1.12]. Igamberdiev [1.32], p. 267, explained: “The observers appear as living subjects only at the highest level of organization, while at the physical level they materialize as the dynamic units of complex reality, i.e., the units of dynamic change. It has been suggested to define these units as ontolons to emphasize their profoundly ontological rather than epistemological nature.” He also proposed that the relational framework in physics needs to be connected with contemporary developments in quantum mechanics. Mikhailovsky [1.46] called such systems eventities, whereas Sukhoverkhov and Gare called them physical memory. Sharov reformulated the idea of Deely in terms of complexity measured by the number of non-redundant potential meanings relevant for projected physicochemical systems that later gained the capacity of adaptive evolution [1.68]. With the origin of life, some of these potential meanings were converted into actual meanings by being combined into a self-supporting and evolving whole. Other potential meanings became actualized in the subsequent adaptive evolution.
Sharov [1.67] proposes that proto-life emerged in the form of self-producing simple organic molecules capable of context-sensitive catalysis. His scenario also assumes agency-niche coupling, where molecular agents modify their local environment (e.g., oil droplets in water) in such a way that facilitates reproduction of these agents in a niche-dependent way. In other words, the function of first primordial agents was niche construction.5 Sharov rejects the hypothesis of primordial soup; he argues that even if such soup was created by some unknown forces, it would immediately degrade due to dilution, hydrolysis, photolysis, and oxidation before any life-like system would be able to emerge in it. According to Sharov, only hydrocarbons (linear, branching, and aromatic) were available as organic resources before the origin of life, whereas all other kinds of organic resources were produced by evolving living systems long after their origin via metabolic pathways that emerged in the course of simplified natural selection without nucleic acids.
Similar ideas on the origin of life are discussed by Sukhoverkhov and Gare [1.73], p. 90:
For the origin of life, living systems need, as a prerequisite, chemical autocatalytic circles (sets) with some stable memory-like structures. Such strictures can preserve and accumulate new (functional) information that is needed to maintain these reproductive circles and provide further cumulative development of such systems […]
1.4 Semiotic Agency
The fundamental question in biosemiotics is why organisms are capable of semiosis? Sharov wrote that
[…] organisms are not the only systems that are capable of semiosis because interpretation and production of signs also takes place in organism parts and in multi-organism systems such as colonies, populations, and ecological consortia. Thus, it makes sense to use the notion of semiotic agency as a generalization of organism in semiotic context. Sharov and Tønnessen [1.69], p. 153, defined semiotic agents (or simply ‘agents’) as systems with “a capacity for acting purposefully and using signs to make informed choices.” [1.68], p. 143.
Some semiotic agents are not alive (e.g., ribosomes and robots), but they all depend by origin and/or by function on living organisms, and thus, the main assumption of biosemiotics that semiosis is coextensive with life [1.3][1.38] still holds. Primary agents are defined as those capable of self-reproduction, whereas secondary agents are produced by other kinds of agents (e.g., robots are produced by humans and machines) [1.69]. There is no single component or single function that is uniformly present in all agents. Instead, agency is characterized by end-directed behavior6[1.38], p. 171, and autonomy, which means “[s]elf-sufficiency, self-government, and (relative) independence from the environment” [1.69], p. 350.
The importance of the notion of semiotic agency is reiterated in several chapters of this book. Here is a brief summary of novel ideas related to this notion. Norris and Sharov [1.50]
