Biosemiotic Research Trends

Biosemiotics (bios=life & semion=sign) is an interdisciplinary science that studies communication and signification in living systems. Communication is the essential characteristic of life. An organism is a message to future generations that specifies how to survive and reproduce. Any autocatalytic system transfers information (i.e. initial conditions) to its progeny so that daughter systems will eventually reach the same state as their parent. Self-reproducing systems have a semantic closure because they define themselves in their progeny. A sign (defined in a broadest sense) is an object that is a part of some self-reproducing system. A sign is always useful for the system and its value can be determined by its contribution to the reproductive value of the entire system. The major trend in the evolution of signs is the increase of their complexity via development of new hierarchical levels, i.e., metasystem transitions. This book presents new research in this dynamic field.

Biosemiotics (bios = life and semion = sign) is an interdisciplinary science that studies communication and signification in living systems. This book presents research in this field.

Preface; More Than Metaphor: Genomes Are Objective Sign System; Limitations on Applying Peircean Semeiotic Biosemiotics as Applied Objective Ethics and Aesthetics Rather than Semeiotic; The French Reception of Jakob von Uexkulls Umwelt: A Regional Variation of Global Semiotics; Nature of Music / Music of Nature: An Introduction to Zoomusicology; The Ant on the Kitchen Counter; Biological Information Sign Processes in Living System; How Living Systems Manage the Uncertainty of Events: Adaptation by Semiotic Cognition; Investigating the Dynamics of Becoming From Cybernetics towards Semiotics; From Biosphere to Semiosphere to Social Lifeworlds Biology as an Understanding of Social Science; How Junk Became Selfish: The Nominalist Breakdown of Molecular Biology; The Wake of Consilience Produces Monsters Evolutionary Psychology, Social Construction, and a Biosemiotic Proposal for Symmetry; Semiotics in Biology: Inside Neodarwinism; Index.