Biosemiotics

Meaningfulness and applicability of semiotic concepts in biosemiotics The 1st Gatherings in biosemiotics was held 22 years ago in Copenhagen and the first sentence of its CFP proclaimed the intention “to establish a regular framework for discussions of biosemiotics in the context of biology”. I must have been taken that seriously, because without being biologist […]

Peirce’s ideas of the man-animal distinction Peirce was an evolutionist and one of the first to generalize the concept of evolution from biology to physics and sociology alike. He also took some interest in locating what it is that separates the human animal from other higher animals. As to biological instinct, it was the human […]

A view on abstract concepts from an interaction-based perspective: An attempt at a semiotic analysis Most of the approaches to concepts, both in cognitive science and in artificial intelligence, are informed by information-processing views. Concepts are mapped to categories, which despite their fuzzy boundaries, graded structure and family resemblance (Rosch, 1973), are still mostly characterized […]

Extending Biosemiotics The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis also extends the role of biosemiotics. This paper will seek to extend it further, both to the metaphysics of C. S. Peirce and A. N Whitehead and to Ingold’s treatment of inheritance (Ingold, 2022). Firstness, experience without reaction, is fundamental to Peirce’s metaphysics, giving qualia an ontological status equivalent […]

In praise of Brainwaves as Tissue. A biosemiotic perspective Until discovery of telescopes Saturn was thought, by proto-scientists, to be the last planet of our solar system. Equally nowadays, in anatomic perspective, the skin is considered histologically the furthest tissue that divides us from , and is in contact with the external environment. But exactly […]

Ecosemiotics between matter and life: starting from John Deely’s interpretation of semiotic scaffolding The presentation is an extension of the arguments proposed by John Deely in his article “Building a Scaffold: Semiosis in Nature and Culture”, published in 2015 in the journal Biosemiotics. In particular, the idea that physical scaffolding prepares the plans for the […]

An attempt at a semiotic approach to animal play and joking Play in the animal kingdom is an extremely widespread phenomenon, most studied in higher vertebrates (birds and mammals), but clearly existing in the behavior of reptiles and fish, possibly even arachnids and insects. Definitely in cephalopods, chiefly octopuses. The phenomenon of animal play is […]

A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis In this presentation I will present the book chapter “A biosemiotic perspective on the human condition and the environmental crisis” (Tønnessen, forthcoming). The chapter presents a biosemiotic perspective on the basic situation for human beings and that of other organisms, with an emphasis on […]

The thresholds for extending the evolutionary synthesis: How far can we go? The research project “Methodological design of extended evolutionary synthesis: interdisciplinary framework for social and life sciences” (Russian Science Foundation, № 22-18-00383) faces the challenges of crossing interfaces between traditional scientific disciplines, paradigms (in Kuhn’s sense), research programmes (in Lakatos’ sense) and even subtler […]