Biosemiotics
Encyclopedia
Biosemiotics is a growing field that studies the production, action and interpretation
of signs
in the biological
realm. Biosemiotics attempts to integrate the findings of scientific biology and semiotics
, representing a paradigmatic shift
in the occidental scientific view of life
, demonstrating that semiosis
(sign process, including meaning
and interpretation) is its immanent and intrinsic feature. The term "biosemiotic" was first used by Friedrich S. Rothschild
in 1962, but Thomas Sebeok
and Thure von Uexküll
have done much to popularize the term and field. The field, which challenges normative views of biology, is generally divided between theoretical and applied biosemiotics.
s and chemistry
, but as signs conveyed and interpreted by other living signs in a variety of ways, including by means of molecules. In this sense, biosemiotics takes for granted and respects the complexity
of living processes as revealed by the existing fields of biology – from molecular biology to brain science and behavioural studies – however, biosemiotics attempts to bring together separate findings of the various disciplines of biology (including evolutionary biology) into a new and more unified perspective on the central phenomena of the living world, including the generation of function and signification in living systems, from the ribosome
to the ecosystem
and from the beginnings of life
to its ultimate meaning
s.
Furthermore, by providing new concepts, theories and case studies from biology, biosemiotics attempts to throw new light on some of the unsolved questions within the general study of sign processes (semiotics), such as the question about the origin of signification in the universe
. Here, signification (and sign) is understood in a very general sense, that is, not simply the transfer of information
from one place to another, but the generation of the very content and meaning of that information in human
as well as non-human sign producers and sign receivers.
Sign processes are thus taken as real: They are governed by regularities (habits, or natural rules) that can be discovered and explained. They are intrinsic in living nature, but we can access them, not directly, but indirectly through other sign processes (qualitative distinction methods, for instance) -- even though the human representation and understanding of these processes (in the construction of explanations) builds up as a separate scientific sign system distinct from the organism
s’ own sign processes.
One of the central characteristics of living systems is the highly organized character of their physical and chemical processes, partly based upon informational and molecular properties of what came to be known in the 1960s as the genome
. Distinguished biologists, such as Ernst Mayr
and Manfred Eigen
have seen these informational aspects as one of the emergent features of life as a process that distinguish life from anything else in the physical world, except, perhaps, man-made computer
s. However, whereas the informational teleology
of computer programmes are derived, by being designed by humans to achieve specific goals, the teleology
and informational characteristics of organisms are intrinsic to them and evolve naturally.
Traditional biology (and philosophy of biology
) has seen such processes as being purely physical and, being influenced by a reductionist and mechanistic
tradition, has adopted a very restricted notion of the physical as having to do with only efficient causation. Biosemiotics uses concepts from semiotics (in the sense of C.S. Peirce as the broad logic
al and scientific study
of dynamic sign action in humans as well as elsewhere in nature) to answer questions about the biological emergence of meaning, intentionality
and a psychical
world; questions that are hard to answer within a purely mechanist and physicalist framework.
Biosemiotics sees the evolution of life and the evolution of semiotic systems as two aspects of the same process. The scientific approach to the origin and evolution of life has, in part due to the success of molecular biology, given us highly valuable accounts of the outer aspects of the whole process, but has overlooked the inner qualitative aspects of sign action, leading to a reduced picture of causality. Complex self-organized living systems are also governed by formal and final causality —- formal in the sense of the downward causation from a whole structure (such as the organism) to its individual molecules, constraining their action but also endowing them with functional meanings in relation to the whole metabolism; and final in the sense of the tendency to take habits and to generate future interpretants of the present sign actions. Here, biosemiotics draws also upon the insights of fields like systems theory
, theoretical biology and the study of complex self-organized
systems.
Particular scientific fields like molecular biology
, cognitive ethology
, cognitive science
, robotics
, and neurobiology deal with information processes at various levels and thus spontaneously contribute to knowledge about biosemiosis (sign action in living systems). However, biosemiotics proper is not yet a specific disciplinary research programme, but a general perspective on the need for investigating the role that "sign" use plays in life processes, and attempts to integrate such findings, and to build a semiotic foundation for biology. It may help to resolve some forms of Cartesian dualism that is still haunting philosophy of mind. By describing the continuity between body and mind, biosemiotics may also help us to understand how human "mindedness" may naturalistically emerge from more primitive processes of embodied animal "knowing."
According to the dominant aspect of semiosis under study, accordingly the labels biopragmatics, biosemantics, and biosyntactics have been used.
(1903–1979), early pioneers of biosemiotics were Jakob von Uexküll
(1864–1944), Heini Hediger
(1908–1992), Giorgio Prodi
(1928–1987), Marcel Florkin
(1900–1979) and Friedrich S. Rothschild
(1899–1995); the founding fathers of the contemporary interdiscipline were Thomas Sebeok
(1920–2001) and Thure von Uexküll
(1908–2004).
The contemporary period (as initiated by Copenhagen-Tartu school) include biologists Jesper Hoffmeyer
, Kalevi Kull
, Claus Emmeche
, Terrence Deacon
, Luis Bruni, Alexei Sharov, Søren Brier, Marcello Barbieri, Anton Markos, Howard Pattee, Yair Neuman, Timo Maran, semioticians Donald Favareau, Martin Krampen
, Frederik Stjernfelt, Floyd Merrell, Myrdene Anderson, Lucia Santaella, Marcel Danesi
, Winfried Nöth, philosophers John Deely
, John Collier, Tommi Vehkavaara, Guenther Witzany, and complex systems scientists Peter Cariani, Michael Conrad, Cliff Joslyn
, Luis M. Rocha, et al.
In 2001, an annual international conference for biosemiotic research (Gatherings in Biosemiotics) was inaugurated, and has taken place every year since.
In 2004, a group of biosemioticians - Marcello Barbieri, Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, and Anton Markos - decided to establish an international journal of biosemiotics. Under their editorship, the Journal of Biosemiotics was launched by Nova Science Publishers in 2005 (two issues published), and with the same five editors the Biosemiotics was launched by Springer in 2008.
The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies
was established in 2005. A collective programmatic paper on the basic theses of biosemiotics appeared in 2009.
Interpretation (logic)
An interpretation is an assignment of meaning to the symbols of a formal language. Many formal languages used in mathematics, logic, and theoretical computer science are defined in solely syntactic terms, and as such do not have any meaning until they are given some interpretation...
of signs
Sign (semiotics)
A sign is understood as a discrete unit of meaning in semiotics. It is defined as "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity" It includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be...
in the biological
Biology
Biology is a natural science concerned with the study of life and living organisms, including their structure, function, growth, origin, evolution, distribution, and taxonomy. Biology is a vast subject containing many subdivisions, topics, and disciplines...
realm. Biosemiotics attempts to integrate the findings of scientific biology and semiotics
Semiotics
Semiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of signs and sign processes , indication, designation, likeness, analogy, metaphor, symbolism, signification, and communication...
, representing a paradigmatic shift
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
in the occidental scientific view of life
Life
Life is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
, demonstrating that semiosis
Semiosis
Semiosis is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Briefly – semiosis is sign process...
(sign process, including meaning
Meaning (semiotics)
In semiotics, the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that it occupies within a given sign relation. This statement holds whether sign is taken to mean a sign type or a sign token...
and interpretation) is its immanent and intrinsic feature. The term "biosemiotic" was first used by Friedrich S. Rothschild
Friedrich S. Rothschild
Friedrich Salomon Rothschild was a Jewish psychiatrist and semiotician. He has coined the term biosemiotic in his work of 1962....
in 1962, but Thomas Sebeok
Thomas Sebeok
Thomas Albert Sebeok was a polymathic American semiotician and linguist.- Life and work :...
and Thure von Uexküll
Thure von Uexküll
Thure von Uexküll was a German scholar of psychosomatic medicine and biosemiotics. He has developed the approach of his father, Jakob von Uexküll, in the study of living systems and applied it in medicine.-Life:1955-1965: Director of the Medical Outpatient Department at the University of...
have done much to popularize the term and field. The field, which challenges normative views of biology, is generally divided between theoretical and applied biosemiotics.
Definition
Biosemiotics is biology interpreted as a sign systems study, or, to elaborate, biosemiotics is a study of- significationSign (semiotics)A sign is understood as a discrete unit of meaning in semiotics. It is defined as "something that stands for something, to someone in some capacity" It includes words, images, gestures, scents, tastes, textures, sounds – essentially all of the ways in which information can be...
, communicationCommunicationCommunication is the activity of conveying meaningful information. Communication requires a sender, a message, and an intended recipient, although the receiver need not be present or aware of the sender's intent to communicate at the time of communication; thus communication can occur across vast...
and habitHabituationHabituation can be defined as a process or as a procedure. As a process it is defined as a decrease in an elicited behavior resulting from the repeated presentation of an eliciting stimulus...
formation of livingLifeLife is a characteristic that distinguishes objects that have signaling and self-sustaining processes from those that do not, either because such functions have ceased , or else because they lack such functions and are classified as inanimate...
processes - semiosisSemiosisSemiosis is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Briefly – semiosis is sign process...
(changing sign relations) in living nature - the biological basis of all signs and sign interpretation
Approach
To define biosemiotics as “biology interpreted as sign systems study” is to emphasize not only the close relation between biology as we know it (as a scientific field of inquiry) and semiotics (the study of signs), but primarily the profound change of perspective implied when life is considered not just from the perspectives of moleculeMolecule
A molecule is an electrically neutral group of at least two atoms held together by covalent chemical bonds. Molecules are distinguished from ions by their electrical charge...
s and chemistry
Chemistry
Chemistry is the science of matter, especially its chemical reactions, but also its composition, structure and properties. Chemistry is concerned with atoms and their interactions with other atoms, and particularly with the properties of chemical bonds....
, but as signs conveyed and interpreted by other living signs in a variety of ways, including by means of molecules. In this sense, biosemiotics takes for granted and respects the complexity
Complexity
In general usage, complexity tends to be used to characterize something with many parts in intricate arrangement. The study of these complex linkages is the main goal of complex systems theory. In science there are at this time a number of approaches to characterizing complexity, many of which are...
of living processes as revealed by the existing fields of biology – from molecular biology to brain science and behavioural studies – however, biosemiotics attempts to bring together separate findings of the various disciplines of biology (including evolutionary biology) into a new and more unified perspective on the central phenomena of the living world, including the generation of function and signification in living systems, from the ribosome
Ribosome
A ribosome is a component of cells that assembles the twenty specific amino acid molecules to form the particular protein molecule determined by the nucleotide sequence of an RNA molecule....
to the ecosystem
Ecosystem
An ecosystem is a biological environment consisting of all the organisms living in a particular area, as well as all the nonliving , physical components of the environment with which the organisms interact, such as air, soil, water and sunlight....
and from the beginnings of life
Biogenesis
Biogenesis is the law that living things come only from other living things, e.g. a spider lays eggs, which develop into spiders. It may also refer to biochemical processes of production in living organisms.-Spontaneous generation:...
to its ultimate meaning
Meaning (semiotics)
In semiotics, the meaning of a sign is its place in a sign relation, in other words, the set of roles that it occupies within a given sign relation. This statement holds whether sign is taken to mean a sign type or a sign token...
s.
Furthermore, by providing new concepts, theories and case studies from biology, biosemiotics attempts to throw new light on some of the unsolved questions within the general study of sign processes (semiotics), such as the question about the origin of signification in the universe
Universe
The Universe is commonly defined as the totality of everything that exists, including all matter and energy, the planets, stars, galaxies, and the contents of intergalactic space. Definitions and usage vary and similar terms include the cosmos, the world and nature...
. Here, signification (and sign) is understood in a very general sense, that is, not simply the transfer of information
Information
Information in its most restricted technical sense is a message or collection of messages that consists of an ordered sequence of symbols, or it is the meaning that can be interpreted from such a message or collection of messages. Information can be recorded or transmitted. It can be recorded as...
from one place to another, but the generation of the very content and meaning of that information in human
Human
Humans are the only living species in the Homo genus...
as well as non-human sign producers and sign receivers.
Sign processes are thus taken as real: They are governed by regularities (habits, or natural rules) that can be discovered and explained. They are intrinsic in living nature, but we can access them, not directly, but indirectly through other sign processes (qualitative distinction methods, for instance) -- even though the human representation and understanding of these processes (in the construction of explanations) builds up as a separate scientific sign system distinct from the organism
Organism
In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
s’ own sign processes.
One of the central characteristics of living systems is the highly organized character of their physical and chemical processes, partly based upon informational and molecular properties of what came to be known in the 1960s as the genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
. Distinguished biologists, such as Ernst Mayr
Ernst Mayr
Ernst Walter Mayr was one of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists. He was also a renowned taxonomist, tropical explorer, ornithologist, historian of science, and naturalist...
and Manfred Eigen
Manfred Eigen
Manfred Eigen is a German biophysical chemist who won the 1967 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for work on measuring fast chemical reactions.-Career:...
have seen these informational aspects as one of the emergent features of life as a process that distinguish life from anything else in the physical world, except, perhaps, man-made computer
Computer
A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...
s. However, whereas the informational teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
of computer programmes are derived, by being designed by humans to achieve specific goals, the teleology
Teleology
A teleology is any philosophical account which holds that final causes exist in nature, meaning that design and purpose analogous to that found in human actions are inherent also in the rest of nature. The word comes from the Greek τέλος, telos; root: τελε-, "end, purpose...
and informational characteristics of organisms are intrinsic to them and evolve naturally.
Traditional biology (and philosophy of biology
Philosophy of biology
The philosophy of biology is a subfield of philosophy of science, which deals with epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical issues in the biological and biomedical sciences...
) has seen such processes as being purely physical and, being influenced by a reductionist and mechanistic
Mechanism (philosophy)
Mechanism is the belief that natural wholes are like machines or artifacts, composed of parts lacking any intrinsic relationship to each other, and with their order imposed from without. Thus, the source of an apparent thing's activities is not the whole itself, but its parts or an external...
tradition, has adopted a very restricted notion of the physical as having to do with only efficient causation. Biosemiotics uses concepts from semiotics (in the sense of C.S. Peirce as the broad logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
al and scientific study
Scientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
of dynamic sign action in humans as well as elsewhere in nature) to answer questions about the biological emergence of meaning, intentionality
Intentionality
The term intentionality was introduced by Jeremy Bentham as a principle of utility in his doctrine of consciousness for the purpose of distinguishing acts that are intentional and acts that are not...
and a psychical
Psyche (psychology)
The word psyche has a long history of use in psychology and philosophy, dating back to ancient times, and has been one of the fundamental concepts for understanding human nature from a scientific point of view. The English word soul is sometimes used synonymously, especially in older...
world; questions that are hard to answer within a purely mechanist and physicalist framework.
Biosemiotics sees the evolution of life and the evolution of semiotic systems as two aspects of the same process. The scientific approach to the origin and evolution of life has, in part due to the success of molecular biology, given us highly valuable accounts of the outer aspects of the whole process, but has overlooked the inner qualitative aspects of sign action, leading to a reduced picture of causality. Complex self-organized living systems are also governed by formal and final causality —- formal in the sense of the downward causation from a whole structure (such as the organism) to its individual molecules, constraining their action but also endowing them with functional meanings in relation to the whole metabolism; and final in the sense of the tendency to take habits and to generate future interpretants of the present sign actions. Here, biosemiotics draws also upon the insights of fields like systems theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...
, theoretical biology and the study of complex self-organized
Organization
An organization is a social group which distributes tasks for a collective goal. The word itself is derived from the Greek word organon, itself derived from the better-known word ergon - as we know `organ` - and it means a compartment for a particular job.There are a variety of legal types of...
systems.
Particular scientific fields like molecular biology
Molecular biology
Molecular biology is the branch of biology that deals with the molecular basis of biological activity. This field overlaps with other areas of biology and chemistry, particularly genetics and biochemistry...
, cognitive ethology
Cognitive ethology
The fusion of cognitive science and classical ethology into cognitive ethology "emphasizes observing animals under more-or-less natural conditions, with the objective of understanding the evolution, adaptation , causation, and development of the species-specific behavioral repertoire" - .- Relation...
, cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...
, robotics
Robotics
Robotics is the branch of technology that deals with the design, construction, operation, structural disposition, manufacture and application of robots...
, and neurobiology deal with information processes at various levels and thus spontaneously contribute to knowledge about biosemiosis (sign action in living systems). However, biosemiotics proper is not yet a specific disciplinary research programme, but a general perspective on the need for investigating the role that "sign" use plays in life processes, and attempts to integrate such findings, and to build a semiotic foundation for biology. It may help to resolve some forms of Cartesian dualism that is still haunting philosophy of mind. By describing the continuity between body and mind, biosemiotics may also help us to understand how human "mindedness" may naturalistically emerge from more primitive processes of embodied animal "knowing."
Main branches
According to the basic types of semiosis under study, biosemiotics can be divided into- vegetative semiotics (also phytosemioticsPhytosemioticsPhytosemiotics is a branch of biosemiotics that studies the sign processes in plants, or more broadly, the vegetative semiosis. Vegetative semiosis is a type of sign processes that occurs at cellular and tissue level, including cellular recognition, plant perception, plant signal transduction,...
); vegetative semiosis occurs in all organisms at their cellular and tissue level; vegetative semiotics includes prokaryote semiotics, sign-mediated interactions in bacteria communities such as quorum sensing and quorum quenching. - animal semiotics, or zoosemiotics; animal semiosis occurs in the organisms with neuromuscular system.
According to the dominant aspect of semiosis under study, accordingly the labels biopragmatics, biosemantics, and biosyntactics have been used.
History
Apart from Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) and Charles W. MorrisCharles W. Morris
Charles W. Morris was an American semiotician and philosopher.-Background:A son of Charles William and Laura Morris, Charles William Morris was born on May 23, 1901...
(1903–1979), early pioneers of biosemiotics were Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob von Uexküll
Jakob Johann von Uexküll was a Estonian biologist who worked in the fields of muscular physiology, animal behaviour studies, and the cybernetics of life. However, his most notable contribution is the notion of umwelt, used by semiotician Thomas Sebeok...
(1864–1944), Heini Hediger
Heini Hediger
Heini Hediger was a Swiss zoologist noted for work in proxemics in animal behavior and is known as the "father of zoo biology". Hediger was formerly the director of Tierpark Dählhölzli , Zoo Basel and Zürich Zoo ....
(1908–1992), Giorgio Prodi
Giorgio Prodi
Giorgio Prodi was an Italian medical scientist, oncologist and semiotician.He studied medicine and chemistry in the University of Bologna. From 1958, he taught general pathology and experimental oncology...
(1928–1987), Marcel Florkin
Marcel Florkin
Marcel Florkin was a Belgian biochemist. Florkin was graduated as a Doctor in Medicine and became a professor of biochemistry at the University of Liège....
(1900–1979) and Friedrich S. Rothschild
Friedrich S. Rothschild
Friedrich Salomon Rothschild was a Jewish psychiatrist and semiotician. He has coined the term biosemiotic in his work of 1962....
(1899–1995); the founding fathers of the contemporary interdiscipline were Thomas Sebeok
Thomas Sebeok
Thomas Albert Sebeok was a polymathic American semiotician and linguist.- Life and work :...
(1920–2001) and Thure von Uexküll
Thure von Uexküll
Thure von Uexküll was a German scholar of psychosomatic medicine and biosemiotics. He has developed the approach of his father, Jakob von Uexküll, in the study of living systems and applied it in medicine.-Life:1955-1965: Director of the Medical Outpatient Department at the University of...
(1908–2004).
The contemporary period (as initiated by Copenhagen-Tartu school) include biologists Jesper Hoffmeyer
Jesper Hoffmeyer
Jesper Hoffmeyer is emeritus professor at the University of Copenhagen Institute of Biology, and is a leading figure in the emerging field of Biosemiotics....
, Kalevi Kull
Kalevi Kull
Kalevi Kull is an eminent biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.He was the president of the Estonian Naturalists' Society in 1991–1994.Ecologist Olevi Kull was his younger brother.-Publications:...
, Claus Emmeche
Claus Emmeche
Claus Emmeche is a Danish theoretical biologist and philosopher. He is associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, and is head of the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Science Studies at the Faculty of Science .His research interests are in philosophy of science, especially...
, Terrence Deacon
Terrence Deacon
Terrence William Deacon is an American anthropologist . He taught at Harvard for eight years, relocated to Boston University in 1992, and is currently Professor of Biological Anthropology and Neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley.-Theoretical interests:Prof...
, Luis Bruni, Alexei Sharov, Søren Brier, Marcello Barbieri, Anton Markos, Howard Pattee, Yair Neuman, Timo Maran, semioticians Donald Favareau, Martin Krampen
Martin Krampen
Martin Krampen is a leading German semiotician, semiotics Professor in Göttingen. He has worked in the field of visual semiotics and environmental perception, also as a professional artist, but he became well-known as the one who established the field of phytosemiotics , later becoming an...
, Frederik Stjernfelt, Floyd Merrell, Myrdene Anderson, Lucia Santaella, Marcel Danesi
Marcel Danesi
Marcel Danesi is a current Professor of Semiotics and Linguistic Anthropology at the University of Toronto. He is known for his work in language, communications, and semiotics; being Director of the Program in semiotics and communication theory...
, Winfried Nöth, philosophers John Deely
John Deely
John Deely is an American philosopher and semiotician. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the Center for Thomistic Studies of the University of St. Thomas ....
, John Collier, Tommi Vehkavaara, Guenther Witzany, and complex systems scientists Peter Cariani, Michael Conrad, Cliff Joslyn
Cliff Joslyn
Cliff Joslyn is an American cognitive scientist, cyberneticist, and currently Chief Scientist for Knowledge Sciences at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Seattle, Washington, USA.- Biography :...
, Luis M. Rocha, et al.
In 2001, an annual international conference for biosemiotic research (Gatherings in Biosemiotics) was inaugurated, and has taken place every year since.
In 2004, a group of biosemioticians - Marcello Barbieri, Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, and Anton Markos - decided to establish an international journal of biosemiotics. Under their editorship, the Journal of Biosemiotics was launched by Nova Science Publishers in 2005 (two issues published), and with the same five editors the Biosemiotics was launched by Springer in 2008.
The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies
International Society for Biosemiotic Studies
The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies is an academic society for the researchers in semiotic biology. The Society was established in 2005...
was established in 2005. A collective programmatic paper on the basic theses of biosemiotics appeared in 2009.
External links
- International Society for Biosemiotics Studies
- The Biosemiotics website by Alexei Sharov
- Biosemiotics, introduction
- Overview of Gatherings in Biosemiotics
- The S.E.E.D. Journal (Semiotics, Evolution, Energy, and Development)
- http://www.zbi.ee/~uexkull/Jakob von Uexküll CentreJakob von Uexküll CentreJakob von Uexküll Centre is an Estonia-based organisation for the work with the heritage of biologist Jakob von Uexküll.It was established in 1993. The Centre is situated in Tartu and attached to the Estonian Naturalists' Society. The Centre co-works with the Department of Semiotics of the...
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