Biosemiotics: The Origins of an Interdisciplinary Movement

 
PIIS004287440001897-1-1
DOI10.31857/S004287440001897-1
Publication type Article
Status Published
Authors
Occupation: Professor
Affiliation:
National Research University Higher School of Economics, Faculty of the Humanities, School of Philosophy
I.M. Sechenov First Moscow State Medical University (Sechenov University), Chair of Philosophy and History of Medicine
Address: Russian Federation, Moscow
Journal nameVoprosy filosofii
EditionIssue 11
Pages86-98
Abstract

Biosemiotics is considered in the article from the moment of its birth at the beginning of the 20th century (J. von Uexküll, Th. Sebeok, G. Prodi, H. Pattie, et al.); its reception in the philosophical anthropology and science of the 20th century and the prospects of its further development are analyzed. It is with the name of Sebeok that the popularization of Uexküll's study and the attribution of a special status to biosemiotics as a promising interdisciplinary (transdisciplinary) area of research are related. Biosemiotics is close nowadays in its conceptual arsenal to the theory of complex adaptive systems, bio-cybernetics, and the conception of enactivism in cognitive science and in non-classical epistemology. Considering living systems as operating signs, distinguishing signs and acquiring the ability to interpret them, biosemiotics seeks to penetrate into the deep sources of the origins of meaning in the Universe and thereby contributes to the development of the methodological foundations of communication theory and an extended ecological approach. It is substantiated that biosemiotics offers new conceptual and methodological tools for scientific understanding of mind (consciousness) and sense, for studying the rich variety of nonverbal human, animal and plant communicative processes, the intrinsic connection between perception and action, the nature of the vital world of organisms and the configuration of their semantic landscapes. The historical analysis of the emergence and development of biosemiotics makes it possible to evaluate its contribution to the development of modern interdisciplinary research strategies that have integrative capabilities, outlining the ways of synthesizing natural scientific (primarily biological) and the humanitarian knowledge, as well as pointing to promising steps in studying the mutual penetration of the human natural world and the world of technology, natural and artificial intelligence, ways of constructing modern cyberphysical systems.

Keywordsbiosemiotics, life, sign, complex systems, Sebeok, meaning, interdisciplinarity, ecological philosophy, Uexküll, Umwelt
AcknowledgmentThe study was supported by RFBR project № 16-06-00522a "Biosemiotics: birth and development of the paradigm".
Received18.12.2018
Publication date19.12.2018
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