New discoveries in the life sciences have affirmed that the virtual script as well as its context-dependent reading and interpretation determine the final living creature. An extended understanding of Darwinian Theory is crucial for understanding life as semiosis in terms of Peirce and Eco’s semiotic models. The semiosis of living systems is potentially unlimited. Genes are not static and unchangeable scripts, but can always be reinterpreted by new interpretants that illuminate them from different points of view, depending on which properties (...) are relevant in a particular context. The encyclopedia is a term, in Umberto Eco’s semiotics, which represents the multidimensional space of semiosis that is governed by a self-sustaining production of interpretants. The paper will present the idea of understanding the Extended Synthesis in terms of a biosemiotic enyclopedia. (shrink)

This paper examines the ethological notion of ritualization from the perspective of zoosemiotic studies. Instead of moving within the horizon of traditional semiotic approaches to this phenomenon, my aim is to propose an alternative attempt of modelling based on the linguistic and semiotic concepts of context and contextuality. At the same time, the paper identifies ritualization as a case of exaptation, suggesting the extension of the context-based model within evolutionary biology and the agenda of its semiotic description, namely biosemiotics. At (...) lenght, a potential application of the model is suggested with respect to human ritualization, essentially as a means to prevent inadequate adaptationist considerations. (shrink)

Evolution and life phenomena can be understood as results of history, i.e., as outcomes of cohabitation and collective memory of populations of autonomous entities across many generations and vast extent of time. Hence, evolution of distinct lineages of life can be considered as isomorphic with that of cultures. I argue here that cultures and culture-like systems – human culture, natural languages, and life forms – always draw from history, memory, experience, internal dynamics, etc., transforming themselves creatively into new patterns, never (...) foreseen before. This is possible thanks to the fact that all forms of life are descendants of life. Ontogeny and speciation in various lineages draw from continuous re-interpretation of conservative genetic/generic “texts”, as well as from changes of the interpretative process itself. The result is continuous appearances of new lineages-cultures and/or communities-cultures, in a semiotic process of re-interpretation and inventing new ways of living. The topic is developed here on the backgrounds of ideas presented by R. A. Rappaport in “Ritual and religion in the making of humanity” and J. Flegr in “Frozen evolution”. (shrink)

The concept of protosemiosis or semiosis at the lower levels of the living goes back to Giorgio Prodi, Thomas A. Sebeok and others. More recently, a typology of proto-signs was introduced by Sharov and Vehkavaara. Kull uses the term of vegetative semiosis, defined by iconicity, when referring to plants and lower organism semiosis. The criteria for the typology of proto-signs by Sharov and Vehkavaara are mostly based on two important presuppositions: agency and a lack of representation in low-level semiosis. We (...) would like to focus on an alternative approach to protosign classification. In particular, we aim to provide a sign-typological characteristic of proteins (in analogy to Maran’ s classification of environmental signs). Our approach is focused on representation, that is, we only consider the relation between a sign and its object. We are considering representation independently from the role of interpretant and interpretation (which is an epiphenomenon of agency). Two hypotheses are investigated and accordingly evaluated in this paper: (I) Proteins are indexical protosigns. (II) Proteins are iconic protosigns. The conclusion our argumentation leads to supports the hypothesis (II). (shrink)

The article deals with the notion of the genetic code and its metaphorical understanding as a “language”. In the traditional view of the language metaphor of the genetic code, combinations of nucleotides are signs of amino acids. Similarly, words combined from letters represent certain meanings. The language metaphor of the genetic code, 171–200, 2011) assumes that the nucleotides stay in the analogy to letters, triples to words and genes to sentences. We propose an application of mathematical linguistic methods on the (...) notion of the genetic code. We provide quantitative analysis of mRNA strings and natural language texts. This analysis is sensitive to the detection of the code units hierarchy. We also take into consideration a representative quantitative analysis of DNA, RNA and proteins. Our analysis of mRNA confirms an assumption that the design of the genetic code cannot analogize DNA bases and letters. The notion of the letter is much more appropriate if analogized with triplets or amino acids, 187–191, 2017). (shrink)

This review paper discusses the perspective of complex biological systems as applied to inheritance and ontogeny, focusing on the continuity of genetic, epigenetic and microbiotic inheritance. The informational processuality within this continuity can be used as to exemplify the insufficiency of hierarchical concepts in grasping the complex and integrated nature of biological processes. The argument follows Bruni and Giorgi in emphasizing that while structures and substrates are organized hierarchically, communicational processes are organized heterarchically. The essay also argues the insufficiency of (...) a single, basic, i.e. genetic level of description, which is the prevalent idea of twentieth century biology, to explain all phenotypic variation. I argue that inheritance and development cannot be fully explained by some sub- or super-ordination and that such descriptions are merely heuristic tools that do not reflect the nature of such processes. (shrink)

The discovery of the genetic code has shown that the origin of life has also been the origin of semiosis, and the discovery of many other organic codes has indicated that organic semiosis has been the sole form of semiosis present on Earth in the first three thousand million years of evolution. With the origin of animals and the evolution of the brain, however, a new type of semiosis came into existence, a semiosis that is based on interpretation and is (...) commonly referred to as interpretive, or Peircean semiosis. This suggests that there are two distinct types of semiosis in Nature, one based on coding and one based on interpretation, and all the experimental evidence that we have does support this conclusion. Both in principle and in practice, therefore, there is no conflict between organic semiosis and Peircean semiosis, and yet they have been the object of a fierce controversy because it has been claimed that semiosis is always based on interpretation, even at the cellular level. Such a claim has recently been reproposed in a number of papers and it has become necessary therefore to reexamine it in the light of the proposed arguments. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to consider the significance of different types of memory and non-genetic inheritance and different biosemiotic systems for the origin and evolution of language. It presents language and memory as distributed, heteronomous and system-determined processes implemented in biological and social domains. The article emphasises that language and other sign systems are both ecological and inductive systems that were caused by and always correlate with the environment and deductive systems that are inherited by and depend (...) on the internal development of organisms, individuals, and societies. The article also claims that the origin, re-occurrence and evolution of naturally-emerging sign systems presuppose their retention and accumulation in physical, biological, individual, and social types of memory and reinforcement and maintenance by conventional and deliberate social regulation and accumulation. All of this allows language and other sign systems to be situation-relevant and to be transmitted through generations without their constant reinvention. The novelty of the proposed theory of language origin and evolution is in interdisciplinary integration of biosemiotic studies, systems approaches to language and studies of inheritance systems presented by ‘Extended evolutionary synthesis’. (shrink)

Metaphors involve immense explanatory power and positive impact predominantly in the scientific education and popularization. Still the use of metaphors in science might be a double-edged sword. Introduction of the computer metaphor to many scientific fields in the last century resulted in reductionist approaches, oversimplifications and mechanistic explanations in science as well as in humanities. In this short commentary we developed further the computer metaphor by prof. Noble and the illusions this metaphor led to in genetics, linguistics and consequently DNA (...) linguistics. (shrink)

Meaning is a central concept of (bio)semiotics. At the same time, it is also a word of everyday language. Here, on the example of the world information, we discuss the “reduction-inflation model” of evolution of a common word into a scientific concept, to return subsequently into everyday circulation with new connotations. Such may be, in the near future, also the fate of the word meaning if, flexed through objectified semantics, will become considered an objective concept usable in semiotics. We argue (...) that reducing meaning to a technical term essentially synonymous to code and stripped of most of the original semantic field is not a necessary prerequisite for a meaningful application of the concept in semiotics and in biology. (shrink)

In a macroevolutionary timescale, evolvability itself evolves. Lineages are sorted based on their ability to generate adaptive novelties, which leads to the optimization of their genotype-phenotype map. The system of translation of genetic or epigenetic changes to the phenotype may reach significant horizontal and vertical complexity, and may even exhibit certain aspects of learning behaviour. This continuously evolving semiotic system probably enables the origin of complex yet functional and internally compatible adaptations. However, it also has a second, “darker”, side. As (...) was pointed out by several authors, the same process gradually reduces the probability of the origination of significant evolutionary novelties. In a similar way to the evolution of societies, teachings, or languages, in which the growing number of internal linkages gradually solidifies their overall structure and the structure or interpretation of their constitutive elements, the evolutionary potential of lineages decreases during biological evolution. Possible adaptations become limited to small “peripheral” modifications. According to the Frozen Evolution theory, some of the proximate causes of this “macroevolutionary freezing” are more pronounced or present exclusively in sexual lineages. Sorting based on the highest evolvability probably leads to the establishment of certain structural features of complex organisms, e.g. the modular character of their development and morphology. However, modules also “macroevolutionary freeze” whereas the hypothetical “thawing” of modules or their novel adaptive combinations becomes rarer and rarer. Some possible ways out of this dead end include the rearrangement of individual development, e.g. neoteny, radical simplification, i.e. sacculinization, and transition to a higher level of organization, e.g. symbiosis or symbiogenesis. The evolution of evolvability is essentially a biosemiotic process situated at the intersection of the genocentric modern synthesis and the evo-devo-centric extended synthesis. Therefore, evolvability may eventually connect these three not necessarily contradictory approaches. (shrink)