Familiarity with Charles Darwin's treatise on evolution is essential to every well-educated individual. One of the most important books ever published--and a continuing source of controversy, a century and a half later--this classic of science is reproduced in a facsimile of the critically acclaimed first edition.

J. Baird Callicott seeks to resolve the problem of the intrinsic value of nature by utilizing a nondualistic paradigm derived from quantum theory. His approach is twofold. According to his less radical approach, quantum theory shows that properties once considered to be “primary” and “objective” are in fact the products of interactions between observer and observed. Values are also the products of such interactions. According to his more radical approach, quantum theory’s doctrine of internal relations is the model for the (...) idea that everything is intrinsically valuable because the “I” is intrinsically valuable and related to everything else. I argue that humanity’s treatment of nature will become respectful only as humanity’s awareness evolves toward nondualism, and that such nondualistic awareness will not be produced by changes in scientific theory alone. Nevertheless, as Callicott suggests, such changes may be harbingers of evolutionary trends in human awareness. I conclude with a sketch of how nondualism, especially in its panentheistic version, provides the basis for environmental ethics. (shrink)

This paper attempts to put forward an aesthetic theory of nature based on a biosemiotic description of the living, which in turn is derived from an autopoietic theory of organism (p. Varela). An autopoietic system's reaction to material constraints is the unfolding of a dimension of meaning. In the outward Gestalt of autopoietic systems, meaning appears as fonn, and as such it reveals itself in a sensually graspable manner. The mode of being of organisms has an irreducible aesthetic side in (...) which this mode of being becomes visible. Nature thus displays a kind of transparency of its own functioning: in a nondiscursive way organisms show traces of their conditio vitae through their material self-presentation. Living beings hence always show a basic level of expressiveness as a necessary component of their organic mode of being. This is called the ecstatic dimension of nature (G. Böhme, R. Corrington). Autopoiesis in its full consequence then amounts to a view reminding of Paracelsus' idea of the signatura rerum (c. Glacken, H. Böhme): nature is transparent, not because it is organized digitally as a linguistic text or code, but rather because it displays analogically the kind of intentionality engendered by autopoiesis. Nature as a whole, as «living fonn" (S. Langer), is a symbol for organic intentionality. The most fundamental meaning of nature protection thus is to guarantee the «real presence" of our soul. (shrink)

It is a relatively rare, and very welcome, event when an original, brilliantly imaginative analytic philosopher takes a fresh look at earlier figures in the history of philosophy and proceeds to tell a story that ties in their work with his own. Analytic philosophy’s greatest disability remains its lack of historical resonance, and Hilary Putnam is one of the few who have worked hard to help it overcome this handicap. His discussion of the great American pragmatists has made it possible (...) for students to see past the dismissive attitudes that Russell and Ayer, for example, adopted toward James and Dewey. Advancing along lines sketched out some decades ago in Morton White’s prescient Toward Reunion in Philosophy, Putnam has helped us see in detail how Quinean skepticism about the language-fact and essence-accident dualisms ties in with James’s and Dewey’s skepticism about many other traditional dualisms. (shrink)

This article compares the material pollution of life's elementary resources, i.e., water, soil, and air, with the semiotic pollution of the elementary resources of sign-processes, i.e., channel, sign-matter, and message; code, signifier, and signified; as well as context, sender, and recipient. It is claimed that semiotic pollution interferes with sign-processes as much as material pollution interferes with the fundamental processes of life; both types of pollution are similar in that they produce stress for human beings in current societies. It is (...) argued that semiotics is able to provide the conceptual tools necessary to develop policies that can reduce semiotic pollution. As is shown, however, additional research is required to operationalize and metricize generalized concepts of semiotic pollutionsuch as "channel-related", "semiosis-related", and "situation-related noise". (shrink)

Ecosemiotics is the study of sign processes (semioses) in relation to the natural environment in which they occur. The paper examines the cultural, biological, and evolutionary dimensions of ecosemioses on the basis of C. S. Peirce's theory of continuity between matter and mind and investigates the ecosemiotic dimensions of natural signs. Ecosemiotics and the semiotics of nature are distinguished from pansemiotism, and the coevolution of sign processes with their natural enviromnent is discussed as a determining factor of ecosemiosis.

"Every word, like a sacred object, has its place. No _précis_ is possible. This extraordinary book must be read."—Edmund Carpenter, _New York Times Book Review _ "No outline is possible; I can only say that reading this book is a most exciting intellectual exercise in which dialectic, wit, and imagination combine to stimulate and provoke at every page."—Edmund Leach, _Man _ "Lévi-Strauss's books are tough: very scholarly, very dense, very rapid in argument. But once you have mastered him, human history (...) can never be the same, nor indeed can one's view of contemporary society. And his latest book, _The Savage Mind_, is his most comprehensive and certainly his most profound. Everyone interested in the history of ideas _must_ read it; everyone interested in human institutions _should _read it."—J. H. Plumb, _Saturday Review_ "A constantly stimulating, informative and suggestive intellectual challenge."—Geoffrey Gorer, _The Observer_, London. (shrink)

The article sketches an introductory outline of zoomusicology as a discipline closely related to zoosemiotics, focusing on the existing results and formulating few further problems. The analysis addresses the limitations and potentials of zoomusicological research, problematic topics, a basic framework of possible methodologies, and an attempt to situate the discipline in relation to other fields, ethnomusicology in particular.

David Herman; Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds by Lubomír Dolezel, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Volume 57, Issue 3, 1 June 1999, Pages.

A short review of complexity research from the perspective of history and philosophy of biology is presented. Complexity and its emergence has scientific and metaphysical meanings. From its beginning, biology was a science of complex systems, but with the advent of electronic computing and the possibility of simulating mathematical models of complicated systems, new intuitions of complexity emerged, together with attempts to devise quantitative measures of complexity. But can we quantify the complex?

It is argued, that theory sf signs, especially in the tradition of the great philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) can inspire the study of central problems in the philosophy of biology. Three such problems are considered: (1) The nature of biology as a science, where a semiotically informed pluralistic approach to the theory of science is introduced. (2) The peculiarity of the general object of biology, where a realistic interpretation of sign- and information-concepts is required to see sign-processes as immanent (...) in nature. (3) The possibility of an artificial construction of life, hereby discussed as a conceptual problem in the present form of the artificial life project and its implied definition of life. (shrink)

Prodi's semiotics theory comes into being to answer a radical question: if a sign is a cross-reference, what guarantees the relation between the sign and the object to which it is referring? Prodi rebukes all traditional solutions: a subject's voluntary intention, a convention, the iconic relation between sign and object. He refutes the fIrst answer because the notion of intention, upon which it is based, is, indeed, a fully mysterious entity. The conventionalist answer is just as unsatisfactory for it does (...) nothing but extends to a whole group that which cannot be explained for a single component; the iconic one, finally, is rejected toosince in this case the notion of "likeliness", as the basis of the concept of "iconicity", is not explained. Prodi's answer is to locate the model of semiotic relations in the figure of the circle. The circle is life, which is nothing else but an infinite chain of translation and recognition relations amidst ever more complex systems. The circle has neither a beginning nor an end. It has no foundation, no established rule. It holds no cause that cannot become, in turn, effect. Semiosis, then, is based upon life for life, itself, is intrinsically semiotic. We can put the world in signs, that is we can come to know it, because we, ourselves, are a part of that very worldthat through us is made known. Finally, what this implies is that being inside the circle of semiosis-life, an issue arises what is beyond that circle: that is both an aesthetic and a religious problem. (shrink)

Any great new theoretical framework has an epistemological and an ontological aspect to its philosophy as well as an axiological one, and one needs to understand all three aspects in order to grasp the deep aspiration and idea of the theoretical framework. Presently, there is a widespread effort to understand C. S. Peirce's (1837–1914) pragmaticistic semeiotics, and to develop it by integrating the results of modern science and evolutionary thinking; first, producing a biosemiotics and, second, by integrating it with the (...) progress in cybernetics, information science, and system theory to create a cybersemiotics. In this paper, we focus on the understanding of the evolution of the universe that Peirce produced as an alternative to the mechanistic view underlying classical physics and try to place man in an evolving universe as a creative, aesthetical agent. It is true that modern non-equilibrium physics has made a modern foundation for a profound physical understanding of the basic evolutionary processes in the universe. But science still has not produced a theory that can explain how the creativity of the universe could produce signification, interpretation, and first-person consciousness. To this end, Peirce's thoughts on agapastic evolution coupled with the aesthetically influence of the growth of ideas and reasonableness on man could make a contribution. (shrink)