Semiosis and Phase Transitions in Biology: a Peircean View
-
Eliseo Fernández
Abstract
Since the days of Darwin and Wallace, evolution has been a leading unifying factor in biological theorizing, along with other key conceptual strands from thermodynamics, genetics, and molecular biology. Physics, whose explanatory resources underpin those of the physical sciences, has until quite recently stood impervious to evolutionary thought however. The thoroughly ahistorical conception of nature promoted by traditional physics, bundled with other philosophical preconceptions, conspired against any conceptual unification of physics with biology other than strict reductionism. This article aims to show that Peircean semiotics combined with new developments in both physics and biology augur new prospects for reversing this situation by means of a non-reductive unification of physical and biological theories leading to a truly evolutionary natural philosophy - including cosmology. For several reasons, such an upcoming synthesis could become auspicious to the incorporation of biosemiotic ideas as central explanatory resources in biology (in contrast to the present situation). To develop the reasons behind this expectation, I offer first a summary of some remarkable developments in cosmology, particle physics, condensed matter physics and biology, all of which relate to the notions of symmetry breaking, phase transitions and scale invariance. Next, I indicate how these trends merge with the rise of novel forms of causation (e.g. circular, downward, reciprocal) in systems biology and self-organization theories. Finally, I speculate on how the characteristic form of causation in biosemiotic transactions (i.e. semiosis) may relate to other types of causal action deployed within living systems.
© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Front matter
- Global Semiotics: Bridging Different Civilizations —The 11th World Congress of IASS, Nanjing Normal University
- A Portrait of Professor Yiheng Zhao
- The Paradox of Translation
- Semiotics and Its Double-institutional Aspects: As Analyzing Methods and as Institutionalized Objects
- A Semiotic Perspective on the Language of Science
- The Theories of Value and Opposition Applied to Mathematics
- Zoomorphism: An Analytic Model for Drama Characters
- The Back of Mnemosyne A Cultural-semiotic Analysis of the Forgetting Mechanism of Culture
- “Le Soleil”. Representation or Re-presentation?
- An Analysis of Symbolized Character Images and Dual Discourses in Comic Novels
- Theoretical Models for the Rhetorical Analysis of Photomontage
- Demystification of an Ad Using Barthes’s Cultural Semiotics
- Introduction to the Special Section for Peircean Semiotics and His Philosophy of Inquiry
- Semiosis and Phase Transitions in Biology: a Peircean View
- Peirce on Wonder, Inquiry and the Semiotic Ubiquity of Surprise
- Semiotic Boundary Values, Spirit and Human Freedom
- Tartu Semiotics in 2012
- The Tartu Synthesis in Semiotics Today Viewed from America
- On Cognitive and Semiotic Functions of Shifters
- Pragmatical Aspects of Models of Sociocultural Space
- Sign Systems Studies and the Semiotic Journals of the World
- CogSem Notes IV
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Front matter
- Global Semiotics: Bridging Different Civilizations —The 11th World Congress of IASS, Nanjing Normal University
- A Portrait of Professor Yiheng Zhao
- The Paradox of Translation
- Semiotics and Its Double-institutional Aspects: As Analyzing Methods and as Institutionalized Objects
- A Semiotic Perspective on the Language of Science
- The Theories of Value and Opposition Applied to Mathematics
- Zoomorphism: An Analytic Model for Drama Characters
- The Back of Mnemosyne A Cultural-semiotic Analysis of the Forgetting Mechanism of Culture
- “Le Soleil”. Representation or Re-presentation?
- An Analysis of Symbolized Character Images and Dual Discourses in Comic Novels
- Theoretical Models for the Rhetorical Analysis of Photomontage
- Demystification of an Ad Using Barthes’s Cultural Semiotics
- Introduction to the Special Section for Peircean Semiotics and His Philosophy of Inquiry
- Semiosis and Phase Transitions in Biology: a Peircean View
- Peirce on Wonder, Inquiry and the Semiotic Ubiquity of Surprise
- Semiotic Boundary Values, Spirit and Human Freedom
- Tartu Semiotics in 2012
- The Tartu Synthesis in Semiotics Today Viewed from America
- On Cognitive and Semiotic Functions of Shifters
- Pragmatical Aspects of Models of Sociocultural Space
- Sign Systems Studies and the Semiotic Journals of the World
- CogSem Notes IV
