OPINION THE BIG IDEA
A meadowful
of meaning
When it comes to the biological world, we think we have a
pretty good idea of how things work. But what if we need a
bigger frame to fit around our current picture? What if it linked
the workings of animals’ cells with language and consciousness,
all via unexplored webs of meaning? Liz Else discovers the
strange new world of biosemiotics
EVERY so often, something shows up on the name for its activity – semiotics is the study
New Scientist radar that we just can’t identify of signs and symbols that is most commonly
easily. Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a brand associated with linguistic philosophers such
new type of flying machine that we are going as Ferdinand de Saussure. “Biosemiotics”,
to have to study closely? then, might sound like the name of some
That was our reaction when we first heard arcane mix of biological science and linguistic
about a small conference held in June at the philosophy. Luckily, though, the true message
philosophy department of the Portuguese of biosemiotics is clear: we may do better
Catholic University in Braga. There, a group to stop thinking about the biological world
of biologists, neuroscientists, philosophers, solely in terms of its physical and chemical
information technologists and other scholars properties, but see it also as a world made
from all over the world gathered to discuss up of biological signs and “meanings”.
some revolutionary ideas for developing One of the nascent field’s leading lights,
the hitherto obscure field of biosemiotics. Donald Favareau of the National University
Unlike most revolutionaries, it soon became of Singapore, provides a definition on the
clear that this group’s goal was not to overturn group’s website. “Biosemiotics is the study
the established order. They don’t attack the of the myriad forms of communications…
current way of doing science – they see its observable both within and between living
value plainly – but they do believe that for systems. It is thus the study of representation,
biology to become a more fully explanatory meaning, sense, and the biological significance an animal physiologist whose 1934 book
science, it needs a more encompassing of sign processes – from intracellular signalling A Stroll Through the Worlds of Animals and
framework. This framework needs to be able to processes to animal display behaviour to Men: A picture book of invisible worlds – and
explain an under-studied aspect of all living human… artefacts such as language and later works – inspired Konrad Lorenz and
organisms: the capacity to navigate their abstract symbolic thought.” Niko Tinbergen, who then went on to win
environments through the processing of signs. To get a better sense of what this means, a Nobel prize in 1973 for their studies in
Biology, of course, already concerns itself it is best to go back to the field’s roots. animal behaviour, or ethology.
with information: cell signalling, the genetic Biosemiotics traces its earliest influences to Von Uexküll wrote: “If we stand before
code, pheromones and human language, for the independent efforts of an Estonian-born a meadow covered with flowers, full of
example. What biosemiotics aims to do is to biologist in the early 20th century and an buzzing bees, fluttering butterflies, darting
weave these disparate strands into a single American philosopher of the 19th century, dragonflies, grasshoppers jumping over
coherent theory of biological meaning. who wrote much of his work hidden in an blades of grass, mice scurrying, and snails
At first glance, the group seems to have attic to avoid his creditors. crawling about, we would be inclined to ask
chosen an unfortunate and incomprehensible Estonian-born Jakob von Uexküll was ourselves the unintended question: Does the
28 | NewScientist | 21 August 2010
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In her own world, skin… The pursuit of this simple meaning rule
yet enwrapped constitutes almost the whole of the tick’s life.”
in myriad others By reacting only to the single odorant of sweat,
the tick reduces the countless characteristics
of the world of host animals to a simple
common denominator in its own world.
So von Uexküll’s meadow is alive with
myriad perceptual worlds, with each one, for
each species, evolving within, and functioning
as, a different web of meaning. To understand
why animals are organised the way they are,
and why they act on the world as they do, he
explained: “Meaning is the guiding star that
biology must follow.”
Von Uexküll’s pioneering sensation-action
“feedback-cycle” model for explaining the
mechanics of biological meaning was
revolutionary for its time. Indeed, it anticipated
by many decades the science of cybernetics,
which studies systems of control. But his
“Does the meadow present
the same view to so many
animals as it does to us?”
model is now considered too mechanical and
simplistic by most biosemioticians. To build
what they hope might be a more scientifically
fertile model, many of them base their
understanding on the semiotic logic of
the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce.
Peirce was born in 1839 in Cambridge,
Massachusetts. His father was a professor
of mathematics and astronomy at Harvard
University. Peirce junior was a brilliant but
Frank Courtes/Agence VU/camerapress
rebellious student, who suffered from both
neuralgia and depression. Known today as
the father of the philosophical school of
pragmatism, as a student Peirce made the
serious mistake of angering his chemistry
professor, who went on to become president
of Harvard. During a life-long feud, he ensured
that Peirce never gained a permanent post at
any university.
meadow present the same view to the eyes of alone knows”, and it was in accordance with For the 55 years after he graduated, Peirce
so many various animals as it does to ours?” that experiential world – and not the entirety wrote scientific and philosophic dictionary
He thought that a naive person would of the whole, unseen but physically existing and encyclopaedia entries to support himself
intuitively answer that it is the same meadow world – that the creature had to coordinate and his ongoing studies, which included
to every eye. Physical scientists, he thought, its actions to eat, flee, mate and sustain itself. producing the world’s first photometric
would see all the animals in the meadow as For some animals, that subjective star catalogue at Harvard Astronomical
“mere mechanisms, steered here and there perceptual universe, or Umwelt, as von Observatory and working as a geodesist for
by physical and chemical agents, the meadow Uexküll called it, writing in German, is narrow. the US Coastal Service. It was a difficult life:
consists of a confusion of light waves and He describes the umwelt of a tick which sits he was often without heat and food, and was
air vibrations… which operate the various “motionless on the tip of a branch until a kept alive thanks to the kindness of his brother,
objects in it”. mammal passes below it. The smell of the neighbours and benefactors, including his
For von Uexküll, both views were wrong. butyric acid awakens it and it lets itself fall. closest friend and admirer, the psychologist
Each creature in the meadow lived in “its own It lands on the coat of its prey, through which William James.
world filled with the perceptions which it it burrows to reach and pierce the warm Peirce’s work in logic, mathematics and >
21 August 2010 | NewScientist | 29
OPINION THE BIG IDEA
philosophy ran to an astonishing 60,000 the different biological systems of different
pages. Much of this has been discovered and creatures, and Peirce’s model of the sign as
re-examined only recently, giving rise to the ultimately a kind of relation that living agents
vigorous field of Peircean studies. He saw logic adopt towards things for the accomplishment
as a formal doctrine of signs, and his theory of various ends and actions.
of signs is important in modern biosemiotics. When Peirce wrote, he was thinking
Most of us naively conceive of a “sign” as primarily of signs as relations that enable
standing for something concrete: a red traffic human thought to effectively understand the
light for most of us simply means “stop”. In world. Accordingly, his logic has recently been
other words, the two things – a sign and its applied in efforts to understand the origins
meaning – are directly connected in a sign of human language that reject the idea that
language appeared either as a lucky accident
“What biosemioticians really that endowed humans with a universal
want is an analysis which grammar – as posited by the linguist and
philosopher Noam Chomsky – or as a
goes beyond metaphor” by-product of an enlarged brain.
Instead, researchers such as Terrence Deacon,
relationship. Peirce, however, saw a sign as a biological anthropologist at the University of
representing a relation between three things. California, Berkeley, have used Peirce’s sign
Take the everyday example given by Jesper logic to explain how language may have
Hoffmeyer, a biochemist at the University arisen as an evolutionary consequence of
of Copenhagen, Denmark, and a leader in pre-linguistic symbolic activity.
biosemiotics, in his book Signs of Meaning in But biosemiotics applies the idea of signs
the Universe. Suppose a child breaks out in a and signalling much more widely than just
rash of red spots and is taken to the doctor the analysis of human language. Take these
by his mother. For the mother, the spots are sentences from a recent “Perspectives” article
a sign that her child is sick. The doctor knows in Science magazine: “Living cells are complex
they mean that the child has measles. As systems that are constantly making decisions
Peirce put it in its most general form: “a sign in response to internal or external signals.
is something which stands to someone, for Among the most notable carriers of
something, in some respect”. The red spots are information are… enzymes that receive inputs
not automatically something which is a sign from cell surface or internal receptors and
of measles to anyone, but only to “someone”, determine what actions should be taken
in this case the doctor. in response…” (Science, vol 328, p 983).
Piece saw all signs as involving a triadic
relation: the sign “vehicle” (the red spots);
the “object” to which the sign-bearer refers The broadest scope
(measles); and the “interpretant”, the system Words like “signals”, “information” and
that allows the realisation of the sign-object “inputs” litter the biology literature. But
relation to take place (the doctor’s thinking) all of these usages are metaphorical. What
and that acts accordingly upon that relation. biosemioticians really want is an analysis
He wanted to investigate and uncover the which goes further, says Charbel El-Hani, a
complex logic by which “in every scientific biologist at the Federal University of Bahia
intelligence, one sign gives birth to another, in Brazil. “The importance of going beyond
and especially one thought brings forth metaphor and really building a theory of
another”. His insight was to see that even the information is underlined by the reiterated To get a feel for this, New Scientist asked
simplest sign must be considered as a triadic claim that biology is a science of information,” a range of thinkers attending the Braga
relation, in which the sign vehicle, object and El-Hani told New Scientist. conference to explain how they saw the
interpreting system all play ineliminable The scope envisioned for the new field field. More than 20 responded. The wildly
parts – an insight biosemioticians believe is therefore truly broad: a viewpoint which different roads they have travelled to reach
science would do well to explore more fully. connects everything from biomolecular biosemiotics, and the different areas to
This realisation led Peirce away from networks sending signals that control cell which they wanted to apply it, were evident
devising linear chains of logic that relied behaviour to animal behaviour and human in their responses.
on just two factors, to the construction of a language. That is the agreed goal, but the Favareau came to biosemiotics as a result
“sign” logic that is an endlessly branching, scientists and philosophers involved each of “growing discontent with the inability of
multidimensional network. Although Peirce’s bring their own uniquely interdisciplinary cognitive neuroscience to explain the reality
work is theoretical, there are clear parallels perspective, and so do not always agree on of experiential ‘meaning’ at the same level
between von Uexküll’s model of the meadow, the best way forward. It is safe to say that that it was so successful in, and manifestly
filled with different meanings, interpreted by this new science is very much in ferment. committed to, explaining the mechanics of
30 | NewScientist | 21 August 2010
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Imagine your entire on the other hand, full intentional meaning is
world was flowers a specifically human privilege. How could
and how to kiss them such a thing have developed phylogenetically,
if not from simpler semiotic processes in
biology?” asks Stjernfelt.
Kalevi Kull at the University of Tartu
in Estonia stays closer to von Uexküll.
“Biology has studied how organisms and
living communities are built. But it is no less
important to understand what such living
systems know, in a broad sense; that is, what
they remember (what agent-object sign
relations are biologically preserved), what
they recognise (what distinctions they are
capable and not capable of), what signs they
explore (how they communicate, make
meanings and use signs) and so on. These
questions are all about how different living
systems perceive the world, how they model
the world, what experience motivates what
actions, based on those perceptions.”
“The exploration of the
scientifically new continent
of ‘meaning’ has just begun”
These answers and many more are just a
taste of how biosemiotics is shaping up. As
Favareau explains, we must remember that it
is still a “proto-science – closer to a very lively
debate between scientists about what such
a future science will have to explain about
biological meaning, and how it will do so, than
it is to a fully realised science with a common
terminology and a settled methodology”.
The founders are open to new ideas. “If one
truly recognises the need for something like
biosemiotics, then one owes it to science to
apply one’s best thought and effort to the
task,” writes Favareau in the introduction
christian ziegler
to a recently released anthology Essential
Readings in Biosemiotics (Springer, 2009).
Marcello Barbieri, a molecular biologist at
the University of Ferrara in Italy, another key
the electrochemical transmission events by as ‘information’, ‘message’, ‘representation’, figure, echoes Favareau. He brings yet another
which such meanings are asserted (without ‘code’, ‘signal’, ‘cue’, ‘communication’ and perspective to the field – a “code model” that
explanation) to be produced”. ‘sign’ crop up all over biology,” he says. He he has applied to the genetic code, splicing
For Gerard Battail, an information theorist points out, however, that while the use of such and other cellular codes. “Nothing is settled
at Télécom ParisTech in France, it is the fact terms is apparently unavoidable in explaining yet in biosemiotics,” he says. “Everything
that mainstream biology, while loosely using the workings of living systems, rarely, if is on the move, and the exploration of the
a vocabulary borrowed from communication ever, are such concepts explicitly defined as scientifically new continent of ‘meaning’
theory – “pathways”, “codes” and the like – technical terms. His version of biosemiotics has just begun.” Watch this space. n
“remains basically concerned with the sees this as an explanatory blind spot that
flow of matter and energy into and between should be taken seriously. To learn more about biosemiotics and its history,
living entities, failing to recognise [that] the “If not, the danger is that biology is trapped download a free pdf of the first chapter of Donald
information flow is at least as important”. in a dualism where all organic communication, Favareau’s Essential Readings in Biosemiotics
Frederik Stjernfelt of Aarhus University from cells to apes, are claimed to be describable at [Link]/axHqMO, courtesy of Springer
in Denmark echoes El-Hani: “Notions such as simple physiochemical causes only – while, Science publishers and Donald Favareau
21 August 2010 | NewScientist | 31
