H O M E
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R E V I E W |
O R D E R
 Dear Kalevi Kull,
Many thanks for your review. I would like to take this opportunity
to send you a brief commentary explaining the motivation for writing
the book in its present form.
Let me begin with the first paragraph of your review. From the
perspective of the history of science, it is correct that progress
in scientific knowledge takes place in small steps in the framework
of discourse communities and that, in normal scientific activity,
this progress does not involve discontinuous spurts. In the case of
new, revolutionary theories, however, the decisive steps in
advancing scientific knowledge are, in fact, discontinuous leaps
forward and not based mainly on prior research results. This has
clearly been proven by the history of science as a discipline.
Although this correction of the Popper model by Th.S. Kuhn dates
back 20 years ago, it has lost none of its validity.
Moving on to the motivation for my book. Over a period of 10 years,
the key concern in my field of research (philosophy) was the
philosophy of language along the line Wittgenstein I, Wittgenstein
II, Austin, Searle, Apel and Habermas. In particular, the
theoretical work of the authors Karl Otto Apel and Jrgen Habermas
has satisfactorily summarized the discussion on the theory of
science of the last 50 years and has yielded conclusive results.
Carnap, following the lines of Wittgenstein I, attempted to develop
a general scientific language that was to be equally valid for all
empirical scientific languages. It was also to consider all the
criteria of verifiability, and to be formalizable mathematically.
This effort merely represented the epitome of a development designed
to secure "objectivity" and "exactness" for scientific languages in
the natural sciences. The predecessors of this development, for
example Aristotle or Leibnitz ("characteristica universalis"), had
the same intention.
Then, Wittgenstein II very radically refuted his own "Tractatus",
and the subsequent discussions also disproved the scientific
theories of logical empiricism and critical rationalism by means of
the "pragmatic turn" and by proving that the foundation of the
epistemological positions of these approaches could not be provided.
This gave rise to the question as to the basis for a sufficient
foundation and justification of the respective scientific languages
used, and of language itself.
The decades-long attempts at foundation in the framework of theories
on syntactic logic or through semantic theories (Tarski) were unable
to effect a differentiation of sense and nonsense in speech acts;
they were unable to explain the identical meaning for two partners
in such a manner that it would be understandable in a
non-formalizable language, i.e. in everyday or colloquial language.
The key features for speaking and communicative action are:
a) the differentiation between overlying grammar and underlying
grammar
b) the different modi of underlying grammar
c) the rules governing language games
d) the constitutive and regulative rules of linguistic behavior
e) the establishment of inter-subjectivity
These confronted the behavioristic theories of semantics, as well as
the numerous attempts to justify language and communication in the
framework of cybernetic systems theory, with unsolvable problems.
The innumerable attempts to understand language and communication
through a cybernetic reformulation of the transmission process
failed both with respect to content and methodologically, even at
the attempt were made to found and justify the use of the individual
scientific language.
"Systems theory, by severing its ties to action theory, has, however,
had to pay a price for its objective turn. This approach cuts itself
off from any intuitive knowledge of the lifeworld and its members.
Hermeneutic access to this source of knowledge proceeds via (at
least virtual) participation in everyday communicative practices" (HABERMAS,
1994, p. 64)
When fundamental mathematical research also stressed that only
colloquial language fulfilled the criteria of a final metalanguage,
upon which all meta-languages ultimately had to rely on, it became
clear that the ultimate foundation of the terms language and
communication could only be possible through the understanding (hermeneutic)
reconstruction of the social practice of human language communities
in everyday communicative practices. Socio-linguistics and
language-critical sociology performed this understanding
reconstruction in the framework of Jrgen Habermas' theory of
communicative action or the works of D. Wunderlich.
The application of the pragmatics of language (Sprachpragmatik) to
non-human language communities and their everyday communicative
practices had never been attempted prior to my book "Natur der
Sprache - Sprache der Natur. Sprachpragmatische Philosophie der
Biologie" (Wrzburg, 1993).
Two options were available for the structure of my book.
The proof that all living nature is structured and organized in a
linguistically and communicative manner would have to be developed
vis-…-vis other theories of living nature, for example purely
biological, behavioristic, systems theoretical, syntactic-systems
theoretical (M. Eigen), semantic, semiotic, biosemiotic, and
linguistic approaches. From the perspective of the theory of science,
this would additionally require founding and justifying the
scientific language with which this dispute is to be conducted. You
will have to admit that this would have effectively hindered me from
systematically developing a theory of communicative nature, because
the debate with all other theoretical approaches would have taken up
the entire book.
I therefore chose the other path, namely systematically developing a
theory of communicative nature based on language-pragmatic aspects
that satisfactorily founds and justifies "language" and "communication"
in human language communities. The expansion to non-human
communication communities can then proceed via a biosemiotic
terminology without introducing the biosemiotic deficits of founding
and justifying the central terminology by explaining f. e. the
underlying grammar in everyday communicative practices of honey bees
in northern hemisphere.
Why the systems theoretical attempt to show "language" and "communication"
to be the ordering and structuring principles behind living nature
were doomed to failure is something I outline in the most important
chapters of the book, namely chapters 6 and 7. Chapter 8 and
subsequent chapters then merely outline the application of this
theory to the taxonomy and evolution of living nature; the
contribution on N. Hartmann for the theory should also be seen in
this light.
It is therefore important to recognize that I support a
language-pragmatic philosophy of biology rather than biosemiotics.
There is currently no secondary literature on this topic.
You also write that I use Habermas' term Lebenswelt "as a 'species-specific
life-world' quite in the sense of Uexkll's Umwelt concept". The
term "Lebenswelt" of Jürgen Habermas has, at most, an intuitive
affinity rather than any systematic affinities with Uexkll's
concept of Umwelt. On the other hand, it is important to recognize
that, in the framework of his theory of communicatiove action,
Uexkll's "Umweltlehre als Theorie der Zeichenprozesse" has no
context of foundation with Habermas' term "Lebenswelt" ,i.e. "lifeworld"
(the latter developed this term via Wittgenstein II, Mead, Durkheim,
Parsons and Weber), even if Uexkll, and independently thereof
Habermas, mean something similar.
"The meaning that is sedimented in symbolic structures and
self-images is open only to the hermeneutic approach to
interpretation. Whoever does not wish to block this path but rather
to disclose the socio-cultural life context from within has to take
as a starting point a concept of society that can be linked to the
perspectives, the action-orientations and the interpretative efforts
of the participants themselfes. This first step can be made by
introducing the concept of lifeworld, a concept which the
formal-pragmatic analysis of the presuppositions of communicative
action discovers prior to all sociological theory building." (HABERMAS,
1994, p. 64)
With regard to Hoffmeyer's critique of my article in Semiotica 120,
3/4, 1998, I answered to Hoffmeyer's reply that Mantegna et al. 1994
was the most important here ("These results are consistent with the
possible existence of one (or more than one) structured biological
language(s) present in non-coding DNA sequences" (MANTEGNA et al.
1994, p. 3172).
Notes:
Habermas, Jürgen. (1994), Actions, speech acts, linguistically
mediated interactions and the lifeworld. In: G.Floistad(ed.),
Philosophical problems today. Vol. 1, p. 45-74
Mantegna,R.N. et.al. (1994), Linguistic features of noncoding DNA
sequences. In: Physical Review Letters 73 (23), p. 3169-3172
I hope that these comments have made the motivation behind my book
somewhat more understandable. At the same time I must admit that I
will have to follow up with a science theoretical discussion with
the biosemioticists. Perhaps it would be possible to obtain a
research grant for this endeavor.
Sincerely, Guenther Witzany
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