H O M E
| F E E D B A C K |
C O M M E N T
Kalevi Kull
[2]
Living Forms are communicative Structures,
based on the Organic Codes [1]
If anyone claims that he has got a new and original idea, then
this can be true for ones personal world. For the scientific culture
as a whole, an original idea is most probably just a wrong idea - or,
it is not an original one. Because, if the idea is true and says
anything about how things are, then it is quite certain that the
same understanding has been achieved earlier by somebody else in the
endless society of thinkers. The same idea may be formulated, indeed,
in another terminology, in a
different language, which might be quite difficult to translate, to
find, or to identify - however, a philosophy can be new for a pupil,
not for its history.
The two books of our attention in this review both concern the shift
in the theory of living systems, which at least professionals can
feel as taking place in these days. Indexes of this shift include
various studies on functional closure, second order, emergence,
autonomous agents, poiesis in itself. This is a change from
particles of memory to the reading of a whole. We find the keywords
as
'physics of semantics', 'downward causation', or 'a constructivist
companion to the reductionist thesis' (Kauffman 2000: 111, 129,
268), and, of course, 'signs' (Solé, Goodwin, 2000). In one way or
other, all this tends to touch the problem of the origins of meaning
as a problem of biology.
The set of ideas that are used to call biosemiotics (or semiotic
biology) nowadays, has been formed during a very long period (for a
review, see Kull 1999a). Since the semiotic approach in biology
comprises a whole biological paradigm, it may include various
authors. And if a scientist discovers this
approach independently, by himself, then it is obvious that one may
get a subjective feeling of anything very new, which is sometimes
reflected in the titles of ones writings.
Since T. A. Sebeok's reopening of Jakob von Uexküll's old works in
late 1970s, and the publication of the English translations of
Uexküll's two books on Umwelt and Bedeutung (in Semiotica
42(1), 1982, and 89(4), 1992), the growth of biosemiotics has been
remarkable. Many new authors came into the field, special issues of
journals appeared (Semiotica 120(3/4), 1998; 127(1/4), 1999;
134(1/4),
2001; European Journal for Semiotic Studies 9(2), 1997,
Zeitschrift für Semiotik 8 (3), 1986, 15(1-2), 1993,
18(1), 1996), several periodicals paid much attention to Cybernetics
& Human Knowing, Vol.8, no.1-2, 2001, pp. ???
[1]
Review of Günther Witzany's book Life: The Communicative Structure.
A New Philosophy of Biology, Norderstedt: Libri Books on Demand,
2000, and Marcello Barbieri's book The Organic Codes: The Birth of
Semantic Biology, Ancona: Pequod, 2001.
[2] Department of
Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tiigi St. 78, 50410 Tartu, Estonia;
kalevi@zbi.ee biosemiotics (Cybernetics
and Human Knowing 5(1), 1998, 7(1), 2000, Sign Systems Studies 27,
1999, and 28, 2000, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 901,
2000), and a number of books that are dealing directly on
biosemiotics, has been produced within a short time (e.g., Sebeok
1990, Sebeok, Umiker-Sebeok 1992, Salthe 1993, Pollack 1994, Y…as
1994, Hoffmeyer 1996, Deacon 1997, Cimatti 1998, etc.).
2 Kalevi Kull
This brief essay has been initiated by the editor's proposal to
review a book by Günther Witzany (2000). Indeed, already the German
version of the book (Witzany 1993a) was noted to me by Thure von
Uexküll as an interesting approach in biosemiotics, and thus I have
tried to keep my eye on Witzany's writings (1993b, 1998). He is an
Austrian philosopher of biology.
It happens very seldom when I find any book that I like in toto.
Most usual situation is that there are few interesting, or sometimes
fascinating ideas found from the reading. Even if I cannot agree
with several statements of the author, there might be some
interesting ideas to pick and develop. Similarly with this book.
Thus, let me point few ideas which I can see interesting here, or
anyhow compatible to my own ones. Some of these may be worth of
further study.
The first is the one used in the title, both here and by Witzany. As
he says (p. 13), 'the central idea is that living nature is
structured and organized in a language-like and communicative manner,
i.e., that all organisms, including humans, are members of a global
community of communication. [...] Evolutionary history could then be
understood as a developmental history of interaction
semioses'. I would add that the specific objects of biology -
biological species, colonies, swarms, organisms, tissues, etc. - are
all communicative structures, i.e., the communication process is
itself responsible for the formation and stability of these
structures. Witzany does not go so far, however, his thought is
quite close to this statement when he is describing Hartmann's 'laws'
of autonomy, novelty, dominance, dependence, and distance (p.
174ff).
Thus, Witzany attempts to apply Nicolai Hartmann's concept of levels
in biology, in order 'to determine the interrelationships of the
communication forms' (p. 175). It is indeed interesting to add that
Hartmann's first book (1912) was about philosophy of biology, which
means that his early thoughts (from the period when he studied in
Tartu University) were very much twined round biology.
Another authority for Witzany is Jürgen Habermas and his theory of
language. It is quite seldom when anybody has attempted to apply
Habermas' approach in general biology, and here Witzany's
philosophical background seems to play a role (on Habermas'
discussion on metabiology, in the context of Niklas Luhmann's
statements, see Leydesdorff 2000). The author is attracted by the
concept of universal pragmatics, in order to build a 'molecular
pragmatics', as he calls it. He also uses the Habermas' term
Lebenswelt, interpreted as a 'species-specific life-world' (p.
43-44) quite in the sense of Uexküll's Umwelt concept. Anyway, the
various attempts to find connections between different linguistic
theories and biology should be a valuable experience in the current
stage
of semiotic biology.
3
Living Forms are communicative Structures
In Witzany's book, no other works (nor from classics, neither from
contemporary literature) strictly on 'philosophy of biology' are
referred. Neither there are comparisons to the other approaches in
philosophy of biology. Thus, the subtitle of the book is a bit
misleading. In comparison to the German original (1993a), very
little has been changed. What is added is few pages of discussion
about evolution (p. 202-212). This point seems to have some relation
to the critique made by Hoffmeyer (1998).
Recently, another book has been published in English, which should
call the biologists' attention even more than the one above, because
its author is a well-trained biologist. This is Marcello Barbieri's
The Organic Codes: The Birth of Semantic Biology (2001). Barbieri is
an Italian developmental biologist from the University of Ferrara,
the president and founder (in 1997) of the Italian Association for
Theoretical Biology.
The Organic Codes is a development and extension of his earlier book,
The Semantic Theory of Evolution (1985), which has appeared with
René Thom's foreword, and of his several papers (Barbieri 1981,
1987, 1997).
A central idea Barbieri introduces is the triad of phenotype,
genotype, and ribotype. The latter is responsible for meaning, it's
function is interpretation. The ribotypes (e.g., RNA-s) are 'intermediaries',
which are 'more important than instructions and objects' (p. 155).
Indeed, one can find a compatibility between this concept and the
biosemiotic applications of Peirce's triadic sign concept in
cell biology.
Barbieri shows that there are several codified assemblies in the
multi-step row of epigenetic processes. According to his
characterisation, each code connects two independent worlds, and
adds meaning to information. As examples, he gives few details of
the RNA splicing codes and the cellular signal transduction codes
(pp. 97-106). Other codes noted include the signal integration codes
(p. 108), apoptosis codes, cell migration codes (p. 114),
cytoskeleton codes (p. 173), etc. He also specifies several organic
memories, e.g., the epigenetic cell memory of determination (p.
109). I found it very interesting that he describes the body plan as
a supracellular memory, the body's memory (p. 202).
The evolution of coding rules means the evolution of natural
conventions, as can be evidently concluded from the general concept
of code. Accordingly, 'to the classical concept of evolution by
genetic drift and by natural selection, we must add therefore the
concept of evolution by natural conventions' (p. 153).
Barbieri does not apply directly a terminology of any linguistic or
semiotic theory in his work. His use of common terms like 'meaning',
'context', 'code', 'semantic', etc., and few beautiful comparisons
between biological and linguistic phenomena (e.g., p. 107, 232),
however, help to build such a bridge by those who will develop this
approach further on.
If there is anything that I may criticise in Barbieri's book, then
this is an impression of certain rigidity of the codes as they
appear in his discussion and the models supplied. This means, he
does not speak about things like redundancy, uncertainty,
stochasticity, vagueness, etc. However, since this aspect is not
4 Kalevi Kull
directly stated by the author
himself, I take it as a reflection of a practical experience of an
embryologist.
Barbieri is a very well-educated biologist and is writing in a good
clear style, which allows to use his books as textbooks of general
biology for students. As an appendix, his book includes a good
collection of 60 selected definitions of life, formulated by
biologists throughout the last two centuries (pp. 235-242).
This is a quite usual phenomenon in the history of science that
several scientists think in similar lines, without knowing about
each other (on another example, see Kull 1999b). If they stay so, it
often happens that their work will not become acknowledged. In order
to get a wider acceptance, certain coherence has to take place
between a group of scientists working on the same or similar
problems, and between the terminologies they use. In semiotic
biology (or biosemiotics), this is what is going to take place in
these days, and I expect that the Gatherings in Biosemiotics which
have been initiated by Danish and Estonian biologists will become a
fascinating series of meetings in favour of better understanding of
life itself. The next steps in biosemiotics are waiting for
open-minded biologists.
References
Barbieri, Marcello 1981. The ribotype theory of the origin of life.
Journal of Theoretical Biology 91:
545-601.
Barbieri, Marcello 1985. The Semantic Theory of Evolution. London:
Harwood Academic Publishers.
Barbieri, Marcello 1987. Co-information: A new concept in
theoretical biology. Rivista di Biologia 80:
101-126.
Barbieri, M., 1997. Biological forms as natural conventions. Rivista
di Biologia 90: 485-488.
Cimatti, Felice 1998. Mente e linguaggio negli animali: Introduzione
alla zoosemiotica cognitiva. Roma:
Carocci editore.
Deacon, Terrence 1997. The Symbolic Species: The Co-Evolution of
Language and the Brain.NY: Norton.
Hartmann, Nicolai 1912. Philosophische Grundfragen der Biologie.
Göttingen: Vanderhoek&Ruprecht.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper 1996. Signs of Meaning in the Universe.
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hoffmeyer, Jesper 1998. Semiosis and biohistory: A reply. Semiotica
120(3/4): 455-482.
Kauffman, Stuart 2000. Investigations. Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
Kull, Kalevi 1999a. Biosemiotics in the twentieth century: a view
from biology. Semiotica 127 (1/4):
385-414.
Kull, Kalevi 1999b. On the history of joining bio with semio: F. S.
Rothschild and the biosemiotic rules.
Sign Systems Studies 27, 128-138.
Leydesdorff, Loet 2000. Luhmann, Habermas, and the theory of
communication. Systems Research and Behavioral Science 17(3):
273-288.
Pollack R. 1994. Signs of Life: The Language and Meanings of DNA.
London: Viking.
Salthe Stanley N. 1993. Development and Evolution: Complexity and
Change in Biology. Cambridge
(Mass.): The MIT Press.
Sebeok Thomas A. 1990. Essays in Zoosemiotics. Toronto: Toronto
Semiotic Circle.
Sebeok Thomas A. and Jean Umiker-Sebeok (eds.) 1992. Biosemiotics:
The Semiotic Web 1991. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Solé, Richard and Goodwin, Brian 2000. Signs of Life: How Complexity
Pervades Biology. New York:
Basic Books.
Witzany, Günther 1993a. Natur der Sprache - Sprache der Natur:
Sprachpragmatische Philosophie der
Biologie. Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann.
Witzany, Günther 1993b. Zeichenprozesse als Bedingungen der
Möglichkeit von Leben und Evolution:
Zur Notwendigkeit einer Molekularpragmatik. Zeitschrift für Semiotik
15(1-2): 107-125.
Witzany, Günther 1998. Explaining and understanding Life. Semiotica
120(3/4): 421-438.
Y…as, Martynas 1994. O Prirode Zhivogo: Mehanizmy i Smysl (Meaning
and Mechanics). Moskva: Mir.
|