Zeichenprozesse als Bedingungen der Möglichkeit von Leben und Evolution: Zur Notwendigkeit einer Molekularpragmatik

Sign processes as conditions for the possibility of life and evolution: the necessity of molecular pragmatics

In: Zeitschrift fuer Semiotik, Vol 15, No 1-2, 1993

Summary: The author argues the position that life is only possible on the basis of semiotic processes. He claims that Nature is semiotically organized and that evolution is semiotically controlled, and justifies these claims by elaborating and generalizing the tenets of action-theoretically oriented pragmatics and discussing them with respect to recent research results in biological taxonomy, molecular biology, biochemistry, sociobiology, and the theory of evolution. Particularly compelling evidence for the claim that elementary life processes would be impossible without sign processes is found in intraorganismic semioses. From this perspective, evolution itself no longer appears to be a result of mutation and selection, but of generative semioses and their successful trials within the horizon of Nature as a "universally interacting community".