Abstract
The current article is the first in a series of review articles addressing biosemiotic terminology. The biosemiotic glossary project is inclusive and designed to integrate views of a representative group of members within the biosemiotic community based on a standard survey and related publications. The methodology section describes the format of the survey conducted in November–December 2013 in preparation of the current review and targeted on the terms ‘agent’ and ‘agency’. Next, I summarize denotation, synonyms and antonyms, with special emphasis on the denotation of these terms in current biosemiotic usage. The survey findings include ratings of nine citations defining or making use of the two terms. I provide a summary of respondents’ own definitions and suggested term usage. Further sections address etymology, connotations, and related terms in English and other languages. A section on the notions’ mainstream meaning vs. their meaning in biosemiotics is followed by attempt at synthesis and conclusions. Although there is currently no consensus in the biosemiotic community on what constitutes a semiotic agent, i.e., an agent in the context of semiosis (the action of signs), most respondents agree that core attributes of an agent include goal-directedness, self-governed activity, processing of semiosis and choice of action, with these features being vital for the functioning of the living system in question. I agree that these four features are constitutive of biosemiotic agents, and stipulate that biosemiotic agents fall within three major categories, namely 1) sub-organismic biosemiotic agents, 2) organismic biosemiotic agents and 3) super-organismic biosemiotic agents.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Sedov and Chebanov 2009 includes 20 central semiotic terms (section 4.2.3), 24 central biosemiotic terms (section 4.2.5), eight terms related to genetics (section 4.2.6), six terms related to neurophysiology (section 4.2.7), 12 terms related to ethology/ecology (section 4.2.8), and five terms related to evolution (section 4.2.9), altogether 75 glossary entries, among other material.
In response to a draft of this article, one member of the Editorial Board claimed that there is consensus on the definition provided here. Others, however, appeared to disagree. If nothing else, some biosemioticians find this definition poor and lacking of semioticity, if not outright wrong. One member of the Editorial Board thought such a notion of agency will”align biosemiotics with artificial intelligence or cognitive neurophysiology”. The same scholar noted that agency typically”evokes a process of recursion” and interpreted the current article as implying that”all is linearity of agent-objects, in which even subjects become objects”. Another member of the Editorial Board observed that agency need not be”reduced to the linear, narrow, sociological, unsemiotic assumptions serving as backbone in this essay”, and asked:”where is emergence?”. This scholar further remarked that”the established assumptions about agency in fields so often un- or anti-semiotic, should not be held up as useful for semiotics”. Coincidentally, the term ‘sociological’ was also applied in a negative sense by one of the reviewers of this article, who characterised it as a”quasi-sociological analysis”.
In three cases the questionnaire was filled in an inconsistent manner. In two of these cases the respondent’s real intention was clarified by email.
In these nine citations, the terms ‘agent’ and ‘agency’ have been marked in bold. Notably, in the questionnaire and to some extent in this review article, these nine citations are taken out of context, as possible definitions. Detailed reports from closer readings, in context, would of course be valuable in some cases, but this is neither possible nor necessary within the framework of the current article.
In the full sentence there is a reference to Sebeok 1979: 26.
Sedov and Chebanov 2009 mentions the English term ‘agency’ in the entry “Субъект (subject)” (section 4.2.5.9). As it happens, this refers directly to Emmeche et al. 2002 and its entry ‘subject’ (p. 30, see above). This supports Emmeche, Kull and Stjernfelt’s implicit interpretation of ‘subjecthood’ as a synonym for ‘agency’. The Russian term ‘агентство’ [agency] is not used in Sedov and Chebanov 2009; the term ‘агент’ [agent] only in the in our context non-substantial sense of ‘инфекционного агента’ [infectious agent].
‘Agēns’ or ‘agentis’ is also a Latin adjective meaning ‘effective’ (Collins Latin Dictionary 1997).
In a somewhat similar vein, Harries-Jones (1995: 15) describes the way in which Gregory Bateson argued that concepts based on the primacy of human agency, primacy of human rationality, and primacy of human control must be abandoned. Instead, we must build on an understanding of recursive communication, knowledge of which can overcome the divide in our thinking between humanity and nature.” In Bateson’s own, critical words (2000: 318),”a difference which makes a difference is an idea or unit of information. […] But this is not how the average Occidental sees the event sequence of tree felling. He says,”I cut down the tree” and he even believes that there is a delimited agent, the”self,” which performed a delimited”purposive” action upon a delimited object.” In a biosemiotic understanding, however, agency is always relational.
I refer to “non-semiotic systems” here not because the systems mentioned in medicine and veterinary science cannot potentially be described as semiotic, but because they are in fact not described as such in current terminology.
Cf. Cobley’s mention of Archer in the Appendix’ “Supplement to Section 7. Mainstream meaning vs. meaning in biosemiotics”.
Speaking of economics, ‘travel agent’ is a central example of agent qua representative.
If we compare this terminology with that of AGENT 5, we can note first that ‘principal’ corresponds to ‘agent’ in Sharov’s vocabulary and ‘agent’ to ‘subagent’, and second that in organization theory the behaviour of ‘agents’ (i.e., subagents) is not regarded as ‘programmed’ but far more uncertain.
Incidentally, for Aristotle (2002 [c330 BC/c348-347 BC]) the question of the ‘First Mover’ – first agent, so to speak – was central. This ideal agent is also referred to as the ‘Prime Mover’ or ‘Unmoved Mover’. In Deely’s words (2001: 255), “Aristotle came to think of the ‘Prime Mover’, the ‘Mover that moves without being moved’, in terms of the highest form of distinguished causality, and in terms of thought rather than of transitive action”.
This is consistent with the scheme of levels of biosemiosis presented in Tønnessen and Tüür (2014: 14).
On a related note, Sebeok (1991: 22) remarked that the capacity for treating messages “distinguishes [all terrestrial life forms] more from the nonliving – except for human agents, such as computers or robots, that can be programmed to simulate communication – than any other traits often cited.”
Regarded as belonging to theory of science, the biosemiotic glossary project thus involves both descriptive and normative theory of science.
References
Archer, M. (1988). Culture and agency: the place of culture in social theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Archer, M. (1995). Realist social theory: the morphogenetic approach. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Aristotle (2002 [c330 BC/c348–347 BC]). Metaphysics (2nd ed.). Trans. J. Sachs. Santa Fe, N.M.: Green Lion.
Bandura, A. (2006). Toward a psychology of human agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164–180.
Barbieri, M. (2008). Biosemiotics: a new understanding of life. Naturwissenschaften, 95, 577–599.
Barbieri, M., de Beule J. and Hofmeyr J.-H. (2014). Code biology: A glossary of terms and concepts. URL: http://www.codebiology.org/glossary.html.
Barker, C. (2003). Cultural studies: theory and practice. SAGE Publications.
Bateson, G. (2000). Steps to an ecology of mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Bergson, H. (1907). L'Évolution créatrice. Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France.
de Beule, J., & Stadler, K. (2014). An evolutionary cybernetics perspective on language and coordination. New Ideas in Psychology, 32, 118–130.
Blood, D.C., Studdert V.P. and Gay C.C. (2007). Saunders Comprehensive veterinary dictionary (3rd ed.). Saunders/Elsevier.
Collier, J. (2008). Simulating autonomous anticipation: the importance of Dubois’ conjecture. Biosystems, 91(2), 346–354.
Collins Dictionary (2014). URL: http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english-thesaurus/.
Collins Latin Dictionary (1997). Glasgow: HarperCollins Publishers.
Cowley, S. (2012). Distributed language: cognition beyond the brain. In Proceedings of the Humanities International Forum. Moscow: Russian State University for the Humanities.
Deely, J. (2001). Four ages of understanding: the first postmodern survey of philosophy from ancient times to the turn of the twenty-first century. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Deely, J. (2005). Basics of semiotics (4th ed.). Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Dubois, D. M. (2003). Mathematical foundations of discrete and functional systems with strong and weak anticipations. In M. V. Butz, O. Sigaud, & P. Gérard (Eds.), Anticipatory behavior in adaptive learning systems (pp. 110–132). Berlin: Springer.
Encyclopædia Britannica (2014). URL: http://global.britannica.com.
Emmeche, C. (1998). The agents of biomass. In J. Andreas & O. Carsten (Eds.), The mass ornament. The mass phenomenon at the turn of the millennium (pp. 64–79). Odense: Kunsthallen Brandts Klædefabrik.
Emmeche, C., Kull, K., & Stjernfelt, F. (2002). A brief biosemiotic glossary. In C. Emmeche, K. Kull, & F. Stjernfelt (Eds.), Reading Hoffmeyer, rethinking biology (Tartu Semiotics Library 3) (pp. 25–30). Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Eshleman, A. (2014). Moral responsibility. In Zalta E. N. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2014/entries/moral-responsibility/.
Farina, A. (2010). Ecology, Cognition and Landscape: Linking Natural and Social Systems (Landscape Series 11). Dordrecht: Springer.
Franklin, S. and Graesser A. (1996). Is it an agent, or just a program?: A taxonomy for autonomous agents. In Proceedings of the Third International Workshop on Agent Theories, Architectures, and Languages, Springer-Verlag.
Giorgi, F. (2012). Agency. In D. Favareau, P. Cobley, & K. Kull (Eds.), A more developed sign – interpreting the work of jesper hoffmeyer (pp. 13–16). Tartu: Tartu University Press.
Harries-Jones, P. (1995). A recursive vision: ecological understanding and Gregory Bateson. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Harper, D. (2014). Online etymology dictionary. URL: http://www.etymonline.com/.
Hendriks-Jansen, H. (1996). Catching ourselves in the Act. Situated activity, interactive emergence, and human thought. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1996). Signs of meaning in the universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1997). Semiotic Emergence. Revue de la Pensée d'Aujourd'hui 25–7 (6), 105–17. In Japanese. English language version available online at http://www.molbio.ku.dk/MolBioPages/abk/PersonalPages/Jesper/SemioEmergence.html.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1998). Surfaces inside surfaces: on the origin of agency and life. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 5(1), 33–42.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2000). The biology of signification. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 43(2), 252–268.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2008). In J. Hoffmeyer & D. Favareau (Eds.), Biosemiotics: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs. Scranton: University of Scranton Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2009). Epilogue: Biology is immature biosemiotics. In J. Deely & L. Sbrocchi (Eds.), Semiotics 2008 (Proceedings of the 33rd Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America) (pp. 927–942). Ottawa: Legas Publishing.
Jensen, M. C., & Meckling, W. H. (1976). Theory of the firm: managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure. Journal of Financial Economics, 3(1976), 305–360.
Joslyn, C. (1999). Semiotic Agent Models for Simulating Socio-Technical Organizations. Prepared for the DS Project, PSL/NMSU. URL: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.37.423&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
Joslyn, C. and Rocha L. M. (2000). Towards Semiotic Agent-Based Models of Socio-Technical Organizations. In Sarjoughian H.S. et al. (Eds.): Proc. AI, Simulation and Planning in High Autonomy Systems (AIS conference 2000), Tucson, Arizona, 70–79.
Juarrero, A. (1999). Dynamics in action. Intentional behavior as a complex system. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Kauffman, S. (1995). At home in the universe: the search for laws of self-organization and complexity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, S. (1996). Investigations on the character of autonomous agents and the worlds they mutually create. Santa Fe Institute Working Paper 96-08-072. Santa Fe, NM.
Kauffman, S. (2000). Investigations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Kauffman, S. (2008). Reinventing the sacred: a New view of science, reason, and religion. New York: Basic Books.
Kull, K., Deacon, T., Emmeche, C., Hoffmeyer, J., & Stjernfelt, F. (2009). Theses on biosemiotics: prolegomena to a theoretical biology. Biological Theory, 4(2), 167–173.
Latour, B. (1996). On actor-network theory. A few clarifications plus more than a few complications. Soziale Welt, 47, 369–381.
Maran, T. (2013). Semiotics meets species conservation: translation and modeling. Manuscript. Presented at Gatherings in Biosemiotics 13. Castiglioncello, Italy, June 4–8 2013.
Markoš, A. (2002). Readers of the book of life: contextualizing developmental evolutionary biology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Martinelli, D. (2010). A glossary of people, paths and ideas. In D. Martinelli (Ed.), A Critical Companion to Zoosemiotics: People, Paths, Ideas (Biosemiotics 5) (pp. 171–290). Dordrecht: Springer.
Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary (2014). Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.
Merriam-Webster Online Thesaurus (2014). Online: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary.
Mosby's Medical Dictionary (8th ed.) (2009). Elsevier Health Sciences.
Nöth, W. (2009). On the instrumentality and semiotic agency of signs, tools, and intelligent machines. Cybernetics & Human Knowing, 16(3–4), 11–36.
Oxford dictionaries (2014). Online: http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/.
Pattee, H. H. (2007). The necessity of biosemiotics: Matter-symbol complementarity. In M. Barbieri (Ed.), Introduction to biosemiotics (pp. 115–132). Dordrecht: Springer.
Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. London: Routledge.
Ross, S. A. (2000). The economic theory of agency: the principal’s problem. In N. J. Foss (Ed.), The theory of the firm: critical perspectives on business and management. London: Routledge.
Salthe, S. (1993). Development and evolution. Complexity and change in biology. Cambridge: MIT Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (1979). The sign and its masters. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Sebeok, T. A. (1991). A sign is just a sign. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Sedov, A., & Chebanov, S. (2009). Биосемиотика/Biosemiotika [Biosemiotics]. In A. V. Oleskin (Ed.), Terminologicheskij slovar’ (tezaurus): Gumanitarnaja biologija [Terminological Dictionary (Thesaurus): Humanitarian Biology] (pp. 295–338). Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Moskovskogo Universiteta [Moscow University Press].
Segen, J. C. (2002). McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine. The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc.
Sharov, A. (2010). Functional information: towards synthesis of biosemiotics and cybernetics. Entropy, 12, 1050–1070.
Sharov, A. (2013). Minimal mind. In L. Swan (Ed.), Origins of mind (Biosemiotics 8) (pp. 343–360). Dordrecht: Springer.
Sharov, A., & Vehkavaara, T. (2014). Protosemiosis: agency with reduced representation capacity. Biosemiotics. doi:10.1007/s12304-014-9219-7.
Stedman’s medical dictionary for the health professions and nursing (7th ed.) (2012). Farlex
Tønnessen, M. (2010). Steps to a semiotics of being. Biosemiotics, 3(3), 375–392.
Tønnessen, M., & Beever, J. (2014). Beyond sentience: Biosemiotics as foundation for animal and environmental ethics. In J. Hadley & E. Aaltola (Eds.), Animal ethics and philosophy: questioning the orthodoxy (pp. 47–62). London: Rowman & Littlefield International.
Tønnessen, M., & Tüür, K. (2014). Introduction: The semiotics of animal representations. In K. Tüür & M. Tønnessen (Eds.), The semiotics of animal representations (Nature, culture and literature 10) (pp. 7–30). Amsterdam: Rodopi.
von Uexküll, J. (1982a). The theory of meaning. Semiotica 42(1): 25–82. Trans. by Barry Stone and Herbert Weiner
von Uexküll, T. (1982b). Glossary. Semiotica, 42(1), 83–87.
Vehkavaara, T. (2002). Why and how to naturalize semiotic concepts for biosemiotics. Sign Systems Studies, 30(1), 293–313.
de Waal, F. B. M. (1996). Good natured: the origins of right and wrong in humans and other animals. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Witzany, G. (2011). The agents of natural genome editing. Journal of Molecular Cell Biology, 3, 181–189.
Witzany, G. (Ed.). (2012). Viruses: essential agents of life. Dortrecht: Springer.
WordNet (2014). Princeton University. URL: http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn.
Acknowledgments
This work has been carried out thanks to the support of the research project Animals in Changing Environments: Cultural Mediation and Semiotic Analysis (EEA Norway Grants/Norway Financial Mechanism 2009–2014 under project contract no. EMP151). I would like to thank my fellow editors, Alexei Sharov and Timo Maran, for contributing to designing the biosemiotic glossary project and for important feedback on this specific article. Furthermore I thank two reviewers of this paper for critical comments, and the respondents to the first survey for their contributions. I would also like to thank members of the Editorial Board of Biosemiotics for providing feedback – particularly Peter Harries-Jones, Myrdene Anderson, Günther Witzany, Claus Emmeche and Victoria Alexander. Finally I am grateful to Kalevi Kull for providing references for two biosemiotic glossaries, and to Sergey Chebanov for sending me Sedov and Chebanov 2009.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM 1
(PDF 195 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tønnessen, M. The Biosemiotic Glossary Project: Agent, Agency. Biosemiotics 8, 125–143 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-015-9229-0
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12304-015-9229-0