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Computing Codes Versus Interpreting Life

Two alternative ways of synthesizing biological knowledge through semiotics

  • Chapter
Introduction to Biosemiotics

Abstract

One of the most important aims of biosemiotics is to provide a conceptual framework for synthesizing the biological knowledge of living systems. This goal can be assumed achievable in (at least) two alternative ways, both of which are actually followed by working biosemioticians. Either biosemiotics is considered a philosophical revolution in biological thought that will change biology into an art of interpreting life, i.e. into an appreciation of organisms as semiotic beings whose structure, function, and behaviour is to be understood by participating in the communicative web of life. Or biosemiotics is considered from a model-theoretical point of view as an application of abstract semiotic concepts to a field of empirical research that is foreign to semiotics only for an anthropocentric understanding of signs. This paper sketches both biosemiotic ways of synthesizing biological knowledge and shows how they mirror a fundamental opposition, which has been intensely investigated by Jaakko Hintikka, between two answers to the question whether it is possible that language can be scientifically explained by linguistic means. It is argued that biosemiotics should postulate, as a starting-point of its research programme, a positive answer to this question. A model-theoretical sketch of how to develop a precise definition of organic codes, shall show that this postulate allows to elucidate the inner structure of biosemiotic concepts

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Philosophy, Friedrich-Schiller-University, Zwätzengasse 9, 07737 Jena, Germany

    Stefan Artmann

  2. >Human Science Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Goethestraβe 31/I, 80336 Munich

    Stefan Artmann

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  1. Stefan Artmann
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Ferrara, Italy

    Marcello Barbieri

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Artmann, S. (2008). Computing Codes Versus Interpreting Life. In: Barbieri, M. (eds) Introduction to Biosemiotics. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-4814-9_9

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