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34Biosemiotics in a GalleryBiosemiotics 5 (3): 313-317. 2012.In this article we review the biosemiotic art exhibition «Signs of life» (Livstegn), that was organized by the Danish installation artist Morten Skriver and the biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer in 2011 at the Esbjerg Art Museum (Denmark). The exhibition presented five central (bio)semiotic concepts using artistic tools: the semiosphere, the sign, semiotic scaffolding, semiotic freedom, and surfaces
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48The Biosemiotic Concept of the SpeciesBiosemiotics 9 (1): 61-71. 2016.Any biological species of biparental organisms necessarily includes, and is fundamentally dependent on, sign processes between individuals. In this case, the natural category of the species is based on family resemblances, which is why a species is not a natural kind. We describe the mechanism that generates the family resemblance. An individual recognition window and biparental reproduction almost suffice as conditions to produce species naturally. This is due to assortativity of mating which i…Read more
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50An introduction to phytosemioticsSign Systems Studies 28 326-350. 2000.Asking, whether plants have semiosis, the article gives a review of the works on phytosemiotics, referring to the tradition in botany that has seen plants as non-mechanic systems. This approach can use the concept of biological need as the primary holistic process in living systems. Demonstrating the similarity between the need and semiosis, it is concluded that sign is a meronomic entity. A distinction between five levels of sign systems is proposed: cellular, vegetative, animal, linguistic, an…Read more
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30Maastike semiootiline uurimineSign Systems Studies 39 (2/4): 36-36. 2011.The article provides an overview of different approaches to the semiotic study of landscapes both in the field of semiotics proper and in landscape studiesin general. The article describes different approaches to the semiotic processes in landscapes from the semiological tradition where landscape has been seen as analogous to a text with its language, to more naturalized and phenomenological approaches, as well as ecosemiotic view of landscapes that goes beyond anthropocentric definitions. Speci…Read more
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Biosemiotic Research QuestionsIn Claus Emmeche (ed.), Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs, Imperial College Press. pp. 67--90. 2011.
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134Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical BiologyBiological Theory 4 (2): 167-173. 2009.Theses on the semiotic study of life as presented here provide a collectively formulated set of statements on what biology needs to be focused on in order to describe life as a process based on semiosis, or sign action. An aim of the biosemiotic approach is to explain how life evolves through all varieties of forms of communication and signification (including cellular adaptive behavior, animal communication, and human intellect) and to provide tools for grounding sign theories. We introduce the…Read more
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36A sign is not alive — a text isSign Systems Studies 30 (1): 327-335. 2002.The article deals with the relationships between the concepts of life process and sign process, arguing against the simplified equation of these concepts. Assuming that organism (and its particular case — cell) is the carrier of what is called ‘life’, we attempt to find a correspondent notion in semiotics that can be equalled to the feature of being alive. A candidate for this is the textual process as a multiple sign action. Considering that biological texts are generally non-linguistic, the co…Read more
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16Journals of semiotics in the worldSign Systems Studies 41 (1): 140-145. 2013.Hereby we provide a list of all semiotic journals currently published in the world, which includes 53 titles. From among these, 42 are printed on paper (among them six international journals on general semiotics, 16 journals specializing in some branch of semiotics, and 20 regional semiotics journals), while 11 appearonly as electronic publications. All in all, these journals publish articles in 16 languages.
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6Need for impressionsSign Systems Studies 44 (3): 456-462. 2016.Need for impressions: Zoosemiotics and zoosemiotics, by Aleksei Turovski
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95How Can the Study of the Humanities Inform the Study of Biosemiotics?Biosemiotics 10 (1): 9-31. 2017.This essay – a collection of contributions from 10 scholars working in the field of biosemiotics and the humanities – considers nature in culture. It frames this by asking the question ‘Why does biosemiotics need the humanities?’. Each author writes from the background of their own disciplinary perspective in order to throw light upon their interdisciplinary engagement with biosemiotics. We start with Donald Favareau, whose originary disciplinary home is ethnomethodology and linguistics, and the…Read more
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67Journals of semiotics in the worldSign Systems Studies 41 (1): 140-145. 2013.Hereby we provide a list of all semiotic journals currently published in the world, which includes 53 titles. From among these, 42 are printed on paper (among them six international journals on general semiotics, 16 journals specializing in some branch of semiotics, and 20 regional semiotics journals), while 11 appearonly as electronic publications. All in all, these journals publish articles in 16 languages.
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Evolution and semioticsIn Thomas A. Sebeok & Jean Umiker-Sebeok (eds.), Biosemiotics: The Semiotic Web 1991, . 1992.
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16Uexküll and the post-modern evolutionismSign Systems Studies 32 (1-2): 99-114. 2004.Jakob von Uexküll’s evolutionary views are described and analysed in the context of changes in semiotic and biological thinking at the end of Modern age. As different from the late Modernist biology, a general feature of Post-Modern interpretation of living systems is that an evolutionary explanation has rather secondary importance, it is not obligatory for an understanding of adaptation. Adaptation as correspondence to environment is a communicative, hence a semiotic phenomenon.
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33An introduction to phytosemioticsSign Systems Studies 28 326-350. 2000.Asking, whether plants have semiosis, the article gives a review of the works on phytosemiotics, referring to the tradition in botany that has seen plants as non-mechanic systems. This approach can use the concept of biological need as the primary holistic process in living systems. Demonstrating the similarity between the need and semiosis, it is concluded that sign is a meronomic entity. A distinction between five levels of sign systems is proposed: cellular, vegetative, animal, linguistic, an…Read more
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24Semiosphere and a dual ecologySign Systems Studies 33 (1): 175-188. 2005.This article compares the methodologies of two types of sciences (according to J. Locke) — semiotics, and physics — and attempts thereby to characterise the semiotic and non-semiotic approaches to the description of ecosystems. The principal difference between the physical and semiotic sciences is that there exists just a single physical reality that is studied by physics via repetitiveness, whereas there are many semiotic realities that are studied as unique individuals. Seventeen complementary…Read more
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51Interview with Vyacheslav V. Ivanov about semiotics, the languages of the brain and history of ideasSign Systems Studies 39 (2/4): 290-313. 2011.The interview with one of the founders of the Tartu–Moscow school, semiotician Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (b. 1929) from August 2010, describes V. V. Ivanov’s opinions of several scholars and their work (including Evgenij Polivanov, Mikhail Bakhtin, Andrej Kolmogorov, Nikolaj Marr etc.), his relationships with his father Vsevolod Ivanov, as well as V. V. Ivanov’s views on the past and future of semiotics, with some emphasis on neurosemiotics, zoosemiotics, semiotics of culture, cybernetics,…Read more
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8Semiosphere is the relational biosphereIn Claus Emmeche (ed.), Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs, Imperial College Press. pp. 179--194. 2011.
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34Ladder, tree, webSign Systems Studies 31 (2): 589-602. 2003.Fundamental turns in biological understanding can be interpreted as replacements of deep models that organise the biological knowledge. Three deep models distinguished here are a holistic ladder model that sees all levels of nature being complete (from Aristotle to the 18th century), a modernist tree model that emphasises progress and evolution (from Enlightenment to the recent times), and a web model that evaluates diversity (since the 20th century). The turn from the tree model to the web mode…Read more
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15Habits – semioses – habits (review)Sign Systems Studies 44 (4): 623-629. 2016.Review of Consensus on Peirce’s Concept of Habit: Before and Beyond Consciousness. Donna E. West and Myrdene Anderson. Cham: Springer, 2016, 434 pp.
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42Exemplifying Umweltlehre Through One’s Own Life A Biography of Jakob von Uexküll by Florian MildenbergerBiosemiotics 2 (1): 121-125. 2009.
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12Beyond Word: On the Semiotic MechanismsBiosemiotics 7 (3): 465-470. 2014.Juri Lotman wrote, in Russian, a book Непредсказуемые механизмы культуры — the unpredictable mechanisms of culture. Its English translator, Brian Baer, preferred to translate the title as The Unpredictable Workings of Culture . He had a reason for this — many scholars tend to refuse the term ‘mechanism’ for the phenomena of meaning-making. However, there exist quite clear cultural differences in this opinion. For instance in Russian, ‘mechanisms’ are understood so broadly that there is no questi…Read more