-
Peirce on biology : a critical reviewIn Cornelis De Waal (ed.), The Oxford handbook of Charles S. Peirce, Oxford University Press. 2024.
-
19Interview with Gerd B. Müller on Theoretical BiologyBiosemiotics 16 (3): 381-394. 2023.The topics discussed in the interview cover the development and activities of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research as one of the most important theoretical biology centers in the world, the reasons for its inspiring atmosphere, as well as the development of the interests and research work of its longtime president Gerd B. Müller. An important part of this is the work on a revised theoretical framework of evolution, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. We also talk abo…Read more
-
101Trends in Theoretical Biology: the 20th CenturyAquinas 43 (2): 235-250. 2000.The paper examines the main trends in the search for a theory of general biology throughout the 20th century — the physicalization on one hand, and the semiotization on the other. These two approaches had their predecessors and were formed already in the 19th century biology, as Darwinian and Baerian biology. In theoretical biology, there are co-existing (however, asymmetrical) trends toward specifying solutions and generalizing axioms. The inclusion of the biological organism as a subject into …Read more
-
21Биосемиотическая беседаSign Systems Studies 37 (1/2): 331-331. 2009.In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions …Read more
-
641A biosemiotic conversationSign Systems Studies 37 (1-2): 311-330. 2009.In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions …Read more
-
30There is Umwelt Before Consciousness, and Learning Transverses BothBiosemiotics 15 (3): 491-495. 2022.We comment here on a target article by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg, which adds an interesting and important contribution to semiotic biology by their discussion of cognition and learning. In agreement with the aims and outlook of the authors, we offer a few observations about how the seminal biosemiotic concept of umwelt may be a critical tool to aid in this investigation of biological learning, knowing, being, and acting in the world. In particular, we would like to advance the proposition…Read more
-
88The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic FittingBiosemiotics 15 (1): 1-22. 2022.We propose a model which argues that aesthetics is based on biosemiotic processes and introduces the non-anthropomorphic aesthetics. In parallel with habit-taking, which is responsible for generating semiotic regularities, there is another process, the semiotic fitting, which is responsible for generating aesthetic relations. Habit by itself is not good or bad, it is good or bad because of semiotic fitting. Defining the beautiful as the perfect semiotic fitting corresponds to the common conceptu…Read more
-
7Jaan Kaplinski and his contacts with the Tartu-Moscow School of SemioticsSign Systems Studies 49 (3-4): 608-615. 2021.Jaan Kaplinski (1941–2021), Estonian poet, essayist and public intellectual, sadly passed away earlier this year. To commemorate him, we publish some excerpts from a conversation with him that was recorded in 2018 and in which, among other topics, we also talked about Kaplinski’s relationship with semiotics and his personal contacts with eminent scholars of the Tartu-Moscow School.
-
46Natural Selection and Self-Organization Do Not Make Meaning, while the Agent’s Choice DoesBiosemiotics 14 (1): 49-53. 2021.Demonstration of illusiveness of basic beliefs of the Modern Synthesis implies the existence of evolutionary mechanisms that do not require natural selection for the origin of adaptations. This requires adaptive changes that occur independently from replication, but can occasionally become heritable. Plastic self-organizational changes regulated by genome are largely incorporable into the old theory. A fundamentally different source of adaptability is semiosis which includes the agent’s free cho…Read more
-
4Codes: Necessary, but not Sufficient for Meaning-MakingConstructivist Foundations 15 (2): 137-139. 2019.Open peer commentary on the article “A Critique of Barbieri’s Code Biology” by Alexander V. Kravchenko.: One of the main problems of biosemiotics, i.e., the distinction between code-based artifacts and life itself, does not seem to be resolved yet. Semiosis requires codes but it cannot be based on a single code. I sketch a model that demonstrates the role of codes in semiosis and helps to see correspondences between the models of Peirce and Saussure.
-
13On the Logic of Animal Umwelten: The Animal Subjective Present and Zoosemiotics of Choice and LearningIn Gianfranco Marrone & Dario Mangano (eds.), Semiotics of Animals in Culture: Zoosemiotics 2.0, Springer Verlag. pp. 135-148. 2018.The aim of this study is to demonstrate the mutual relationship between the classes of signs, mechanisms of learning, and types of umwelten. This framework is necessary in order to describe the animal ways of meaning-making in the context of various forms of semiosis. We state that semiosis only occurs in the internal present. An account of the linkage of vegetative, animal, social, and cultural umwelten with corresponding classes of signs and mechanisms of learning is provided. We also formulat…Read more
-
4Learning and knowing as semiosisSign Systems Studies 47 (3-4): 352-381. 2019.If all knowing comes from semiosis, more concepts should be added to the semiotic toolbox. However, semiotic concepts must be defined via other semiotic concepts. We observe an opportunity to advance the state-of-the-art in semiotics by defining concepts of cognitive processes and phenomena via semiotic terms. In particular, we focus on concepts of relevance for theory of knowledge, such as learning, knowing, affordance, scaffolding, resources, competence, memory, and a few others. For these, we…Read more
-
33Semiotic Fitting and the Nativeness of CommunityBiosemiotics 13 (1): 9-19. 2020.The concept of ‘semiotic fitting’ is what we provide as a model for the description and analysis of the diversity dynamics and nativeness in semiotic systems. One of its sources is the concept of ‘ecological fitting’ which was introduced by Daniel Janzen as the mechanism for the explanation of diversity in tropical ecosystems and which has been shown to work widely over the communities of various types. As different from the neo-Darwinian concept of fitness that describes reproductive success, ‘…Read more
-
4Jesper Hoffmeyer: Biosemiotics Is a DiscoveryBiosemiotics 12 (3): 373-379. 2019.Here we publish an interview with Jesper Hoffmeyer, conducted in 2012–2014.
-
33Jesper Hoffmeyer 1942–2019Biosemiotics 12 (3): 365-372. 2019.This obituary about Jesper Hoffmeyer, thinker, scholar, science communicator, biochemist, biosemiotician, and saxophonist, gives a sketch of his intellectual biography, and provides a bibliography of the books he authored or edited.
-
9Jesper Hoffmeyer: Biosemiotics Is a DiscoveryBiosemiotics 12 (3): 373-379. 2019.Here we publish an interview with Jesper Hoffmeyer, conducted in 2012–2014.
-
29Jesper Hoffmeyer 1942–2019Biosemiotics 12 (3): 365-372. 2019.This obituary about Jesper Hoffmeyer, thinker, scholar, science communicator, biochemist, biosemiotician, and saxophonist, gives a sketch of his intellectual biography, and provides a bibliography of the books he authored or edited.
-
17Jesper Hoffmeyer: Biosemiotics Is a DiscoveryBiosemiotics 12 (3): 373-379. 2019.Here we publish an interview with Jesper Hoffmeyer, conducted in 2012–2014.
-
15Choosing and learningSign Systems Studies 46 (4): 452-466. 2018.We examine the possibility of shifting the concept of choice to the centre of the semiotic theory of learning. Thus, we define sign process (meaning-making) through the concept of choice: semiosis is the process of making choices between simultaneously provided options. We define semiotic learning as leaving traces by choices, while these traces influence further choices. We term such traces of choices memory. Further modification of these traces (constraints) will be called habituation. Organic…Read more
-
3Umberto Eco and John Deely: What they sharedSign Systems Studies 45 (1-2): 194-204. 2017.Umberto Eco and John Deely: What they shared
-
29Toward a reterritorialization of cultural theoryHistory of the Human Sciences 29 (1): 75-98. 2016.This article argues that from a territorial perspective a certain coherence and continuity can be identified in the Estonian cultural-theoretical tradition – a discursive body based on common sources of influence and similar fundamental attitudes. We understand Estonian theory as a local episteme – a territorialized web of epistemological associations and rules for making sense of the world, which favours some premises while discouraging others. The article focuses on the older layers of Estonia…Read more
-
37Semiotic study of landscapesSign Systems Studies 39 (2-4): 12-36. 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
-
826The Biosemiotic Approach in Biology : Theoretical Bases and Applied ModelsIn George Terzis & Robert Arp (eds.), Information and Living Systems: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives, Bradford. pp. 91-130. 2011.Biosemiotics is a growing fi eld that investigates semiotic processes in the living realm in an attempt to combine the fi ndings of the biological sciences and semiotics. Semiotic processes are more or less what biologists have typically referred to as “ signals, ” “ codes, ”and “ information processing ”in biosystems, but these processes are here understood under the more general notion of semiosis, that is, the production, action, and interpretation of signs. Thus, biosemiotics can be seen as …Read more
-
26A note on biorhetoricsSign Systems Studies 29 (2): 693-703. 2001.This article analyses the possibility to look at living systems as biorhetorical systems. Rhetorics of biology, which studies the rhetoric of biological discourse, is distinguishable from biorhetorics, which attempts to analyse the expressive behaviour of organisms in terms of primordial (unconscious) rhetoric. The appearance of such a view is a logical consequence from recent developments in new (or general) rhetorics on the one hand (e.g., G. A. Kennedy's claim that rhetoric exists among socia…Read more
-
10An 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
-
25Semiosphere 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
-
29The place of art among other modelling systemsSign Systems Studies 39 (2-4): 249-269. 2011.This article by Juri Lotman from the third volume of Trudy po znakovym sistemam (Sign Systems Studies) in 1967, deals with the problem of artistic modelling. The general working questions are whether art displays any characteristic traits that are common for all modelling systems and which could be the specific traits that can distinguish art from other modelling systems. Art is seen as a secondary modelling system, more precisely, as a play-type model, which is characterised simultaneously by p…Read more