On the Origin of Semiosis
This paper focuses in upon a model of abiotic (proto) semiosis, giving some suggestions concerning the origin of life. In doing this, the paper utilizes the Peircean triadic concept of semiosis along with the maximum energy dispersion principle in connection with the concept of dissipative
structures. It is suggested that the origin of biosemiosis via the genetic system allowed mediation of physiosemiosis into zoosemiosis. Thus, biosemiosis is taken to not be on the direct line of descent of anthroposemiosis. I argue that the characteristic gesture of natural science was to
eliminate final cause from its texts, which amounted to eliminating the contexts of examined phenomena as being critical in understanding their behavior. But, I argue, context is crucial for any semiotic interpretation, and must be brought back into our conception of the abiotic world if semiosis
is to be understood as arising naturally during evolution.
Document Type: Research Article
Publication date: 01 January 2012
- Access Key
- Free content
- Partial Free content
- New content
- Open access content
- Partial Open access content
- Subscribed content
- Partial Subscribed content
- Free trial content