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.