Biosemiotics (bios=life & semion=sign) is a growing field that studies the production, action and interpretation of signs in the physical and biologic realms in an attempt to integrate the findings of scientific biology and semiotics to form a new view of life and meaning as immanent features of the natural world. The term "biosemiotic" was first used by F.S. Rothschild in 1962, but Thomas Sebeok has done much to popularize the term and field.

Thus, biosemiotics is

• biology interpreted as sign systems

or, to use a few more words,

• the signification, communication and habit formation of living processes
  
• semiosis (changing sign relations) in living nature
  
• the biological basis of all signs and sign interpretation

To define biosemiotics as “biology interpreted as sign systems” is to emphasize not only the close relation between biology as we know it (as a scientific field of inquiry) and semiotics (the study of signs), but primarily the profound change of perspective implied when life is considered not just from the perspectives of molecules and chemistry, but as signs conveyed and interpreted by other living signs in a variety of ways, including by means of molecules. In this sense, biosemiotics takes for granted and respects the complexity of living processes as revealed by the existing fields of biology -- from molecular biology to brain science and behavioural studies -- however, biosemiotics attempts to bring together separate findings of the various disciplines of biology (including evolutionary biology) into a new and more unified perspective on the central phenomena of the living world, including the generation of function and signification in living systems, from the ribosome to the ecosystem and from the beginnings of life to its ultimate meanings.

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Biosemiotics: terms & definitions http://is.gd/4SaRe
ilindstrom (Ingrid Lindstrom) Wed, 11 Nov 2009 01:04:27 -0000
Biosemiotics: terms & definitions http://is.gd/4SaRe

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