Pathways to the Origin and Evolition of Meanings in the Universe
The book explains why meaning is a part of the universe populated by life, and how organisms generate meanings and then use them for creative transformation of the environment and themselves.
This book focuses on interdisciplinary research at the intersection of biology, semiotics, philosophy, ethology, information theory, and the theory of evolution. Such a broad approach provides a rich context for the study of organisms and other semiotic agents in their environments. This methodology can be applied to robotics and artificial intelligence for developing robust, adaptable learning devices.
In this book, leading interdisciplinary scholars reveal their vision on how to integrate natural sciences with semiotics, a theory of meaning-making and signification. Developments in biology indicate that the capacity to create and understand signs is not limited to humans or vertebrate animals, but exists in all living organisms - the fact that inspired the integration of biology and semiotics into biosemiotics. The authors discuss the nature of semiotic agents (organisms and other autonomous goal-directed units), meaning, signs, information, memory, evolution, and consciousness. Also discussed are issues including the origin of life, potential meaning and its actualization, top-down causality in physics and biology, capacity of organisms to encode their functions, the strategy of organisms to combine homeostasis with direct adaptation to new life-cycle phases or new environments, multi-level memory systems, increase of freedom via enabling constraints, creative modeling in evolution and learning, communication in animals and humans, the origin and function of language, and the distribution and transfer of life in space.
This is the first book on biosemiotics in its global conceptual and spatial scope. Biosemiotics is presented using the language of natural sciences, which supports the scientific grounding of semiotic terms. Finally, the cosmic dimension of life and meaning-making leads to a reconsideration of ethical principles and ecological mentality here on earth and in space exploration.
Audience
Theoretical biologists, ethologists, astrobiologists, ecologists, evolutionary biologists, philosophers, phenomenologists, semioticians, biosemioticians, molecular biologists, linguists, system scientists and engineers.
Preface xv Acknowledgments xix Part I: The Nature of Meaning and Its Components 1 1 Introduction: Towards Integrating Studies of Meanings with Science 3 Alexei A. Sharov 2 Pathways to the Understanding of Signs and Meanings in the Biosphere: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives 27 Donald Favareau and Kalevi Kull 3 Is it a Janus-Faced World After All? Physics is Not Reductionist 55 Bashir Ahmad and Richard Gordon 4 Semiotic Ground and the Hierarchic Nature of Information 71 Terrence W. Deacon 5 Ontology and Semiotics of Memory 85 Anton V. Sukhoverkhov and Arran E. Gare 6 Meanings, Their Hierarchy, and Evolution 101 George E. Mikhailovsky 7 Semiotics of Potential Meanings 137 Alexei A. Sharov 8 A Constructivist Approach to Meanings in the Universe 167 Alexander Kravchenko Part II: Meanings in the Evolution of Life 187 9 Chemical Origins of Life, Agency, and Meaning 189 Alexei A. Sharov 10 Evolution of Biomolecular Communication 217 Gustavo Caetano-Anollés 11 Meaning Relies on Codes but Depends on Agents 245 Robert Prinz 12 Evolutionary Growth of Meanings in the Relational Universe of Intercommunicating Agents 265 Abir U. Igamberdiev Part III: Meanings in Organism Behavior and Cognition 279 13 The Sentient Cell 281 Arthur S. Reber, Frantisek Baluska and William B. Miller, Jr. 14 A Hypothesis about How Bacterial Cells Sustain and Change Their Lives in Response to Various Signals 299 Vic Norris and Alexei A. Sharov 15 Self-Reinforcing Cycles and Mistakes: The Emergence of Subjective Meaning 325 Victoria N. Alexander 16 On the Energy-Based Limitations of the Information Capacity and Information Processing Rates in the Human Brain 345 Jack A. Tuszynski 17 The Peculiar Case of Danger Modeling: Meaning-Generation in Three Dimensions 363 Hongbing Yu Part IV: Meanings in Humans and Beyond 377 18 Anchors of Meaning: The Intertwining of Signs, Abduction, and Cognitive Niches 379 Lorenzo Magnani 19 Levels of Translation, Levels of Freedom? 401 Kobus Marais 20 Towards a Biosemiotic Account of Memes as Units of Cultural Replication and Interpretation 419 Ivan Fomin 21 Astrobiosemiotics and Its Frontier with Astrobiology 439 Julian Chela-Flores 22 Time Horizons and Biosemiotic Adaptation: Taking Seriously Variable Temporalities in the Evolution of Possible Life Forms 453 Yogi H. Hendlin and Constantijn-Alexander Kusters Declaration 467 References 467 Index 471
Alexei A. Sharov is the vice president of bioinformatics at Elixirgen Scientific in Baltimore, USA. He holds a Ph.D. in ecology and entomology from Moscow State University in Russia. He’s the editor of Journal Biosemiotics, published 4 books, and 180 peer-reviewed papers. Sharov has organized three conferences on biosemiotics. George E. Mikhailovsky is the president and CEO of Global Mind Share in Norfolk, USA. He has a Ph.D. in biophysics from Moscow State University in Russia and a DSc in systems ecology from P.P. Shirshov Institute of Oceanology. Currently, he is the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolutionary Science and has published 5 books and 100 peer-reviewed papers.
