What is Biosemiotics?

Abstract

The discovery of the genetic code took place between 1961 and 1966, and almost immediately inspired the idea of a deep link between biology and semiotics. The manifesto of this new synthesis was written by George and Muriel Beagle in 1966 with a single simple sentence: “The deciphering of the genetic code has revealed our possession of a language much older than hieroglyphics, a language as old as life itself, a language that is the most living language of all—even if its letters are invisible and its words are buried in the cells of our bodies” (Beadle and Beadle 1966). In 1974, Marcel Florkin coined the term ‘biosemiotics’ for the study of this molecular language, or, more precisely, for the study of semiosis (the production of signs) at the molecular level (Florkin 1974). At about the same time, a parallel development was taking place in linguistics. The idea that animals have feelings, psychologies and even minds has been entertained in various ways throughout the centuries, but for a long time is has been taken almost for granted that only man is a semiotic animal, i.e. that only man makes use of signs. That idea was explicitly challenged for the first time in 1963, when Thomas Sebeok suggested that animal communication is also based on signs, and proposed the term ‘zoosemiotics’ for the new science of animal semiosis (Sebeok 1963, 1972). That proposal set Sebeok out on a long search for evidence of semiosis in the various fields of the life sciences, and apparently he found the decisive proof by reading the original German edition of Jakob von Uexkull’s Theoretische Biologie (1928). That book convinced Sebeok that von Uexkull had already provided abundant evidence of semiosis in the animal world, and had been in fact the unintentional founding father of zoosemiotics. In 1977, Sebeok started a life-long collaboration with Thure von Uexkull (Jacob’s son), who was arguing that medicine has been a semiotic discipline ever since antiquity, because it has always been concerned with the interpretation of clues. In 1979, Sebeok invited Giorgio Prodi to Biosemiotics (2008) 1:1–3 DOI 10.1007/s12304-008-9009-1