Natural history of life:
History of communication logics and dynamics
© This article is not for reproduction without permission of the author.
ABSTRACT
“A full understanding of the dynamics of semiosis may in the last analysis turn out to be no less than the definition of life” (Th. Sebeok)
If rules
governing evolution are equivalent to communication rules which lie behind the
history of interaction, then we could refer to the natural history of life as a
history of communication logics and dynamics. Communication processes are rule
governed sign mediated interactions (rsi) which
may be described in the evolution of eukaryotic cells as well as - for example
- in microbial and plant interactions. The first part of this article supports Margulis theory of symbiogenesis
(Serial Endosymbiotic Theory) but questions the use
of classical
mechanistic language of natural science in describing highly complex interactions of symbiosis and, subsequently,
of symbiogenesis. The alternative is to describe
these as communication processes which are multi-leveled,
regulative, constitutive and generative and whose success depends on sign
processes which proceed in a rule-based manner. In my
illustrations of rsi, I propose the existence
of an innovation code (text-generating code, evolution code), a genome editing (ge)
MetaCode hidden in the non-coding DNA. The second part argues that the community of investigators doesn’t
consist of ‘pure observers’ but of performative
participants of the communicating scientific community which are (a) parts of
the investigation itself, (b) parts of the planetary symbiotic interdependence
of communicating living nature. I summarize pragmatic turn results which
lead to an adequate description of communicative rationality by investigating
which formal preconditions must be fulfilled so that rule-governed sign-mediated
interactions in and between communicating communities can function. This
approach of a pragmatic philosophy of biology enables a three-levelled biosemiotics avoid reductionistic
fallacies.