Science
Science

Summary/Abstract: Biosemiotics suggests that living systems should be studied as semiotic systems in their own right. This idea is based on the belief that the poverty of information discourse in biological sciences results from the reductive neglect of the interpretive aspect of biological information. By introducing the concept of the sign, as developed by US chemist and philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce [1839–1914] as a substitute for information, it will be assured that the interpretive side of information is not neglected. In everyday parlance, a sign is simply “something that refers to something else”, like smoke refers to fire. This reference, however, cannot be brought about without a process of interpretation. In the above quotation about the need for the study of living systems within a semiotic framework, Jesper Hoffmeyer argues persuasively for the enrichment of ‘information’ discourse in the biological sciences, due to that field’s traditional neglect of the interpretive component of biological information.

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