The failure of modern science to create a common scientific framework for nature and consciousness makes it necessary to look for broader foundations in a new philosophy. Although controversial for modern science, the Peircean semiotic, evolutionary, pragmatic and triadic philosophy has been the only modern conceptual framework that can support that transdisciplinary change in our view of knowing that bridges the two cultures and transgresses Cartesian dualism. It therefore seems ideal to build on it for modern biosemiotics and can, in combination with Luhmann’s theory of communication, encompass modern information theory, complexity science and thermodynamics. It allows focus on the connection between the concept of codes and signs in living systems, and makes it possible to re-conceptualize both internal and external processes of the human body, mind and communication in models that fit into one framework.

Key words: autopoiesis, biosemiotics, cybersemiotics, peirce, sebeok, hoffmeyer, kull, emmeche, brier, zoösemiotics, phytosemiotics, endosemiotics, ethology, copenhagen school of biosemiotics.

Excerpt: All living creatures receive and emit signs. It is even legitimate to call them ‘subjects’ on account of this capacity. But subjects are, as Sebeok (1976, 1979) keeps pointing out, not only human. He distinguishes betweenanthroposemiotics and zoosemiotics, and one is even entitled to talkabout phytosemiotics (Krampen 1981). Thus we are confronted with thefollowing problem: As human observers we can grasp the signs of otherliving beings, i.e., zoo- and phytosemiotic signs, only with anthropo-semiotic concepts. How can we avoid the danger of denaturing them bydoing so? This problem is of concern to medicine, as well as to zoology and tobotany; for within the body we deal with phytosemiotic sign-processesthat occur within cells and between cells, and that are regulated by theautonomic nervous, endocrine, and immune systems. On the other hand,sensomotor processes are regulated by the voluntary nervous system,which communicates zoosemiotic signs. Thus medicine constantly dealswith the problem of how phyto-, zoo-, and anthroposemiotic signprocesses are interrelated in sickness and in health and how the physicianas a human observer can grasp their relationships. To approach this complex problem I shall examine what is common toanthropo-, zoo-, and phytosemiotic sign processes and in what mannersthey differ. Such an analysis could be a first step in helping us avoid theanthropomorphic fallacy.