Signs, Instruments and Self-reference in Biosemiotics

We propose to explore some problems and deficiencies in current approaches to biosemiotics and offer some tentative solutions or improvements. For these purposes we approach our field not so much as a separate discipline but rather as a program for a radical re-conceptualization and generalization of theoretical biology in light of the essential role played by semiotic and instrumental notions in biological modeling. We consider a triple approach to this task. First: we examine the historical origins and development of the traditional exclusion or lack of integration of semiotic considerations in the life sciences. In particular, we examine these issues in connection with some historical parallels in the conceptual development of physics. Second: we sketch an attempt to integrate under a single perspective three elusive conceptions which appear ubiquitously, under diverse guises, in the work of several important biosemiotic theorists. These are the notions of triadicity, self-reference and final causation. Third: we carry out an analysis of the manifold meanings of the concept of instrument (organon): its role in scientific modeling, its special status in living systems, and its connection to the three conceptions mentioned above. Finally, we show how the conclusions reached through these three approaches converge into a perspective that suggests new ways of relating signs to instruments. This in turn suggests the possibility of expanding Peircean semiotics to include the relations of the triadic action of signs (semiosis) to the action of various dyadic mediators (i.e., different types of instruments).