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Concept
Biosemiotics
Summary
Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος bios, "life" and σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.
Biosemiotics integrates the findings of biology and semiotics and proposes a paradigmatic shift in the scientific view of life, in which semiosis (sign process, including meaning and interpretation) is one of its immanent and intrinsic features. The term biosemiotic was first used by Friedrich S. Rothschild in 1962, but Thomas Sebeok and Thure von Uexküll have implemented the term and field. The field, which challenges normative views of biology, is generally divided between theoretical and applied biosemiotics.
Insights from biosemiotics have also been adopted in the humanities and social sciences, including human-animal studies, human-plant studies and cybersemiotics.
Biosemiotics is biology interpreted as a sign systems study, or, to elaborate, a study of
signification, communication and habit formation of living processes
semiosis (creating and changing sign relations) in living nature
the biological basis of all signs and sign interpretation
According to the basic types of semiosis under study, biosemiotics can be divided into
vegetative semiotics (also endosemiotics, or phytosemiotics), the study of semiosis at the cellular and molecular level (including the translation processes related to genome and the organic form or phenotype); vegetative semiosis occurs in all organisms at their cellular and tissue level; vegetative semiotics includes prokaryote semiotics, sign-mediated interactions in bacteria communities such as quorum sensing and quorum quenching.
zoosemiotics or animal semiotics, or the study of animal forms of knowing; animal semiosis occurs in the organisms with neuromuscular system, also includes anthroposemiotics, the study of semiotic behavior in humans.
Official source
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