Abstract
For Prodi, the fundamental semiotic interaction obtains between two molecules. The first selectively “reads” some superficial characteristics of the second, allowing it to establish a link. The fact that a link between two molecules is possible makes the second molecule “meaningful” for the first (and vice versa). “Natural meaning” thus arises. At the beginning of semiosis, there is a selective material operation, wherein a certain material configuration is “preferred” to another. All the other forms of semiosis derive from this fundamental operation. Prodi’s theoretical proposal, then, does not presuppose the existence of any intentional process. Semiosis, Prodi argues, does not need a subject or any psychological intentionality. Consequently, semiosic processes are completely natural and are not an exclusive prerogative of human beings.
We think that the threshold for “sign” is situated at the very beginning of the biological domain, characterizing its origin and its basic structure […] Life begins when to such a uniform world, conditions of selectivity are superimposed or, better, when conditions of selectivity are generated from the conditions of uniformity. […] An enzyme , which can be considered the simplest example of this status, selects its substrate among a number of meaningless molecules with which it can collide: it reacts and forms a complex with only its molecules partner. This substrate is a sign for the enzyme (for its enzyme). The enzyme explores reality and finds what corresponds to its own shape: it is a lock which searches and finds its proper key.
(Prodi 2010: 329)
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
The standard model for an anti-Cartesian semiotic is offered by Peirce in his “Questions Concerning Certain Faculties Claimed of or Man” (1868). For similar reasons, Prodi is also a critic of phenomenology, since it presupposes the ability to reach an original and autonomous state of consciousness. Prodi, in particular, doubts the very existence of the act of ἐποχή or “bracketing”. According to Edmund Husserl, the phenomenological stance implies the ability to suspend judgment regarding the general or naive philosophical belief in the existence of the external world and thus to examine phenomena as they are originally given to consciousness. On the contrary, according to Prodi “there can be no ‘bracketing’ of things, especially so when it comes to that thing (the knowledge-structure) which has organized itself onto things by perceiving and manipulating them; a thing which is nothing but a complex ‘linking-thing’ [cosa di collegamento]. Things are always integral and necessary to each other, that is, they are reciprocally constitutive at every step of the process which tries to separate them; the darkness is populated by their presence” (Prodi 1974: 16).
- 2.
In Kant and the Platypus, Umberto Eco defines the concept of “primary iconism” in explicit reference to Prodi, mentioning the semiotic domain of complementarity—“the icon is the natural willingness of something to correspond to something else”—and finds in it the ground for “superior cultural phenomena”. Eco explicitly mentions Prodi’s Le basi materiali della significazione: “in no way am I repudiating the distinction (which remains fundamental) between signal and sign, between dyadic processes of stimulus-response and triadic processes of interpretation, so that only in the full expansion of this last do phenomena such as signification, intentionality, and interpretation (however you wish to consider them) emerge. I am admitting with Prodi (1977) that to understand the higher cultural phenomena, which clearly do not spring from nothing, it is necessary to assume that certain ‘material bases of signification’ exist, and that these bases lie precisely in this disposition to meet and interact that we can see as the first manifestation (not yet cognitive and certainly not mental) of primary iconism” (Eco 1999: 107). However, Eco does not seem to have moved on from his previous stance (as, e.g. in Eco 1976) since he still sets this dyadic iconism apart from “triadic processes of interpretation”. Conversely, the radicality of Prodi’s proposal lies precisely in its questioning of such a separation, considering all semiotic phenomena intrinsically dyadic (reducible to chains of dyadic links). Consequently, this means that notions like intentionality (which is a triadic entity) can be abandoned. It is no coincidence that Eco defines “primary iconism” something that, for Prodi, is not at all iconic (i.e. it is not properly a sign). The point of this discussion is not so much how to assign to the mental-triadic sign a hook in the world (this, for Eco, is the function of “primary iconism”), rather the point is to relinquish the unreflective presupposition of Cartesian semiotics, grounded on triadic relations (Peirce’s Thirdness). However, while in A Theory of Semiotics Eco places dyadic phenomena below of “the lower threshold of semiotics”, in Kant and the Platypus, he is more sympathetic to Prodi’s ideas: “[y]et again I would refrain from using terms such as ‘sign’, but it is beyond doubt that when we come up against this lock that seeks its own key, we come up against a protosemiotics, and it is to this protosemiotic disposition that I would tend to give the name of natural primary iconism” (108–109).
- 3.
A possible source for this radical stance of Prodi’s might have been Mead. See, for example, Mead 1922.
- 4.
It is interesting to note that the number of signs included in non-human animal’s communications systems—natural or artificial (i.e. taught by humans)—seems to be vastly smaller as compared to human languages. It is possible that a reduced number of signs make it impossible to form a system and therefore sign-to-sign associations (Peppergerg 2017). In fact, the majority of linguistic signs refers to other signs, rather than external objects. Perhaps a paradoxical Prodian definition of language could be this one: language is a semiotic device the main function of which is to refer to language itself. This is but another application of the model of the circle to a biological phenomenon.
BibliographyIn ItalianOther Works Cited
Alač, M., & Violi, P. (Eds.). (2004). In the beginning: Origins of semiosis, Semiotic and Cognitive Studies 12. Bologna: Brepols.
Barbieri, M. (1985). La teoria semantica dell’evoluzione. (Thom, René, preface.) (Saggi, Scienze.) Torino: Bollati Boringhieri.
Barbieri, M. (2000). I codici organici: La nascita della biologia semantica. (Capire la vita 1.) Ancona: peQuod editore.
Barbieri, M. (2001). The organic codes: The birth of semantic biology. (Capire la vita 2.) Ancona: peQuod editore.
Bardini, T. (2017). Relational ontology, Simondon, and the hope for a third culture inside biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, 10(1), 131–137.
Cimatti, F. (2000b). The circular semiosis of Giorgio Prodi. Sign Systems Studies, 28, 351–379.
Cobley, P. (2016). Cultural Implications of Biosemiotics, Biosemiotics 15. Dordrecht: Springer.
Prodi, G. (1986b). Interview. In G. Marrone (Ed.), Dove va la semiotica? Quaderni del Circolo Semiologico Siciliano 24. Palermo: Circolo Semiologico Siciliano.
Prodi, G. (1988d). La cultura come ermeneutica naturale. Intersezioni, Rivista di storia delle idee (Bologna: Società Editrice Il Mulino) 8(1): 23–48. [English translation in Prodi 1989b]
Prodi, G. (1988e). La biologia come semiotica naturale. In M. Herzfeld & L. Melazzo (Eds.), Semiotic theory and practice: Proceedings of the third international congress of the IASS Palermo, 1984 (Vol. 2, pp. 929–951). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Prodi, G. (1989b). Culture as natural hermeneutics. In W. A. Koch (Ed.), The nature of culture. Proceedings of the international and interdisciplinary symposium, October 7—11, 1986 in Bochum, Bochum Publications in Evolutionary Cultural Semiotics; BPX 12 (pp. 215–239). Bochum: Studienverlag Dr. Norbert Brockmeyer [Translation of Prodi 1988d].
Prodi, G. (2010b). Signs and codes in immunology. In D. Favareau (Ed.), Essential readings in biosemiotics: Anthology and commentary (pp. 323–336). Berlin: Springer (originariamente apparso in: Sercar E ed. The semiotics of cellular communication in the immune system, NATO ASI Series H, Cell Biology. Heidelberg).
Prodi, G. (2010b). Semiosic competence, development of. In T. A. Sebeok & M. Danesi (Eds.), Encyclopedic Dictionary of Semiotics. Vol 2, N–Z (3rd ed., pp. 907–910). Berlin: De Gruyter Mouton [Reprint of Prodi 1986].
Baldwin, J. (1896). A new factor in evolution. The American Naturalist, 30(354), 441–451.
Braitenberg, V. (1984). I veicoli pensanti. Saggio di psicologia sintetica. Milano: Garzanti.
Buchanan, B. (2008). Onto-Ethologies. The animal environments of Uexküll, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, and Deleuze. New York: Suny Press.
Churchland, P. (1981). Eliminative materialism and the propositional attitudes. The Journal of Philosophy, 78(2), 67–90.
Cimatti, F. (1998). Mente e linguaggio negli animali. Introduzione alla zoosemiotica cognitiva. Roma: Carocci.
Cimatti, F. (2015). Italian philosophy of language. Rivista Italiana di Filosofia del Linguaggio, 1, 14–36.
Donati C. (1985) Intervista a Giorgio Prodi. Il Resto del Carlino, 23 novembre 1985: 16.
Favareau, D. (2010). Preface. A stroll through the worlds of science and signs. In D. Favareau (Ed.), Essential readings in biosemiotics: Anthology and commentary (pp. V–xi). Berlin: Springer.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Cimatti, F. (2018). The Biological Model: For an Anti-Cartesian Semiotics. In: A Biosemiotic Ontology . Biosemiotics, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97903-8_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97903-8_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97902-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-97903-8
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)