Abstract
A prolific science writer and journalist, as well as a working university professor and molecular biologist, Jesper Hoffmeyer was born in Copenghagen, Denmark on Februrary 21, 1942. “Born during the second world war in occupied Denmark and to a family with strong anticlerical and moderate leftist persuasions,” recounts Hoffmeyer, “I was destined to develop a materialistic, and indeed a positivistic, understanding of our world. To fight irrationalism in all its disguises was an inherent value in my upbringing and in choosing to become a biochemist, I faithfully continued along this path. …But over time, it gradually occurred to me that some of the central tenets of such materialistic self-confidence were perhaps less secure than had been previously assumed” (2009: 292).
Jesper Hoffmeyer (1942– )
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
Genetics, properly speaking, comprises both a transmission aspect and an expression aspect. The transmission aspect is concerned with the transmission of genes from generation to generation, whereas the expression aspect deals with the question of how genes actually do produce the traits ascribed to them. For most of its history, however, the science of genetics has restricted itself to the first of these two aspects, the transmission phenomena, while more or less leaving the expression problem for the future. It is one thing, for instance, to claim that the taboo against incest is genetically anchored, quite another to explain how a gene might manage to cause such an effect. See more on this in Chapter “Universe of Mind: The Semiophere”, especially Lenny Moss’s distinction between gene-P and gene-D (Moss 2001). This emphasis on the transmission aspects, of course, has made the reductionist strategy so much easier to perpetuate.
- 2.
Johannsen actually compared the concept of the gene as a material structure that resides within the cells with the naive belief – of the peasants of his own time – that a team of horses was hidden inside the locomotive.
- 3.
I had better be careful here. A few years ago, the estimated number of genes in the human species was something like 80,000. After the publication of the map of the human genome in 2001, there were reported to be only 30,000–40,000 genes. And the latest estimate I saw had only 20,000–25,000 genes (Nature October 21, 2004).
- 4.
Planning itself, of course, may contain elements of analog coding such as diagrams or drawings, but these are generally superstructures based on numerical or otherwise abstract codifications.
- 5.
Two decades ago, I suggested a less fully developed version of the idea of code-duality (Hoffmeyer 1987).
- 6.
For example, if the gene codes for a distinct enzyme, the rate of degradation of this enzyme will determine how long the enzyme will remain active in the cell, and thus also determine the concentration of metabolites that are available for catalytic reaction. Since the concentration of metabolites will oft en have a regulatory influence on other cellular processes, the gene indirectly also determines the temporal relations between these different processes (see Fig. 5.5). However, the gene cannot, for good reason, determine precisely where in the cell a given molecule will be located at a given time. This problem may perhaps be illustrated by imagining a protein that is the size of a family car. The cell would, in relation, be the size of Copenhagen (although spherical rather than flat). And, due to the intricate internal structure of the cell, the freedom of movement of the proteins inside the cell would hardly be any bigger than the freedom of movement of a car in the street web of Copenhagen.
- 7.
Please notice that there is no sequence of nucleotide triplets per se – just an endless string of bases whose “reading” determines what will be acted upon as actual triplets. The base sequence, CAGTCAAAGAAC, might for instance be read as composed by the triplets: CAG-TCA-AAGAAC. But in another reading frame it might be read as C-AGT-CAA-AGA-AC. (See Chapter “Universe of Mind: The Semiophere” for further details on the semiotics of the genome.)
- 8.
- 9.
Lamarckian inheritance – by conflating the analog and the digital – loses the fertility of their interplay, which, seen semiotically, is the key to evolution.
- 10.
- 11.
That “context space expands” in our biosphere is in accordance with the analyses given by Stuart Kauffman (2000, 151), in the book Investigations, where he shows that the adjacent possible – i.e., the set of states that could possibly be realized in the next step of the ongoing material reconfiguration of the biosphere – exhibits exponential growth: “Our biosphere and any biosphere expands the dimensionality of its adjacent possible, on average, as rapidly as it can.”
- 12.
Code-duality may also be seen as the semiotic core of cultural evolution (Hoffmeyer and Emmeche 1991, 2005 [1991]).
- 13.
The analog-digital gestalt shift may in some cases be observed in individual hieroglyphs that may function both as ideograms and as phonograms. A hieroglyph resembling an eye may, depending on the context, signify either the notions blind, awake, or weep – but it may also signify simply the sound ir, because the name for an eye is irt (Den store danske Encyclopædi vol. 8, p. 438).
- 14.
Bateson is here referring to Bertrand Russell’s type theory (Russell and Whitehead 1910–1913).
- 15.
Stjernfelt (1992) has observed that the linguistic concept of categorial perception perhaps might be extended so as to cover transformations from iconic to symbolic representations quite generally, and this idea concords with the significance I have ascribed here to the analog-digital shift. An alarmone, as will be discussed in connection with endosemiotics in Chapter “The Clever Hans Phenomenon”, is yet another example of such a shift.
- 16.
- 17.
The acyl-group in this case is a 3-oxohexanoyl group.
- 18.
The complementarity principle of quantum theory refers to effects such as the wave-particle duality, in which different measurements made on a system reveal it to have either particle-like or wave-like properties. In Bohr’s understanding, complementarity reflected the weaknesses of human language and not any deeper property of reality (Einstein and Infeld 1938).
- 19.
Dawkins would perhaps reject outright the notion of a symbolic domain as something really existing. But then, how would he propose to solve the von Neumann-Pattee paradox?
- 20.
“… that mode of bringing facts about according to which a general description of result is made to come about, quite irrespective of any compulsion for it to come about in this or that particular way, although the means may be adapted to the end. The general result may be brought about at one time in one way, and at another time in another way. Final causation does not determine in what particular way it is to be brought about, but only that the result shall have a certain general character” (CP 1: 211).
- 21.
Young readers may not know the disease rachitis – or rickets (which, by the way, in Denmark we call “English disease”) – that is caused by a deficiency of vitamin D, and which, in the childhood of this author, was still sufficiently common for everybody to know the characteristically hollow-chested look of children having suffered from this disease.
- 22.
Ironically, this is an obsession that plays right into the hands of precisely those radical social-constructivist theories (e.g., those claims that reality, or at least the scientific model of it, is nothing but a social construction set up to perpetuate unequal power relations) that many scientists so despise.
- 23.
Vehkavaara (2003) has suggested the term externalized purposes for this survival strategy.
- 24.
Molecular genetics has increasingly undermined the simple genotype-phenotype relationship that was so passionately believed in just a few years ago. For it has become increasingly apparent that genomic systems exhibit unexpectedly integrative aspects. The lactose-positive phenotype in E. coli, for example, presupposes not only that the lac-operon proteins are expressed, but also that the genes that code for adenylate cyclase and for the cAMP receptor protein are expressed. “In many cases,” writes James A. Shapiro (1999, 25), “it is really impossible to assign a specific organismal phenotype to a particular locus, because its gene product(s) can participate in the execution of multiple cellular or developmental programs.”
- 25.
I agree with Sarkar (1996) in his demonstration of the inconsistencies inherent in the information concept of molecular biology. From this, however, Sarkar draws the conclusion that we had better stick to strictly chemical-biological terminology. Biosemiotics draws the opposite conclusionand introduces an explicitly semiotic understanding, seeing information as the exchange of signs or sets of signs, i.e., coded messages. A thorough discussion of this understanding is given in Emmeche (1999). Sharov (1992) also has recommended a semiotic understanding of biological information, and Jablonka (2002), as we saw in Chapter “The Logic of Signs”, uses a concept of information that is nearly indistinguishable from the Peircean sign concept.
References
Bateson, G. (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine Books.
Bateson, G. (1979). Mind and Nature. A Necessary Unity. New York: Bentam Books.
Brier, S. (2000). Biosemiotics as a possible bridge between embodiment in cognitive semantics and the motivation concept of animal cognition in ethology. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 7(1), 57–76.
Bruni, L. E. (2002). Does ‘quorum sensing’ imply a new type of biological information. Sign Systems Studies 30(1), 221–243.
Bruni, L. E. (2003). A sign-theoretic approach to biotechnology. Dissertation. Copenhagen: Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Copenhagen.
Buss, L. (1987). The Evolution of Individuality. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Chomsky, N. (1965). Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Christiansen, P. V. (2002). Habit formation as symmetry breaking in the early universe. Sign Systems Studies 30(1), 347–360.
Clark, A. (1997). Being There. Putting Brain, Body, and World Together Again. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, A Bradford Book.
Clark, A. (2002). Is seeing all it seems? Action. Reason and the grand illusion. Journal of Consciousness Studies 9(5/6), 181–202.
Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error. Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam Books.
Danesi, M. (2001). Layering theory and human abstract thinking. Cybernetics & Human Knowing 8(3), 5–24.
Darwin, C. (1981 [1871]). The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1976). The Selfish Gene, 2nd ed., 1989. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1982). The Extended Phenotype: The Long Reach of the Gene. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Dawkins, R. (1989). The Selfish Gene: New Edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Deacon, T. (1997). The Symbolic Species. New York: Norton.
Deacon, T. (2002). Problemet med Memer. Kritik 155/156, 120–126.
Deacon, T. (2003). Multilevel selection in a complex adaptive system: The problem of language origins. In: Weber, B., Depew, D. (Eds.) Evolution and Learning. The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 81–106.
Deely, J. (1990). Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Deely, J. (1991). Basics of Semiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
Deely, J. (1994). How does semiosis effect renvoi? The American Journal of Semiotics 11(1/2), 11–61.
Deely, J. (2001). Four Ages of Understanding. The First Postmodern Survey of Philosophy from Ancient Times to the Turn of the Twenty-first Century. Toronto: Toronto University Press.
Dennett, D. C. (1987). The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford Books.
Depew, D. (2003). Baldwin and his many effects. In: Weber, B., Depew, D. (Eds.) Evolution and Learning. The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 3–31.
Depew, D. L., Weber, B. H. (1995). Darwinism Evolving: Systems Dynamics and the Genealogy of Natural Selection. Cambridge, MA: Bradford/The MIT Press.
Einstein, A. Infeld, L. (1938). The Evolution of Physics. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Emmeche, C. (1999). The Sarkar challenge to biosemiotics: Is there any information in a cell? Semiotica 127(1/4), 273–293.
Emmeche, C. (2001). Does a Robot have an Umwelt? Reflections on the qualitative biosemiotics of Jakob von Uexküll. Semiotica. Special issue on Jakob von Uexküll (Kull, K. Ed.).
Emmeche, C., Hoffmeyer, J. (1991). From language to nature: The semiotic metaphor in biology. Semiotica 84(1/2): 1–42.
Etxeberria, A. (1998). Embodiment of natural and artificial agents. In: van de Vijver, G., Salthe, S., Delpos, M. (Eds.) Evolutionary Systems. Biological and Epistemological Perspectives on Selection and Self-Organization. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 397–412.
Favareau, D. (2001). Beyond self and other: On the neurosemiotic emergence of intersubjectivity. Sign Systems Studies 30(1), 57–100.
Favareau, D. (2002). Constructing representema: On the neurosemiotics of self and vision. SEED 2(4), 3–24.
Favareau, D. (2007). Collapsing the wave function of meaning: The epistemological matrix of talk-in-interaction. In: Hoffmeyer, J. (Ed.) Bateson as a Precursor for Biosemiotics. Dordrecht: Springer.
Fodor, J. (1975). The Language of Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Gottlieb, G. (1981). Roles of early experience in species-specific perceptual development. In: Aslin, R. N., Alberts, J. R., Petersen, M. P. (Eds.) Development of Perception. New York: Academic Press, pp. 5–44.
Gould, S. J. (1996). Triumph of the root-heads. Natural History 105, 10–17.
Griffiths, P. E., Gray, R. D. (1994). Developmental systems and evolutionary explanations. Journal of Philosophy 91, 277–304.
Hendriks-Jansen, H. (1996). Catching Ourselves in the Act. Situated Activity, Interactive Emergence, and Human Thought. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1975). Dansen om Guldkornet. En bog om biologi og samfund. København: Gyldendal.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1987). The constraints of nature on free will. In: Mortensen, V., Sorensen, R. C. (Eds.) Free Will and Determinism. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, pp. 188–200.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1992). Some semiotic aspects of the psycho-physical relation: The endo-exosemiotic boundary. In: Sebeok, T. A., Umiker-Sebeok, J. (Eds.) Biosemiotics: The Semiotic Web 1991. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 101–123.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1996). Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.
Hoffmeyer, J. (1997). Biosemiotics: Towards a new synthesis in biology. European Journal for Semiotic Studies 9(2), 355–376.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2002). The central dogma: A joke that became real. Semiotica 138(1), 1–13.
Hoffmeyer, J., Emmeche, C. (1991). Code-duality and the semiotics of nature. In: Anderson, M., Merrell, F. (Eds.) On Semiotic Modeling. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 117–166.
Hoffmeyer, J., Emmeche, C. (2005 [1991]). Code-duality and the semiotics of nature. Journal of Biosemiotics 1(1), 27–64.
Hoffmeyer, J. (2001). Life and reference. Biosystems 60(1/3), 123–30.
Holley, A. J. (1993). Do brown hares signal to foxes? Ethology 94, 21–30.
Hull, D. (1980). Individuality and selection. Annual Reviews of Ecology and Systematics 11, 311–332.
Jablonka, E. (2002). Information: Its interpretation, its inheritance, and its sharing. Philosophy of Science 69, 578–605.
Kauffman, S. A. (2000). Investigations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Keller, E. F. (1995). Refiguring Life: Metaphors of Twentieth-century Biology. New York: Columbia University Press.
Kull, K. (2000). Organisms can be proud to have been their own designers. Cybernetics and Human Knowing 7(1), 45–55.
Lakoff, G., Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the Flesh. New York: Basic Books.
Lamarck, J. B. (1809). Philosophie Zoologique, ou Exposition des Considération Relatives a l’Histoire Naturelle des Animaux. Paris: Dentu.
Lewontin, R. C. (1983). Gene, organism, and environment. In: Bendall, D. S. (Ed.) Evolution from Molecules to Men. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 273–285.
Lewontin, R. C. (1992). The dream of the human genome. The New York Review, 31–40.
McFall-Ngai, J., Ruby, E. G. (1998). Sepiolids and vibrios: When first they meet. BioScience 48(4), 257–265.
Morgan, T. H., Sturtevant, A. H. et al. (1915). The Mechanism of Mendelian Heredity. New York: Henry Holt.
Moss, L. (2001). Deconstructing the gene and reconstructing molecular developmental systems. In: Oyama, S., Griffiths, P. E., Gray, R. D. (Eds.) Cycles of Contingency. Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: A Bradford Book, MIT Press, pp. 85–97.
Nagel, T. (1986). The View from Nowhere. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.
Neumann-Held, E. M. (1998). The gene is dead-long live the gene. Conceptualizing the gene the constructionist way. In: Koslowsky, P. (Ed.) Developmental Systems, Competition and Cooperation in Sociobiology and Economics. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, pp. 105–137.
Nöth, W. (2000). Handbuch der Semioitk. 2., vollständig neu bearbeitede und erweiterte Auflage. Stuttgart: Verlag J. B. Metzler.
Odling-Smee, F. J. (1988). Niche constructing phenotypes. In: Plotkin, H. C. (Ed.) The Role of Behavior in Evolution. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 72–132.
Odling-Smee, F. J. (2001). Niche construction, ecological inheritance, and cycles of contingency in evolution. In: Oyama, S., Griffiths, P. E., Gray, R. D. (Eds.) Cycles of Contingency. Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: A Bradford Book, MIT Press, pp. 117–126.
Odling-Smee, F. J., Laland, K. N., Feldman, M. W. (1996). Niche construction. American Naturalist 147(4), 641–648.
Odling-Smee, F. J., Patten, B. (1994). The genotype-phenotype-envirotype complex: Ecological and genetic inheritance in evolution. Manuscript.
Oyama, S. (1985). The Ontogeny of Information. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oyama, S, Griffiths, P. E., Gray, R. D. (Eds.) (2001). Cycles of Contingency. Developmental Systems and Evolution. Cambridge, MA: A Bradford Book, MIT Press.
Pattee, H. (1972). Laws and constraints, symbols, and languages. In: Waddington, C. H. (Ed.) Towards a Theoretical Biology, Vol. 4. Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, pp. 248–258.
Pattee, H. H. (1977). Dynamic and linguistic modes of complex systems. International Journal for General Systems 3, 259–266.
Pattee, H. H. (1997). The physics of symbols and the evolution of semiotic controls. Santa Fe Institute Studies in the Sciences of Complexity, Proceedings Volume. Redwood City, CA: Addison-Wesley.
Peirce, C. S. (1931–35). Collected papers I–VI. In: Hartstone, C., Weiss, P. (Eds.) Collected Papers I–IV. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Pinker, S. (1994). The Language Instinct. The New Science of Language and Mind. London: Penguin.
Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal Knowledge. London: Routledge.
Rayner, A. D. M. (1997). Degrees of Freedom. Living in Dynamic Boundaries. London: Imperial College Press.
Rocha, L. (1998). Syntactic autonomy. Joint Conference on the Science and Technology of Intelligent Systems, Gaithersburg, MD.
Ruse, M. (1979). The Darwinian Revolution. Chicago/London: University of Chicago Press.
Russel, B., Whitehead, A. N. (1910–13). Principia Mathematica vol. I–III. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sarkar, S. (1996). Biological information: A skeptical look at some central dogmas of molecular biology. In: Sarkar, S. (Ed.) The Philosophy and History of Molecular Biology: New Perspectives. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 187–231.
Sarkar, S. (1997). Decoding ‘coding’: Information and DNA. European Journal for Semiotic Studies 9(2), 227–232.
Shapiro, J. A. (1999). Genome system architecture and natural genetic engineering in evolution. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 870, 23–35.
Sharkey, N., Ziemke, T. (2001a). Life, mind and robots: The ins and outs of embodiment. In: Wermter, S., Sun, R. (Eds.) Symbolic and Neural Net Hybrids. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Sharkey, N., Ziemke, T. (2001b). Mechanistic versus phenomenal embodiment: Can robot embodiment lead to strong AI? Cognitive Systems Research 2(4), 251–262.
Sharov, A. A. (1992). Biosemiotics: A functional-evolutionary approach to the analysis of the sense of information. In: Sebeok, T. A., Umiker-Sebeok, J. (Eds.) Biosemiotics: The Semiotic Web 1991. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 345–374.
Soler, M., Soler, J. J. (1999). Innate versus learned recognition of conspecifics in great spotted cuckoos Clamator glandarius. Animal Cognition 2, 97–102.
Sterelny, K., Griffiths, P. E. (1999). Sex and death. An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Stjernfelt, F. (1992). Categorial perception as a general prerequisite to the formation of signs? On the biological range of a deep semiotic problem in Hjelmslev’s as well as Peirce’s semiotics. In: Sebeok, T. A., Umiker-Sebeok, J. (Eds.) Biosemiotics. The Semiotic Web 1991. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Taborsky, E. (2002). Energy and evolutionary semiosis. Sign Systems Studies 30(1), 361–381.
Thibault, P. J. (1998). Code. In: Bouissac, P. (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Semiotics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 125–129.
Uexküll, J. von. (1982 [1940]). The theory of meaning. Semiotica 42(1), 25–87.
Van Gelder, T., Port, R. (1995). It’s about time: Overview of the dynamical approach to cognition. In: Port, R., Van Gelder, T. (Eds.) Mind or Motion: Explorations in the Dynamics of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Bradford Books/MIT Press, pp. 1–43.
Vehkavaara, T. (2003). Natural interests: Interactive representation and the emergence of Objects and Umwelt. Sign System Studies 30(2), 547–587.
von Neumann, J. (1955). The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wilden, A. (1980). System and Structure. New York: Tavistock.
Ziemke, T., Sharkey, N. (2001). A stroll through the worlds of robots and animals: Applying Jakob von Uexküll’s theory of meaning to adaptive robots and artificial life. Semiotica 134(1–4), 701–746.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2009 Springer Science+Business Media B.V.
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Favareau, D. (2009). The Semiotics of Nature: Code-Duality. In: Essential Readings in Biosemiotics. Biosemiotics, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9650-1_19
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9650-1_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-1-4020-9649-5
Online ISBN: 978-1-4020-9650-1
eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life SciencesBiomedical and Life Sciences (R0)