Abstract:This article argues that organisms, defined by a semi-permeable membrane or skin separating organism from environment, are (must be) semiotically alert responders to environments (both Innenwelt and Umwelt). As organisms and environments complexify over time, so, necessarily, does semiotic responsiveness, or 'semiotic freedom'. In complex environments, semiotic responsiveness necessitates increasing plasticity of discernment, or discrimination. Such judgements, in other words, involve interpretations. The latt… Show more
“…Whether in biology or in language, the temporality of evolutionary process lies in the fact that the new always derives some elements of the past (or what already exists) which are creatively recombined. (2010)This is an important insight that begins to build a material bridge between the encodedness of genetics and the language that emerges from our genetically derived minds. These are not two things that are merely ‘like’ one another, but clearly have a relationship of kinship.…”
Section: Shakespeare In Our Dnamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Whether in biology or in language, the temporality of evolutionary process lies in the fact that the new always derives some elements of the past (or what already exists) which are creatively recombined. (2010)…”
This essay is built around three narratives of Shakespeare, code, and immortality: the first, the parallel between the passage of encoded genetic material in the body and the cultural transmission of text which converge in the reproduction of Shakespeare's sonnets into the medium of DNA, potentially collapsing a metaphorical relationship into a literal one; the second, the supposed conveying of information from a deceased Shakespeare to a superstitious Victor Hugo through the tapping out of code onto a tabletop during a nineteenth-century seance; and third, one in which I consider an alternative-or perhaps parallel-reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in which the author himself intends, against all odds and rationality, to preserve his deceased son in the form of sonnets that have more frequently been read as love letters to a young male lover. KEYWORDS Shakespeare; biosemiotics; ecocriticism; umwelt; holobiont; artificial intelligence; genetics; afterlives 'We are surrounded by traces of the past, a veritable garden of ghosts.'-Ana Tsing, et al. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (Tsing 2017, g65)In 1596 Shakespeare's son Hamnet was buried in the churchyard of Stratford upon Avon. Over the next three years, often sidelined from the theatre by plague, Shakespeare composed sonnets which were likely revised until their publication in 1609. The sonnets, which obsess over reproduction, fading youth, encroaching mortality, and frustrated succession, are rarely read in terms of Hamnet's death. In 1853 Victor Hugo-in a gesture that revealed much more about his own consciousness than that of his supposed interlocutor-summoned the ghost of Shakespeare in a tabletop séance. Hugo asked questions about the nature of genius, the importance of artistic work, and attempted to glean insight into the life of the mind beyond the borders of the body. The responses emerged in the form of encoded tapping which were shaped in Hugo's mind-a mind that was well versed in the works of Shakespeare-into responses he attributed to his literary predecessor. In 2013 Shakespeare's sonnets were amongst the first texts translated into DNA, eclipsing a clean border between body and text and possibly achieving something akin to the immortality Shakespeare sought for his lost son. These three moments exist on a continuum that is revelatory as to the texture of poetic, biological, and maybe even technological emergence as we enter an era in which the supremacy of human consciousness is questioned even as scientists and engineers seek to simulate that very consciousness in machines. Each of these three instances concerns the passing of encoded
“…Whether in biology or in language, the temporality of evolutionary process lies in the fact that the new always derives some elements of the past (or what already exists) which are creatively recombined. (2010)This is an important insight that begins to build a material bridge between the encodedness of genetics and the language that emerges from our genetically derived minds. These are not two things that are merely ‘like’ one another, but clearly have a relationship of kinship.…”
Section: Shakespeare In Our Dnamentioning
confidence: 99%
“…Whether in biology or in language, the temporality of evolutionary process lies in the fact that the new always derives some elements of the past (or what already exists) which are creatively recombined. (2010)…”
This essay is built around three narratives of Shakespeare, code, and immortality: the first, the parallel between the passage of encoded genetic material in the body and the cultural transmission of text which converge in the reproduction of Shakespeare's sonnets into the medium of DNA, potentially collapsing a metaphorical relationship into a literal one; the second, the supposed conveying of information from a deceased Shakespeare to a superstitious Victor Hugo through the tapping out of code onto a tabletop during a nineteenth-century seance; and third, one in which I consider an alternative-or perhaps parallel-reading of Shakespeare's sonnets in which the author himself intends, against all odds and rationality, to preserve his deceased son in the form of sonnets that have more frequently been read as love letters to a young male lover. KEYWORDS Shakespeare; biosemiotics; ecocriticism; umwelt; holobiont; artificial intelligence; genetics; afterlives 'We are surrounded by traces of the past, a veritable garden of ghosts.'-Ana Tsing, et al. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet (Tsing 2017, g65)In 1596 Shakespeare's son Hamnet was buried in the churchyard of Stratford upon Avon. Over the next three years, often sidelined from the theatre by plague, Shakespeare composed sonnets which were likely revised until their publication in 1609. The sonnets, which obsess over reproduction, fading youth, encroaching mortality, and frustrated succession, are rarely read in terms of Hamnet's death. In 1853 Victor Hugo-in a gesture that revealed much more about his own consciousness than that of his supposed interlocutor-summoned the ghost of Shakespeare in a tabletop séance. Hugo asked questions about the nature of genius, the importance of artistic work, and attempted to glean insight into the life of the mind beyond the borders of the body. The responses emerged in the form of encoded tapping which were shaped in Hugo's mind-a mind that was well versed in the works of Shakespeare-into responses he attributed to his literary predecessor. In 2013 Shakespeare's sonnets were amongst the first texts translated into DNA, eclipsing a clean border between body and text and possibly achieving something akin to the immortality Shakespeare sought for his lost son. These three moments exist on a continuum that is revelatory as to the texture of poetic, biological, and maybe even technological emergence as we enter an era in which the supremacy of human consciousness is questioned even as scientists and engineers seek to simulate that very consciousness in machines. Each of these three instances concerns the passing of encoded
“…Terms describing linguistic tools can be put to use understanding the tools of biological processes, not because to do so is a helpful analogy, but because our linguistic abilities most certainly emerge from similar but more primitive kinds of semiosic processes. As Wendy Wheeler (2010; 281) has proposed, the kind of poetic thought considered to be exceptional in humans actually occurs in all biological processes. Evolution/development is: an effect of long ‘conversations’ over time dominated by certain memories—morphologies/patterns of semiosis (similarity‐in‐difference/metaphors) which are encoded and read (in protein expression) in one particular way until environmental changes (new messages) produce pressures to find a new metaphor (a new expression) with sufficient similarity and difference to allow the great dialogue of life to shift (to a better adapted/more useful expressive form), and thus to continue.…”
Evidence of cognition in aneural cells is well‐establish in the literature. This paper extends the exploration of the mechanisms of cognition by considering whether or not aneural cells may be capable of irrational cognition, making associations based on coincidental similarities and circumstantial factors. If aneural cells do harness such semiosic qualities, as with higher‐level creativity, this might be how they are able to overcome old algorithms and invent tools for new situations. I will look at three examples of irrational learning in aneural systems in terms of semiotics: (1) generalisation in the immune system, based on viral molecular mimicry, whereby immune cells attack the self, which seems to be an overgeneralisation of an icon sign based on mere similarity, not identity, (2) the classical conditioning of pea plants to trope toward wind as a sign of light, which seems to be an association of an index sign based on mere temporal proximity, and (3) a pharmaceutical intervention to prevent pregnancy, using a conjugate to encrypt self with non‐self, which seems to be an example of symbol use. We identify irrational cognition easily when it leads to ‘wrong’ outcomes, but, if it occurs, it may also lead to favourable outcomes and ‘creative’ solutions.
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“…All is human language-all is human." Our modern mistake, writes Wendy Wheeler in this volume (Wheeler 2010), has been to believe that only what is consciously known and measurable is real. But we commit a mistake by believing that through language we define what is real (as opposed to defining what is knowable to us in linguistic terms).…”
mentioning
confidence: 99%
“…In her contribution to this volume, Wendy Wheeler (2010) refers to the 'night science' described by Francois Jacob (1988: 296), which "feels its way, questions itself [...] a sort of workshop of the possible [...] Where hypotheses take the forms of vague presentiments [...] Where the plans for experiments have barely taken form." Night science-or dare I say biosemiotics?…”
The following points, which represent a path to a semiotics of being, are pertinent to various sub-fields at the conjunction of semiotics of nature (biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, zoosemiotics) and semiotics of culture-semioethics and existential semiotics included. 1) Semiotics of being entails inquiry at all levels of biological organization, albeit, wherever there are individuals, with emphasis on the living qua individuals (integrated biological individualism). 2) An Umwelt is the public aspect (cf. the Innenwelt, the private aspect) of a phenomenal/experienced world that is organism-specific (rather than species-specific) and ultimately refers to an existential realm. 3) Existential universals at work on Earth include seeking out the edible, dwelling in a medium, holding a phenomenal world (possibly an Umwelt) and being endowed with life, and consequently being mortal. 4) Human Umwelten include speechless Umwelten, spoken Umwelten and alphabetic Umwelten. 5) An Uexküllian phenomenology-stating that semiotic states represent the general class to which all mental/cognitive states belong-can draw on the works of the phenomenologists David Abram and Ted Toadvine (The notion of semiotic states is treated in Tønnessen 2009a: 62-63. For an introduction to eco-phenomenology, see Brown and Toadvine (eds.) 2003). 6) A task for such a phenomenology is to portray the natural history of the phenomenal world. 7) An imperative task in our contemporary world of faltering biological diversity is that of Umwelt mapping, i.e. a mapping of ontological niches. 8) The ecological crisis is an ontological crisis with historical roots in humankind's domestication of animals and plants, which can be taken as archetypical for our attempted planet-scale taming of the wild. 9) The process of globalization is expressed by correlated trends of depletion of semiotic diversity and semiotic
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