Language Metaphors of Life

Abstract

We discuss the difference between formal and natural languages, and argue that should the language metaphor have any foundation, it's analogy with natural languages that should be taken into account. We discuss how such operation like reading, writing, sign, interpretation, etc., can be applied in the realm of the living and what can be gained, by such an approach, in order to understand the phenomenon of life.

Productive perils: on metaphor as a theory-building device

“…This process is more like changing to a different car model than switching gears, as it implies using familiar language in a different way. This seems to be the point made by Markoš and Faltýnek [25] when they differentiate between formal and natural languages as applied to descriptions of biological phenomena, implying that the sense of one does not correlate with the implications of the other. Interestingly, the adoption of such metaphors, according to Boyd ([2], p. 482), usually works as 'a sort of catachresis -that is, they are used to introduce theoretical terminology where none previously existed', though their aptness is, again, partly derived from contextual needs.…”

“…Linguistic metaphors in biology are a recurrent topic in biosemiotics [24,25] and, at the same time, they pave the way for a more in-depth discussion on what can be applied from the semiotic theory to biological systems. Linguistic metaphors are tricky in that they provide a large range of potential applications, from talking animals to genetic codes.…”

Wide coding: Tetris, Morse and, perhaps, language

“…Application of code metaphors to living systems drew, first, on computation and, second, on a view of language. Roman Jakobson's use of linguistic metaphors to describe DNA strings has been traced to discussion between renowned scientists on French television (see, Markoš & Faltýnek, 2011). After François Jacob endorsed the metaphor (see Jacob et al, 1968), many unthinkingly accepted that molecular processes are reducible to genetically encoded information.…”

A more developed sign: interpreting the work of Jesper Hoffmeyer

“…1 I have struggled with the paper written by Hoffmeyer and Emmeche that is quoted above many times since I first discovered it in the late 1990s; and for many years, I could not understand what I find disappointing about the idea. My answer today (Markoš et al 2009, Markoš, Faltýnek 2011 is that nothing in this word can exist in a purely digital form: 'digitality' resides only in the virtual world of 'objective' reality that is exclusively of our making (Deely 2009) it is only there that we find numbers, alphabets, syllogisms and terms, clare et distincte. Only there can the coding and the copying be absolute, invariant, and error-proof.…”