Dear Stan, lists - As you know, I'd like to see some results here before I shall be convinced. I tend to think - a bit in the vein of Stuart Kauffman - that semiotics only arises when you have stable, autokatalytic cycles in an environment of organic molecules, as a sort of proto-metabolism - this circular structure is what defines (local) teleology and signs (of course, the root of this argument is the second half of Kant's third critique claiming life forms loops on the causal chain ...). Proto-metabolism defines life - the continuation of metabolism - versus its termination, and the existence of metabolism makes it possible for it to recruit new compounds and new chemical sub-cycles as "subcontractors" to the process … Best F
Den 13/09/2014 kl. 16.21 skrev Stanley N Salthe <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> : Frederick -- I take your point regarding physics per se as being semiotic only in a trivial sense -- that is, in a sense mot needed in order to utilize effectively physical knowledge for our cultural purposes. However, I point out that the problem of the origin of life throws a bridge over the gap between physico-chemistry and living cells. Some of us think that semiotics may be a fruitful way to think about the so-far intractable problem of the origin of life. It is in that context that physiosemiosis becomes of potentially great interest. STAN
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