List, In the online 'Semiotics Research Group', Cary Campbell posted this video of a lecture by Terrence Deacon at the University of Tartu.
The video of Terrence Deacon's (University of California, Berkeley) "The bridge from information theory to semiosis", 15.07.2019 available to see on UTTV at https://www.uttv.ee/naita?id=28688 <https://www.uttv.ee/naita?id=28688&fbclid=IwAR3gAqtFXExboW-r9Eosbt9HknhBp1cjME4NhEPE3XyqcgYal_o4x4xBRa0> Several years ago Gary Fuhrman and I considered discussing on Peirce-L Deacon's difficult but, in our opinion, critically important book, *Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter*. [image: image.png] We finally decided that it would probably prove too challenging to discuss it in an online forum (considering, for example, its length, and the difficulties posed by some of Deacon's neologisms, terms necessary to characterize several concepts he introduces in the book necessary to set forth his argument). So while the book is deeply informed by Peircean semeiotics (as was his earlier book, *The Symbolic Species*), we dropped the idea of an online discussion, concluding that it would probably be of interest only to a very few here, such as those grounded in certain facets of information and systems theory in its relation to biosemiotics. The video offers, among other things, an excellent introduction to *Incomplete Nature*. Here is an excerpt from a review of it in *The New York Review of Books*: Terrence W. Deacon approaches these questions [such as the origin of life] with the apparatus of dynamic systems theory, which describes the operations of complex systems that are autonomous, self-maintaining, stable over time, and resistant to the tendency toward disorder called entropy. The model of such systems, at a primitive level, is the biological cell, which makes up further more complex dynamic systems such as organs and whole organisms. The cell maintains its integrity over time by means of an enclosing membrane that is selectively permeable, letting in only such molecules as will serve its self-preserving needs: performing basic metabolism and expelling waste products. It is a self-organizing unit (unlike a humanly constructed machine) that admits of teleological description—it has goals toward which its activities tend—and that contains the essential ingredients of life. One of its central capacities is counteracting the effects of the second law of thermodynamics: it creates order and resists chaos. https://www.nybooks.com/articles/2012/06/07/can-anything-emerge-nothing/ Best, Gary *Gary Richmond* *Philosophy and Critical Thinking* *Communication Studies* *LaGuardia College of the City University of New York*
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