Peirce and Biosemiotics

BiosemioticsVoLUme 11

Series Editors Marcello Barbieri Professor of Embryology University of Ferrara, Italy President Italian Association for Theoretical Biology Editor-in-Chief Biosemiotics

Jesper Hoffmeyer Associate Professor in Biochemistry University of Copenhagen President International Society for Biosemiotic Studies Aims and Scope of the Series

Aims and Scope of the Series combining research approaches from biology, philosophy and linguistics, the emerging field of biose-miotics proposes that animals, plants and single cells all engage insemiosis—the conversion of physical signals into conventional signs. this has important implications and applications for issues ranging from natural selection to animal behaviour and human psychology, leaving biosemiotics at the cutting edge of the research on the fundamentals of life.

the springer book series Biosemiotics draws together contributions from leading players in inter-national biosemiotics, producing an unparalleled series that will appeal to all those interested in the ori-gins and evolution of life, including molecular and evolutionary biologists, ecologists, anthropologists, psychologists, philosophers and historians of science, linguists, semioticians and researchers in artificial life, information theory and communication technology.

For further volumes:http://www.springer.com/series/7710

Vinicius Romanini • Eliseo Fernándezeditors

Peirce and Biosemiotics

A Guess at the Riddle of Life

1 3

issN 1875-4651 issN 1875-466X (electronic)isBN 978-94-007-7731-6 isBN 978-94-007-7732-3 (eBook)Doi 10.1007/978-94-007-7732-3springer Dordrecht Heidelberg New York London

Library of congress control Number: 2014932414

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Editors Vinicius Romaniniescola de comunicações e ArtesUniversity of são Paulo são Paulosão PauloBrazil

Eliseo FernándezLinda Hall Library of science

and technologyKansas citymissouri UsA

v

Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................ 1Vinicius Romanini and Eliseo Fernández

2 The Intelligible Universe ........................................................................... 9Nathan Houser

3 The Continuity of Life: On Peirce’s Objective Idealism ........................ 33ivo A. ibri

4 Peircean Semiotic Indeterminacy and Its Relevance for Biosemiotics .......................................................................................... 51Robert Lane

5 Peircean Habits, Broken Symmetries, and Biosemiotics ........................ 79Eliseo Fernández

6 Semeiotic Causation and the Breath of Life ............................................ 95menno Hulswit and Vinicius Romanini

7 The Ineffable, the Individual, and the Intelligible: Peircean Reflections on the Innate Ingenuity of the Human Animal .................... 127Vincent colapietro

8 Instinct and Abduction in the Peircean Informational Perspective: Contributions to Biosemiotics ............................................. 151Lauro Frederico Barbosa da silveira and Maria Eunice Quilici Gonzalez

9 The Life of Symbols and Other Legisigns: More than a Mere Metaphor? ..................................................................................... 171Winfried Nöth

vi contents

10 Signs Without Minds ................................................................................. 183John collier

11 Dicent Symbols and Proto-propositions in Biological Mimicry ............. 199João Queiroz, Frederik Stjernfelt and Charbel Niño El-Hani

12 Semeiosis as a Living Process .................................................................... 215Vinicius Romanini

Bibliography ..................................................................................................... 241

Index .................................................................................................................. 243

vii

Contributors

Vincent Colapietro Pennsylvania state University, University Park, UsA

John Collier University of Kwazulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa

Eliseo Fernández Linda Hall Library of science and technology, Kansas city, UsA

Maria Eunice Quilici Gonzalez São Paulo State University, Marilia, Brazil

Charbel Niño El-Hani Federal University of Bahia, Salvador, Brazil

Nathan Houser indiana University, indianapolis, UsA

Menno Hulswit Radboud University, Nijmegen, the Netherlands

Ivo Assad Ibri Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Robert Lane University of West Georgia, carollton, Georgia, UsA

Winfried Nöth Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC), São Paulo, Brazil

João Queiroz Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Juiz de Fora, Brazil

Vinicius Romanini University of São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil

Frederik Stjernfelt University of Aarhus, Aarhus, Denmark

Lauro Frederico Barbosa da Silveira São Paulo State University, Marilia, Brazil

ix

About the Authors

Charbel N. El-Hani is associate professor at the institute of Biology, Federal University of Bahia, Brazil, where he coordinates the History, Philosophy, and Biology teaching Lab. He received his Bs c in Biology from Federal University of Bahia, and his PhD in education from University of são Paulo. He is currently the Book Review editor of Science & Education. His areas of research are: science education research, Philosophy of Biology, and evolutionary Biology.

Eliseo Fernández was born and educated in Argentina. He works at the Linda Hall Library of science and technology as a scientific consultant and taught at the University of missouri at Kansas city for 18 years at the Physics Department. He has lectured and published papers and reviews on topics in the philosophy and history of science and on the thought of c. s. Peirce. His current research focuses on the application of some ideas of Peirce to current philosophical problems in physics and biosemiotics.

Frederik Stjernfelt is Professor, Ph.D. at the center for semiotics, Aarhus University, Denmark. member of the Royal Danish Academy of sciences and Letters. Pi of the research projects “Joint Diagrammatical Reasoning in Language” and “Humanomics”. Recent books: Diagrammatology. An Investigation on the Borderlines of Phenomenology, Ontology, and Semiotics (2007), Semiotics. Critical Concepts i-iV (ed. with P. Bundgaard, 2010), The Democratic Contradictions of Multiculturalism (with J.m.eriksen 2012).

Ivo Assad Ibri is full professor of philosophy at the Pontifical catholic University of São Paulo (PUCSP), Brazil. He is the founder and director of the Center for Pragmatism studies of PUcsP and editor of Cognitio – Journal of Philosophy. His main research interest is American pragmatism, especially the work of charles Peirce, as well its connections with German idealism. He published several essays on pragmatism and a book on Peirce’s metaphysics titled Kósmos Noétos. He is researcher of the Brazilian agency CNPq (National Counsel of Technological and scientific Development) and member of the board of consultants of the Peirce edition Project at indiana University.

x About the Authors

Joao Queiroz (www.semiotics.pro.br) is a professor at the institute of Arts and Design, Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil. Queiroz earned a Ph.D. in communication and semiotics from the catholic University of são Paulo (PUc-sP), and received a post-doctoral fellowship in intelligent systems at the school of electrical and computer engineering (Feec-DcA), state University of campinas (UNicAmP). His research interests include: Peircean semiotics, Biosemiotics and Cognitive Science, as well as South-American and Brazilian literature.

John Collier was educated at mit, UcLA and Western ontario in Philosophy and Philosophy of science. He started studying Peirce on his own as an undergraduate. His dissertation was on theory change, but it was strongly influenced by Peircean thought, especially the Pragmatic maxim and pragmatics in general. He has worked on five continents and is glad there are no universities in Antarctica. For the past ten years he has been at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, south Africa. His current work is on complex organization in Biology, most recently ecology at the Federal University of Bahia in Salvador, Brazil, where he is visiting.

Lauro Frederico Barbosa da Silveira, doctor in Philosophy by the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Brazil. Professor at the Graduate Program of Philosophy of the state University of são Paulo (UNesP) campus of marilia, sP. Honorary member of the Psychoanalytic Nucleus of marilia and Region. Associate to the charles s. Peirce society, UsA. member of the Research Group on cognitive Studies, Marilia and of the Self-organization Group at the Center of Logic and epistemology (cLe),Unicamp, campinas , sP. Author of curso de semiótica Geral and of several articles on Philosophy and semiotics.

Maria Eunice Q. Gonzalez has a Bsc in Physics (1977), and an msc in Logic and Philosophy of science (1984). Her PhD thesis “A cognitive approach to visual perception” was completed in 1989 at the University of essex, UK. she is a founder member of the Brazilian Society for Cognitive Science, and the Research Group on cognitive studies at UNesP, and member of the cLe research group on self-organization at UNICAMP, and the Ecological Psychology Society. She is a Latin American representative of the international complex systems society.

Menno Hulswit teaches philosophy at Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) and biology and science at Arentheem college; he completed his PhD in philosophy at Radboud University in 1998. His research interests include process philosophy and pragmatism, especially the philosophy of c.s. Peirce, and most specifically, the concept of causation. He is the author of From cause to causation. A Peircean Perspective (Philosophical studies series 90, Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), and co-editor of Living Doubt: essays concerning the epistemology of charles sanders Peirce (Dordrecht, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994). He has written a number of articles on the concept of causation.

Nathan Houser is Professor emeritus of Philosophy at indiana University in indianapolis (iUPUi) and President of the Peirce Foundation. He has served as Director of the Peirce edition Project and the institute for American thought and as

xiAbout the Authors

President of the charles s. Peirce society and the semiotic society of America. From 1993 to 2009 he was General editor for the indianapolis critical edition of Peirce’s writings and he co-edited the two-volume Essential Peirce and Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce. He is the author of many articles on Peirce including “the scent of truth” (2005); “Peirce in the 21st century” (2005), “Peirce’s contrite Fallibilism” (2006), “Peirce as a sign of Himself” (2009), “Peirce, Phenomenology, and semiotics” (2009), and “signs and survival” (2013).

Robert Lane is Professor of Philosophy at the University of West Georgia. He is editor (for Peirce submissions) of the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society and associate editor of the textbook Pragmatism, Old and New (ed. susan Haack). His work has appeared in the Journal of the History of Philosophy, History of Philosophy Quarterly, Contemporary Pragmatism, Cognitio, Bioethics and other journals.

Vincent Colapietro is Liberal Arts Research Professor of Philosophy at the Pennsylvania state University (University Park campus). one of his main areas of historical specialization is American pragmatism, with special attention to Charles Peirce, while one of his principal foci of theoretical research is semiotics. Recently he has become increasingly interested in sketching a convincing portrait of the human animal, a portrait at once informed by evolutionary theory and attentive to the definitive abilities of human agents. in conjunction with this interest, he is drawn to a number of perspectives or traditions (phenomenology, hermeneutics, and psychoanalysis in addition to pragmatism).

Vinicius Romanini (www.minutesemeiotic.org), Ph.D., is Professor of communication studies at the school of communications and Arts, University of Sao Paulo (USP), Brazil. His research interest is focused on the development of Peirce´s semeiotic into a transdisciplinary theory of communication. He is the scientific editor of Semeiosis – Transdisciplinary Journal of Semiotics, member of the CLE research group on self-organization at UNICAMP, and of the International Advisory committee (iAc) for the Peirce society.

Winfried Nöth is Professor of cognitive semiotics at the catholic University of são Paulo. Until 2009, he was Professor of Linguistics and semiotics and Director of the interdisciplinary center for cultural studies at the University of Kassel. Nöth is an honorary member of the int. Ass. for Visual semiotics and the former President of the German Ass. for semiotic studies. Nöth’s more than 300 articles and 31 authored or edited books (such as: Handbook of semiotics, self-Reference in the media) are on cognitive semiotics, linguistics, literature, media, images, maps, systems theory, culture, evolution, and charles s. Peirce.

xiii

Abbreviations of Peirce’s Works

cN Peirce’s contributions to the Nation, 4 parts, eds. Kenneth L. Ketner and James e. cook. Lubbock: texas tech Press, 1975–1988. References use CN followed by volume and page numbers.

cP Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. edited by c. Hartshorne, P. Weiss (volumes 1–6) and A. Burks (volumes 7–8). cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1931–1958. References appear as CP followed by vol-ume and paragraph numbers.

eP Essential Peirce. Selected Philosophical Writings. Vols. 1–2, various edi-tors at the Peirce edition Project. indiana University Press, 1992 an 1998. References appear as eP followed by volume and page numbers.

HP Historical Perspectives on Peirce’s Philosophy of science. carolyn eisele, ed. New York: mouton, 1985.

ms charles sanders Peirce manuscripts in Houghton Library at Harvard Uni-versity—usually followed by catalogue number and sheet number.

Nem The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce. edited by caro-lyn eisele, 4 volumes in 5 books. the Hague: mouton, 1976. References appear as NEM followed by volume and page numbers.

RLt Reasoning and the Logic of Things. The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898 by Charles Sanders Peirce. edity by Kenneth Laine Ketner, with an introduction by Kenneth Laine Ketner and Hilary Putnam. cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992. References appear as RLt followed by page numbers.

R Peirce’s manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as cata-loged in Richard Robin, Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce, Amherst, mA: University of massachusetts Press, 1967, and in Rich-ard Robin, “the Peirce Papers: A supplementary catalogue,” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 7 (1), 1971, 37–57. these manuscripts are available in a microfilm edition, The Charles S. Peirce Papers, produced by Harvard University Library. except where otherwise noted, references are by Robin’s manuscript number and, when available, page number.

ss semiotic and significs: the correspondence between charles s. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby. edited by charles Hardwick. Bloomington: indi-ana University Press, 1977.

W Writings of chalres s. Peirce: A chronological editon. edited by max H. Fisch and others. Bloomington University Press, 1982. References use vol-ume and page numbers after W.

Abbreviations of Peirce’s Worksxiv