Integrated biological individualism and the primacy of the individual level of biological organization
Morten Tønnessen, Department of Semiotics – University of Tartu
In ‘Umwelt Transitions: Uexküll and Environmental Change’ (Biosemiotics 2.2) I introduced the notion of integrated biological individualism, according to which the individual, or more precisely organismic, level should occupy the centre—the middle ground—of methodology in the life sciences, at the crossroad where the somatic realm encounters the ecological one. The term was then included in a broader programmatic treatment in ‘Steps to a Semiotics of Being’ (Biosemiotics 3.3). From the standpoint of the individual, or organism, we can describe how an individual organism is constituted as a biological body, as well as how nature as a global ecological system is constituted by individual organisms and their interrelations. Nature, then, is a body of bodies (the ultimate superorganism); and any individual self is by its nature a social self – through its interrelation with others, a self is always bigger than itself.
In this paper I will expand upon the notion of integrated biological individualism by relating it more explicitly to the suggested primacy of the individual level of biological organization. As Anton Markoš remarks (Readers of the Book of Life: Contextualizing Developmental Evolutionary Biology (2002): 29), life “proceeds synchronously on innumerable space, time, and organizational levels. Nothing on any single level can reveal its essence”. Yet, it remains that a biological science with no concern for, or interest in, the living themselves (qua living beings – at the level of the individual) would be deeply problematic. There is no doubt that the ‘genetic turn’ in biology has been successful in terms of scientific understanding, but the new microscopic realm that has opened up to us has simultaneously induced us to neglect the ‘life-size’ realm. What future can we envision for the critical task of Umwelt mapping?
After a general introduction to this topic matter I will introduce an original, tentatively all-inclusive model of various levels of biosemiosis. According to this model there are six levels of biosemiosis, falling under three broader categories.
CATEGORIES // PRIMARY REALM // PRIMARY FIELD OF SEMIOTICS OF NATURE
SUB-PERCEPTUAL SEMIOSIS = MICROSCOPIC SEMIOSIS // Somatic // Biosemiotics
Intra-cellular semiosis
Inter-cellular semiosis
PERCEPTUAL SEMIOSIS = ORGANISMIC SEMIOSIS // Social // Zoosemiotics
Intra-organismic semiosis
Inter-organismic semiosis*
Extra-organismic semiosis
SUPER-PERCEPTUAL SEMIOSIS = MACROSCOPIC SEMIOSIS // Ecological // Ecosemiotics
Super-organismic semiosis*
* social proper, in the sense of involving several individuals
The tripartite model is relevant for simple and complex life forms alike (though in the case of very simple – non-social – creatures it collapses into a two-category model). As it demonstrates, perception is at the core of biosemiosis, even though not all biosemiosis is perceptual, and even though perception constitutes but one level (or layer) of biosemiosis. The standing of perception is intimately tied to the standing of the individual. With such an overall model of biosemiosis, the individual organism (and its lifeworld) is methodologically placed at the center of biological research.
Perception and the levels of biosemiosisMorten Tønnessen, Department of Semiotics – University of Tartu
This paper will dwell on the presentation of an original, tentatively all-inclusive model of various levels of biosemiosis, aiming at a treatment first and foremost of perception. According to this model there are six levels of biosemiosis, falling under three broader categories.
CATEGORIES // PRIMARY REALM
SUB-PERCEPTUAL (MICROSCOPIC) SEMIOSIS // Somatic
Intra-cellular semiosis
Inter-cellular semiosis
PERCEPTUAL (INDIVIDUAL) SEMIOSIS // Social
Intra-organismic semiosis
Inter-organismic semiosis*
Extra-organismic semiosis
SUPER-PERCEPTUAL (MACROSCOPIC) SEMIOSIS // Ecological
Super-organismic semiosis*
* social proper, in the sense of involving several individuals
The tripartite model is relevant for simple and complex life forms alike (though in the case of very simple – non-social – creatures it collapses into a two-category model). As it demonstrates, perception is at the core of biosemiosis, even though not all biosemiosis is perceptual, and even though perception is but one level (or layer) of biosemiosis. The standing of perception is tied to the standing of the individual. With such a model of biosemiosis, the individual organism (and its lifeworld) is methodologically placed at the center of biological research.
Such a perception-oriented model of biosemiosis has implications for cultural studies as well. Applied on humans, it evokes a perspective in which the human mind, or soul – as Plato and Aristotle would have it, but in a radically different sense – partakes in three realms. Perceptual semiosis (which is ‘social’ in the primal sense of being related to the active navigating of an individual) is grounded in somatic semiosis, and interacting with a yet higher (more complex) level, namely that of superorganisms – e.g., society, or an animal population. It is on this highest, more-than-individual level that society’s often indiscernible yet absolutely principal influence on how individual members of society carry out their lives is to be located.
According to the abovementioned tripartite model of the levels of biosemiosis, cells and organisms (individuals, where applicable) are the primary substances of the biological world, though there are also larger wholes. It may perhaps shed new light on the notions of endosemiosis and exosemiosis, which is usually conceived of as semiosis that is internal and external to the body respectively. In our tripartite model, the boundary between ‘the outer’ and ‘the inner’ is in flux depending on the level of biosemiosis considered. It is thus possible to argue that endo- and exo-semiosis occurs both at the somatic level and the social level, and that in a global ecological perspective all semiosis is ultimately endosemiosis.
This comprehensive model will be supplemented by a simple model of the interrelations of the sign-relation phenomena of signification, communication and representation in a conceptualized Umwelt. Depending on whether the dominant cognitive processing (if dominated it be) is of a significational, communicational or representational nature, some people will perceive in a way that is dominantly based on immediate (unmediated) perception, social perception (included herein extremist autocommunicative perception) or symbolic perception – though most well-functioning individuals are more balanced.
In this issue I have co-edited 136 pages, written 27 pages on my own and co-written 5 pages (altogether taken part in the writing of 32 pages).257-261 Kati LINDSTRÖM and Morten TØNNESSEN: Introduction to the Special Issue Semiotics of Perception: Being in the World of the Living - Semiotic Perspectives
263-275 David ABRAM: The Discourse of the Birds
277-287 Wendy WHEELER: Delectable Creatures and the Fundamental Reality of Metaphor: Biosemiotics and Animal Mind
289-297 Morten TØNNESSEN: Wolf Land
299-313 Renata SÕUKAND and Raivo KALLE: Plant as Object within Herbal Landscape: Different Kinds of Perception
315-329 Timo MARAN: Why Was Thomas A. Sebeok Not a Cognitive Ethologist? From "Animal Mind" to "Semiotic Self"
331-345 Ane FAUGSTAD AARØ: Merleau-Ponty's Concept of Nature and the Ontology of Flesh
347-357 Kalevi KULL: Ecosystems are Made of Semiosic Bonds: Consortia, Umwelten, Biophony and Ecological Codes
359-373 Kati LINDSTRÖM: Autocommunication and Perceptual Markers in Landscape: Japanese Examples
375-393 Morten TØNNESSEN: Steps to a Semiotics of Being
Minding Animals International is proud to announce that several events are being planned before the next Minding Animals Conference.Events are at various stages of development, and workshops, lectures, exhibitions or seminars in at least Abu Dhabi, Brisbane, Cape Town, Christchurch, Delhi, London (x2), New York, Oslo, Rennes, San Francisco, Sydney (x2), Wollongong, Uppsala and Utrecht, are now being considered.
The First Pre-conference Event is an expert meeting scheduled for Utrecht on 29 and 30 November, 2010, followed by a Second Event in Sydney on 3 December, 2010, a public lecture by Professor Marc Bekoff.
Morten Tønnessen 2010. Når villdyret overvåkes. Ny Tid no. 39 2010 (November 5-11), p32-34.Note that I have listed three corrections (one is rather a precisation) in my Norwegian language blog Utopisk Realisme, concerning the use of ear-tags/chips in management, the practice of captures, and a statement by the major of Rendalen.
