Cited in Denis Noble´s Target Article "The illusions of the Modern Synthesis"; commentary to follow

The first Target Article of Biosemiotics has been published. It is written by Denis Noble, Emeritus Professor of Cardiovascular Physiology, Oxford University, and titled "The illusions of the Modern Synthesis".

Noble cites three of my articles: 

Tønnessen, M. (2010). Wolf land. Biosemiotics, 3, 289–297. 

Tønnessen, M. (2015a). The biosemiotic glossary project: Agent, agency. Biosemiotics, 8, 125–143. 

Tønnessen, M. (2015b). Umwelt and language. In Velmezova, E., Kull, K., Cowley, S.J. (Eds) Biosemiotic Perspectives on Language and Linguistics. Springer. Pp. 77–96.

Excerpts:

I

"I think Darwin was right and was brilliantly foresighted to resist Wallace’s attempt to subsume intentional sexual (and by implication other forms of social) selection to natural selection. Brilliant because I think he must have been aware of the importance of the distinction he was making. He did not use the word agency, but I think he would have agreed with biosemioticians that the concept is necessary to understand the meanings organisms give to the signs and communicative paradigms they use (Tønnessen 2015a)."

II

"If we follow Ginsburg and Jablonka’s (2019) arguments for attributing conscious action to many other organisms capable of unlimited associative learning, then those organisms must also be capable of intended or unintended illusions. I am assuming here, of course, that conscious meaning is a prerequisite of the creation of illusions. I think that biosemiotics could make valuable contributions to this issue. As an example, through understanding the perspective (the Umwelt) of an animal like the wolf (Tønnessen 2010) we may come to understand its possible use of illusory behavior in predator-prey interactions and in signaling within social networks. Organisms capable of anticipatory behavior surely must use such tactics in successful hunting, just as conscious prey must do so to avoid them. I suspect that this must be what Tønnessen has in mind when he refers to “the naïvety of prey”. They become less naïve precisely through developing anticipation of the diversionary signs from predators.

Of course, I am not suggesting that all illusory signs in organisms are intended. ..."

III

"Tønnessen (2015b) has also addressed the application of Umwelt theory to human language in which he argues that “language is not external to Umwelt, but internal to it. Language changes the human Umwelt not by escaping or sidelining it, but by fundamentally transforming it.” This gets to the core of what I think happened in the development of the illusions of the Modern Synthesis between 1940 and the end of the last century. Language was crafted in creating a coherent model of how organisms work and how they depend on and interact with their environment. In a biosemiotic context we could call it the Umwelt, the mind-set on the nature of the environment-organism interaction, of the Modern Synthesis."

Noble´s article is Open Access and can be read and downloaded here on the homepage of the journal.

Commentaries to the Target Article are soon to be published, including one written by me.