Abstract "Nosology and semiotics" submitted to NASS XIII organizers and approved

On December 23rd 2023 I submitted the abstract below to the organizers of NASS XIII. I was notified Debruary 7th that the abstract had been approved.

Abstract for NASS XIII, Feeling – Skill – Knowledge, Helsinki, Finland, 7–9 June 2023   

Author: Tønnessen, Morten 

Affiliation: Department of social studies, University of Stavanger, Norway 

Email address: ***@uis.no 

Title of the paper: Nosology and Semiotics   

ABSTRACT 

Semiotic concepts such as ‘sign’ and ‘symptom’ have been applied in medicine ever since ancient Greece. Medicine relates to biological phenomena. On this background, a biosemiotic perspective on medicine may be relevant and informative. Semiotic perspectives are perhaps particularly pertinent in Nosology, the theory or study of diseases, or more specifically “the scientific study and classification of diseases and disorders, both mental and physical” (APA dictionary of psychology 2021), especially regarding the recognition of diseases. Nosology is related to the concept of diagnosis and the practice of diagnostics, where making a diagnosis often, and historically, typically, entails recognizing a disease or condition by its signs and symptoms.  This presentation draws on a forthcoming book chapter (Tønnessen, forthcoming), “Nosology and Semiotics”, which provides an overview of key works in semiotics on the study of medicine in general and nosology in particular. It presents a biosemiotic perspective on human health, starting with the ‘Umwelt’, the organism´s subjectively experienced lifeworld, and ending with ‘endosemiosis’, the sign processes that are internal to the body and relate to somatic phenomena. The chapter contributes to biosemiotic medicine by commenting on how such an approach can be understood as process-based medicine, the way in which it can bridge human and animal health studies, and how it can be understood as involving a conception of the human being as a system of interrelated sign systems. It concludes by making remarks on how organ crosstalk – “the complex and mutual biological communication between distant organs mediated by signaling factors” (Armutcu 2019) – can be understood within a biosemiotic framework.  

REFERENCES 

— APA dictionary of psychology (2021). Nosology. American Psychological Association. https://dictionary.apa.org/nosology  

— Armutcu, F. (2019). Organ crosstalk: The potent roles of inflammation and fibrotic changes in the course of organ interactions. Inflammation Res. 68: 825–839. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00011-019-01271-7  

— Tønnessen, forthcoming. Nosology and Semiotics. Chapter in Carlo Guido Musso & Adrian Covic (eds.), Organ Crosstalk in Acute Kidney Injury: Basic Concepts and Clinical Practices. Springer Nature.   

KEYWORDS Endosemiosis, Umwelt, biosemiotic medicine, One Health, nosology   

BIONOTE  Morten Tønnessen (born 1976) is Professor of philosophy at University of Stavanger, Norway. He obtained his ph.d. at University of Tartu´s Department of semiotics in 2011, with the thesis “Umwelt Transition and Uexküllian Phenomenology. An Ecosemiotic Analysis of Norwegian Wolf Management”. Tønnessen was an Editor-in-Chief of Biosemiotics 2013–2020. He was the Secretary of the Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (NASS) 2011–2017 and has been the President of NASS in the period 2017–2023. He is co-author, with Alexei Sharov, of the monograph Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism (Springer Nature 2021).