In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions of biosemiotics.

Biosemiotics is a growing fi eld that investigates semiotic processes in the living realm in an attempt to combine the fi ndings of the biological sciences and semiotics. Semiotic processes are more or less what biologists have typically referred to as “ signals, ” “ codes, ”and “ information processing ”in biosystems, but these processes are here understood under the more general notion of semiosis, that is, the production, action, and interpretation of signs. Thus, biosemiotics can be seen as biology (...) interpreted as a study of living sign systems — which also means that semiosis or sign process can be seen as the very nature of life itself. In other words, biosemiotics is a field of research investigating semiotic processes (meaning, signification, communication, and habit formation in living systems) and the physicochemical preconditions for sign action and interpretation. -/- (...). (shrink)

The paper examines the main trends in the search for a theory of general biology throughout the 20th century — the physicalization on one hand, and the semiotization on the other. These two approaches had their predecessors and were formed already in the 19th century biology, as Darwinian and Baerian biology. In theoretical biology, there are co-existing (however, asymmetrical) trends toward specifying solutions and generalizing axioms. The inclusion of the biological organism as a subject into biological theory requires an analysis (...) of the concept of scientific fact. A cross-disciplinary typology of facts on the basis of their invariant features is provided. The main periods of development of theoretical biology are briefly characterised, and the trend towards the theory of biological communication and meaning outlined. (shrink)