Tales of semiotic freedom
Óscar Miyamoto
Do we have the means to clearly explain biosemiotics to the general public? Reaching broader audiences is not only feasible, but also a responsible step if biosemiotics aims at changing the classic way biology is understood in other disciplines. We are, though, a long way from conveying our terminology in accessible and timely ways outside of our own academic journals.
Interestingly, central biosemiotic topics have been already raised in serious media outlets. Take for instance Aeon Magazine’s mention of Jesper Hoffmeyer’s concept of scaffolding in the context of biodiversity; and Jakob von Uexküll’s concept of umwelt to explain the origin of cognition. On a similar note, Quanta has covered slime mould’s habituation, and Real Science has reported sperm whales’ arbitrary codes, even if they do not necessarily label those topics as ‘mycosemiotics’ or ‘zoosemiotics’, respectively. These evidence-based narratives show that scientific accuracy and impactful storytelling can go hand in hand.
The potential to purposefully apply biosemiotics in everyday scientific literacy is yet to be discovered. I argue that biosemiotics has such a responsibility, specifically when it comes to clarifying some of the most amazing and puzzling natural phenomena, such as abiogenesis, convergent evolution, and mind: the ‘bread and butter’ of our field.
My presentation will show an example of how such ‘biosemiotic storytelling’ could look like. More concretely, I will tell a story about umwelt phenomenology based on the concept of “semiotic freedom” (Hoffmeyer 1996: 61). Not being the typical scholarly talk, my tale will start as follows: “In the murky waters of a Tanzanian creek, a platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) is looking for lunch. “Umberto” closes his eyes and nostrils, letting the tickling sensations in his bill guide his scanning movements. The Australian monotreme relies on a multimodal coupling of 100 thousand electroreceptors and mechanoreceptors located on his bill skin. This underwater ‘sixth sense’ provides Umberto with tridimensional coordinates of his invertebrate snacks, even when he cannot see them.
Umberto’s electroceptive ‘scanner’ does something far more complex than ‘encoding’ the position of submerged insects and crayfish. It relies on Umberto’s ability to pertinently interpret surplus of meaning. On the one hand, Umberto’s bill makes an abbreviation or sampling of some relevant aspects of the environment. And, on the other, Umberto’s wits have a productive reference inasmuch they enhance the vividness of his sentience, augmenting his experiential Umwelt, “the phenomenal world or the self-world of the animal” (Uexküll 1992: 319).
In Tartu, Estonia, a suspicious hooded crow (Corvus cornix) is hiding caches inside her secret pantries and fridges. “Nicola” will episodically remember the expiration date and exact location of each buried snack, anticipating which items to retrieve first (e.g. fast-decaying worms), and which items to retrieve later (e.g. mussels and hazelnuts). Nicola’s theftproof food-storing techniques developed within a social game of deception and theory of mind. Umberto, Thomas and Nicola are eye-opening examples of the intrinsic biosemiotic value of life: interpretative freedom. In the words of Jesper (Homo sapiens): “the most pronounced feature of organic evolution is not the creation of a multiplicity of amazing morphological structures, but the general expansion of ‘semiotic freedom’, that is to say the increase in richness or ‘depth’ of meaning that can be communicated” (Hoffmeyer 1996: 61). [to be continued]
References
Hoffmeyer, J. (1996). Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
Sebeok, T.A. (1991). A Sign is Just a Sign. Bloomington: Indiana UP.
Uexküll, J. v. (1992) [1934]. A stroll through the world of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica 89(4), 319-391.