0324 The text before me is chapter ten in Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe (2024, edited by Alexei Sharov and George E. Mikhailovsky, pages 217-243).  The author hails from the Evolutionary Bioinformatics Laboratory at the Department of Crop Sciences and Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology, at the University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois, USA.  The author and editors have permission to use and reprint this commentary.

From prior examinations, I propose that Alexei Sharov’s and Morten Tonnessen’s 2021 book, Semiotic Agency, formulates a noumenal overlay for the diverse field of biosemiotics.  All manifestations of semiotic agency are unique.  Each is a subject of inquiry on its own.  Yet, they have one relational structure in common.  Here is a picture of that dyadic actuality.

0325 Biosemiotics is not divorced from science.  Scientists observe and measure phenomena, then build models based on those observations and measurements.  The real elements in the above figure support phenomena.  The contiguities (in brackets) call for models.

0326 So, what about communication mediated by biomolecules?

0327 In the introduction (section 10.1), the author reminds the reader of two premodern views of biological behaviorsand how they change over time.  One is the force of life (in French, le pouvoir de vie), which tends to increase complexity.  The other is the influence of circumstances (in French, l’influence des circonstances), which tends to select for… um… survivors.

These premodern views fit nicely into the contiguities in the above relational structure.  Each dyad can be compared to Aristotle’s hylomorphe of matter [substance] form, allowing the following comparison.

0328 The force of life tends towards the many.

The influence of circumstances tends toward the few.. or rather… one goal.

Surely, my assignments are confusing, because the force of life is singular and circumstances tend to vary.  Also, real initiating events can vary.  But, goals tend to rule out alternatives.

0329 The author then draws upon a recently translated papyrus scroll, attributed to Empedocles.  Empedocles speaks of two opposing forces, one capable of growing things together from the many and one capable of growing things apart.  The former is labeled, “love”, the latter, “strife”.

0330 I wonder, “How does this ancient distinction fit into the schema pictured above?”

Here is my suggestion.

I have a 50:50 chance of being correct.

0331 Strife goes with the force of life, tending towards the many.  Love goes with the influence of circumstances and tends towards a singular goal.

Both are substances and reflect (however distantly) Aristotle’s exemplar: matter [substance] form.

In the above figure, the real initiating event is like an form that conjures matter (information). At the same time, that matter (information) substantiates another form (goal).  This conjured matter (information [love]goal) encompasses the presence that accounts for semiotic agency as a thing.  

0332 What does that imply?

As [strife] acquires information, [love] moves closer to its goal. 

0388 I conclude this examination of Gustavo Caetano-Anolles’ chapter with a brief discussion on the third item appearing in section 10.3, titled, “Communication”.

0389 The first item that the author mentions is Peirce’s tradition of inquiry.  Peirce’s three categories offer a variety of ways to portray triadic relations.

Biosemiotics is all about triadic relations.  This examination has shown that secondness tends to associate to phenomena.  Thirdness and firstness tends to associate to what models need to explain.

0390 The second item that the author mentions is Shannon’s information theory.

I wonder about the implications of the virtual nested form in the realm of secondness that Shannon’s information theory generates.

What if the associations are more than mere analogy?

What if my neighbor, getting that new-fangled lumber treatment and all, is not sending me a message through a channel_2b that conducts wood-eating insects that are not happy, and frankly, fed up with the wooden food-fare that my neighbor’s shed now offers?

How weird and disturbing is that?

0391 The third item that the author mentions is Chomsky’s hierarchy of formal languages.  Formal language consists of operations within a finite symbolic order.

0392 Finite symbolic order?

Think of how Charles Peirce might rebrand Ferdinand de Saussures’s key term, system of differences.

0393 Ultimately, symbols enter into a picture of the evolution of biomolecular communication.

And, when they do, they seem to associate to “a receiver_2c” in Shannon’s virtual nested form in secondness.

0392 Here is a picture.

0393 But that is not all, in the evolution of biomolecular communication, symbols overflow destination_2c and cascade down into the bucket that the transmitter_2a works from.

The author spends sections 10.4 through 10.8 discussing the implications of this imaginary overflowing, which reminds me of a Tarot card, the ace of cups, where a hand appears out of cloud overhanging an idyllic landscape.

The hand holds a water-filled cup that overflows, in a very biomolecular-cascading fashion, from a perspective-level that associates to love.  Is love an empedoclement?  Only after the empedoclements (which are the inverse of impediments) come together, in the right sort of way, does strife arrive to both hone and diversify the new creation.

0394 Here is the cup of organic biosemiosis.