Biosemiotik

Biosemiotics is an interdisciplinary field that studies sign processes in living systems. It treats biological organisms as sign-processing agents that interpret signals, cues, and codes to regulate development, behavior, metabolism, and interaction with other organisms. The central idea is semiosis, or meaning-making, which is argued to operate at multiple scales—from molecular and cellular levels to behavior, communication, and ecology. In biosemiotics, signs include chemical messages, genetic information, visual or acoustic signals, and symbolic codes that organisms use to interpret their environment.

Historically, biosemiotics builds on the philosophical tradition of semiotics, especially the work of Charles Peirce and Jakob von Uexküll, who emphasized sign relations and the Umwelt—the subjective “surrounding world” of an organism. In the late 20th century, Thomas A. Sebeok helped shape the field by integrating semiotic concepts with biology, and later figures such as Jesper Hoffmeyer, Claus Emmeche, and Kalevi Kull contributed theoretical and empirical work that framed biosemiotics as a broad exploration of meaning in life. Key publications and research programs have sought to unify genetic, developmental, cellular, and ecological sign processes under a common semiotic perspective.

Research in biosemiotics spans theory and practice, including analysis of genetic coding as a sign system, cellular signaling and communication, developmental biology, animal signaling, and ecosystem-level information flows. The field is closely linked to systems biology, bioinformatics, and philosophy of biology, and it engages with debates about the nature of meaning, interpretation, and teleology in living systems. Critics often question the scope and empirical grounding, while proponents argue that semiosis offers a unifying lens for understanding life’s complexity.