Biosemiotics and Peirce

Abstract

Abstract Peirce’s final statements on the sign were consigned in various ways over a hundred years ago as a form of logic, a branch of the science of enquiry based upon observation. This means inevitably that some parts of the theory will have been contested or considered superseded by more recent pronouncements on cognitive activity in general, both within and without the field of semiotics. Two such areas that have been host to innovative developments concern central preoccupations of the entire Peircean edifice: the basic unit of semiotics and its function, and ways of looking. First, following Thomas Sebeok’s pioneering integration of semiotics and the biological theories of Jakob von Uexküll, biosemiotics, it is claimed, has espoused a Peircean approach to the definitions of sign and semiosis. Second, observation involves the relation between the observer and the object observed, and, as a theoretical consequence, the relation between an organism and its environment, von Uexküll’s Umwelt. In view of the importance accorded Peircean semiotic theory in this more recent science, the paper compares and contrasts aspects of the later theory with the earlier, and concludes that there are significant theoretical differences between the two conceptions of the sign and its theoretical implications.