Eleventh Annual International Gatherings in Biosemiotics
Dactyl Foundation, New York City, USA, June 21 - 26,
2011
Energy, semiosis and emergence — the place
of biosemiotics in an evolutionary
conception of nature.
Eliseo Fernández
Linda Hall Library of Science and Technology
5109 Cherry St.
Kansas City, MO 64110, USA
[email protected]
Thursday, June 30, 2011
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Thursday, June 30, 2011
Biosemiotics
changes the way
biology relates to
physics.
Autonomy is a distinctive mark of organisms and living
systems. Organisms are parts of the world that segregate
themselves from the rest of it (their environment) through
membranes that allow selective passage of various forms
of matter, energy and information in and out of their
complex interior.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Physics & Spontaneity
Processes within an organism’s interior obey the physical laws
that govern the environment, but with further restrictions
arising from the conjunction of those laws and the peculiar
boundary conditions that characterize autonomous systems.
By submitting to more exacting constraints, organisms
paradoxically enjoy new forms of spontaneity and freedom of
action. In contrast to inert objects, they behave as autonomous
agents pursuing individual purposes. Thursday, June 30, 2011
Semiosis & Physical Causation
Making intelligible the organization of inert parts into
autonomous agents requires supplementing traditional
resources of physical sciences with new ones, apt to meet the
special explanatory needs of biology. These include novel
kinds of causation, notably what Peirce called semiosis: the
influence by which signs mediate the determination of
interpretants by their objects.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Foundational Status of Biosemiotics
In this regard, biosemiotics far exceeds its role as a
biological sub-discipline (re: cellular signaling,
organic codes, etc.) in two essential ways:
• If semiosis is an essential component in the constitution
of the objects of biological science, biosemiotic ideas
should acquire a high foundational and integrative
status approaching the one presently assigned to
evolutionary conceptions.
• This role should promote a wholesale redefinition of
the place of biology within the sciences, especially
with respect to the way biology is grounded on the
evolving theories, concepts and methods of physics.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Proposal for Modeling Semiotic Causation (Braga 2010)
I advanced a tentative proposal for
redefining the roles of ordinary
(physical) and semiotic forms of
causation partially derived from ideas
advanced by Peirce:
Physical causes act by channeling the
spontaneous tendency of energy
towards its dissipation through the
agency of resistive constraints, which
are embodiments of habits, i.e.
propensities to reproduce similar
behavior each time similar triggering
circumstances are reproduced.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Spontaneous & Forced Processes
link
forced
energy
flow
spontaneous
energy flow
•
•
There are two basic kinds of physical processes:
Spontaneously occurring down a gradient (e.g. ball rolling downhill)
Proceeding against a gradient (e.g. photosynthesis, the working of a
refrigerator). This is always achieved through a link to more
energetic spontaneous processes by means of resistive constraints.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Up-hill & Down-hill: Carnot’s Paddleboat
Imagine a river
paddleboat, long
moored to the
bank while the
current turns the
paddles...
•
•
•
•
•
Paddles are connected to a generator charging a battery. The reactive (resistive)
action of the moorings prevents it from being dragged by the current.
With a charged battery, the boat can sail upstream for a short time, using the
generator in reverse as a motor.
Similarly, the generator drives electrons against the thermodynamic gradient to
charge the battery.
Using a switch (re-channeling by elimination of resistive constraints) the battery
discharges spontaneously through the motor.
This rotates the paddles against water resistance, pushing the boat upstream
until all energy is dissipated irreversibly into heat.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Spontaneity, Constraint & Habit
The boat illustrates a heuristic approach to causal topdown explanations, based on the interplay of three
factors:
• A source of free energy moving spontaneously towards
its complete dissipation
• Structures that resist, redirect and channel the flow of
energy in various ways (boundary conditions and
constraints)
• Tendency to reproduce similar effects every time similar
energy flows and constraints are reproduced (habit)
These three factors, spontaneity, constraint and habit are
instances of the Peircean categories of firstness,
secondness and thirdness.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Semiosis as Second-Order Causation
Semiosis causes changes in the causal action itself. It alters
the way in which energy is channeled by modifying the
habits embodied in the constraints that guide the path of
energy toward thermal equilibration.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Example: Semiosis as Second-Order
Causation
Beyond a minimal threshold,
semiotic causation (unlike
ordinary causation) is quantityindependent:
When we press a button to “call”
an elevator, the signal’s strength
is independent of the pressure
exerted and uses little energy—
enough to produce the desired
interpretant (releasing much
energy to move the elevator) by
altering the switching device
configuration (constraints on the
flow of electrical current).
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Example: Semiosis as Second-Order
Causation
• An animal that interprets a peculiar noise as an index of an
approaching predator releases abundant energy for speedy flight.
• At the basic cellular level, the organic codes embody systems of
genetically preset habits ready to be triggered by physical or
chemical signals into releasing energy flows.
• The flows are channeled through biochemical pathways to their
specific interpretants, e.g. the opening of an ion channel by the
binding of a ligand to a protein receptor.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Explanations & Forms of Causation
The addition of semiosis to the usual forms of causation
allows the deployment of explanatory schemes in which
semiosis and traditional causation become related in new
ways. This can be shown by considering the principal ways
in which physics makes sense of the world in the absence
of semiotic transactions, and later considering new
explanatory patterns arising from the introduction of
semiotic causation.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Einstein(1919)- Constructive Theories
& Theories of Principle
Constructive theories postulate
basic singular parts with simple
properties and interactions,
explaining complex phenomena by
constructing models out of those
elements. These mechanisms often
figure prominently in physical and
biological explanations, e.g. the
molecular underpinnings of
genetic replication processes,
transcription and translation.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Theories
of
Principle
Theories of principle generate
explanations of lower level laws
and regularities, starting from highlevel principles of great generality,
e.g., the symmetries of space and
time, or highly confirmed empirical
generalizations (impossibility of
perpetual motion machines). In
physics, phenomenological
thermodynamics and relativity
theory are good examples. In biology
examples are harder to find. The
theory of evolution through natural
selection seems a combination of
both types of theory.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Constructive Theories: Bottom-up
Explanations
Classes of individual facts &
events
Mechanisms & constructive
models
Individual entities &
interactions
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Theories of Principle: Top-Down
Explanations
Higher order principles
Lower order laws and
regularities
Processes & events
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Systems Biology
In complex self-organized systems
there is no privileged level of
functionality. Parts act on the
wholes they integrate and those
wholes in turn act through
circular loops upon their parts.
Explanations must start in medias
res, and bottom-up and top-down
explanations may be
simultaneously invoked in
complementary fashion.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Complementarity of Upward &
Downward Causation
My proposal for a triadic view of causation integrates
both forms of explanation:
•The spontaneous flow of energy towards dissipation is a
top-down consequence of the laws of thermodynamics.
•The channeling of that flow through resistive constraints
is embodied in the mechanisms typically featured in
bottom-up explanations.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Evolutionary Physics
After presenting an ahistorical portrait
of nature for 200+ years, physics is
evolving into an evolutionary science
able to develop new points of contact
with biology.
Today’s evolutionary cosmology is
intimately linked to an evolutionary
Standard Model of particle physics,
rooted in conceptions of symmetry
and spontaneous symmetry breaking.
The fundamental forces and
concomitant varieties of particles arise
progressively through successive
breakings of original all-encompassing
symmetries, as the universe “cools”
throughout its continuous expansion.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Differences among differences
Frank Wilczec (The Lightness of Being, 2008):
Symmetry is a difference that makes no
difference.
Gregory Bateson (Steps to an Ecology of Mind, 1972):
Information is a difference that makes a
difference.
This asymmetry between differences is not
accidental. Information (and therefore semiosis) is
closely related to symmetry breaking, the process
by which a difference no longer makes no
difference.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Semiosis as Creation & Transmission
of Semiotic Information
Semiosis is a kind of formal causation, different from
efficient and final causation.
It consists in the transfer of a form embodied in an energetic
process and upon reception it sparks a special effect
(interpretant). Above a minimal threshold it is independent
of the quality and quantity of its embodiment.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Semiosis & Symmetry Breaking
In an organism, reception is a triggering. In the simplest
example, a metastable configuration acting as a switch (posed
symmetrically between two divergent courses of action), the
symmetry is broken upon reception of a form. This makes a
difference between symmetrically divided courses of action, or
between quiescence and action.
Numerous examples: firing a retinal photoreceptor neuron upon
reception of information-carrying photons; explosion of a
terrorist’s bomb with a mobile phone detonator, upon reception
of a well-defined string of bits, etc.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Semiosis, Emergence & Evolution
“Emergence” as the rise of new
properties, relations or causes, is
frequently characterized in terms
of wholes that display new
features not found in the parts
that make them up. These
totalities are usually complex
systems, and their emergent
novelties are attributed to
processes of self-organization,
characteristic of many complex
dynamic wholes, e.g. tornados,
organisms and ecosystems.
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Emergence as Creation of New
Information
Information is related to novelty. A message delivering no new
information delivers no information. This suggests generalizing
the idea to account for emergence as the generation of new
information. Three kinds of information with respect to novelty:
• Local novelty: information that conveys novelty to individual
systems in relation to their internal representation of the
environment (semiosis).
• Mereological novelty: information as the rise of novel features of
a whole; new in relation to the properties of its parts (emergence).
•
Cosmic novelty: formation of structures which are radically new
with respect to the previous history of the universe, e.g., stars, life,
new species, new organs, new theories (evolution).
Thursday, June 30, 2011
Conclusion
If this proposal proves viable, it opens
an avenue for relating biosemiotics to
emergent trends in physics, based on
the evolutionary emergence of laws
and entities through symmetry and
symmetry breaking. It would also
disclose an unsuspected connection
between Peircean semiotics and
Peircean cosmology. It would link
semiosis to the cosmic generation of
novelty, as two manifestations of the
universal habit of habit acquisition
(symmetry breaking).
Thursday, June 30, 2011