The Wisdom of the Medium: Ideas of F. de Saussure, F. Guattari and R. Thom in the Context of Development of Biosemiotics
Abstract
The article discusses some essential ideas of the outstanding Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure, of the French philosopher Felix Guattari and of the French mathematician R. Thom. It draws several conceptual parallels which can serve as a methodological instrument for the development of biosemiotics as a modern field of interdisciplinary research. While biosemiotics tries to reveal the biological roots of the origin of meaning in the world of nature and of human world, de Saussure saw a purpose of semiotics developed by him in the study of signs of the life in society and the evolution of languages as sign systems, Guattari coined a concept of ecosophy and wrote about transversivity as a characteristic of the modern method of knowledge, and the creator of the mathematical theory of catastrophes Thom developed semiophysics (the physics of meaning), when studying morphogenesis and the transformation of complex structures. A connecting link of these conceptions is the understanding of the mutual activities and the ability to produce and to select the meanings which are peculiar both for structures, organisms or organizations in the world and for media of their existence, life and development. Such mutual activities of construction of a living organism as a result of influences of the surrounding world on it and of the surrounding world (environment) as a result of activity of the organism is expressed in the important concept of Umwelt introduced by one of the founders of biosemiotics J. von Uexküll, and it is in the focus of attention in the modern conception of enactivism in cognitive science.
For citations:
Knyazeva H. The Wisdom of the Medium: Ideas of F. de Saussure, F. Guattari and R. Thom in the Context of Development of Biosemiotics. Russian Journal of Philosophical Sciences. 2016;(9):61-76. (In Russ.)
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