Biosemiotics is a branch of semiotics that explores sign processes in biological systems, such as the psychophysical mechanisms in the central nervous system and other structures with psychophysical functions, genetic codes, or communication at the level of microorganisms.
The founder of this branch is Thomas Sebeok, who states:
I define ‘consciousness’ as a system of signs represented, for example, as a physical network or structure of neurons.
The problem that needs to be investigated is how the mental representation of information in consciousness is transcribed into the central nervous system and vice versa.
The solution should come from neuroendocrinology, and once this solution is found, once the information specifications are established, much of what we today call semiotics, including linguistics, will become redundant.
Lotman, influenced by Vygotsky, also speaks of “biochemical codes.”
For him, any perception of a work of art is an act of cognition that provides sensory pleasure.
The system of sensory receptors or the biochemical mechanism can be represented as organizations of codes decoding certain information.
According to Umberto Eco, the benefit is that
semiotics derives much of its toolkit from such research (e.g., the concept of ‘information’ as a binary choice)
In Stepanov’s semiotics, the term “biosemiotics” refers to what is known in contemporary science as “zoosemiotics.”
