Biosemiotics

a new understanding of life

pp. 751-795

in: Donald Favareau, Essential readings in biosemiotics, Berlin, Springer, 2009

Abstract

Since the early 1970s, Italian embryologist and theoretical biologist Marcello Barbieri has been developing a biosemiotic framework for biology based on his analysis of the cell's internal organic codes. Developing his theory of semantic biology in complete independence from the Sebeokian biosemioticians, but now widely recognized as a key figure in the development of 21st century biosemiotics, Barbieri proposes an alternative biosemiotic paradigm that is not organicist and qualitative in its origins, but mechanist and molecular instead – but that is just revolutionary a framework for the attempt to scientifically investigate and understand the reality of sign processes in life processes.