Toward a Biosemiotic Theoretical Biology: Sign Processes and Meaning-making in Living Systems

An edited volume bringing together 25 of today’s most forward-thinking biologists and philosophers on sign processes and meaning-making in organisms.

Theoretical biology is concerned with providing science with explanatory frameworks within which to fit its findings. Biosemiotics is the study of sign-processes within life processes.

In the tradition of the field-changing four-volume essay collection Towards a Theoretical Biology issued by developmental biologist Conrad Hal Waddington from 1968 to 1972, this volume brings together many of today’s leading scientists to discuss what they consider to be the most important and pressing problems in our current understandings of the biological world—and how best to advance our understandings of such life processes scientifically.

Contributors: Denis Noble, Terrance Deacon, Scott F. Gilbert, Stuart Kaufmann, Tom Froese, Erik L. Peterson, Richard I Vane-Wright, Charles Wolfe, Raymond Noble, Claus Emmeche, Alexei Sharov, Kalevi Kull, Donald Favareau, Arantza Etxeberria, Anton Markoš, Jana Švorcová, Daniel C. Mayer-Foulkes, Federico Vega, Henrik Nielsen, Karel Kleisner, David Cortés-García, Matt Kalkman, Georgii Karelin, Takashi Ikegami, and Mariana Vitti Rodrigues.

Kalevi Kull is a professor of biosemiotics at the University of Tartu. He specializes in modelling the basic mechanisms of meaning-making and diversification in living systems.

Donald Favareau is Associate Professor in the University Scholars Program at the National University of Singapore. He is the author of Essential Readings in Biosemiotics.