Code-duality and the epistemic cut.
Howard Pattee has claimed that an epistemic cut separates the world from observers and therefore from organisms. The epistemic cut imputes a linguistic mode of operation to living systems. Among evolutionary systems-theorists on the other hand there seems to be a tendency to consider living systems as just one among many other kinds of evolutionary systems that, in principle, can all be described on the basis of thermodynamics or infodynamics. This paper searches a third position, in which the epistemic cut position is defended without adopting Pattee's distinction between a dynamic and a linguistic mode. It is observed that even the dynamic mode in living systems is always a semiotic mode although index- and analog-coded rather than symbolic and digitally coded. The analog-coded messages corresponds to a kind of tacit knowledge hidden in macromolecular structure and shape (e.g., molecular complementarity), and in organismic architecture and communication, that is, in the semiotic interactions of the body.
Hoffmeyer
J
J
Institute of Molecular Biology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. hoffmeyer@mermaid.molbio.ku.dk
D005075:Biological Evolution; D019359:Knowledge; D008037:Linguistics; D008954:Models, Biological