Meaning-making in the immune system.
Meaning-making is the process by which a system responds to an indeterminate signal. This article focuses on meaning-making in living systems. It proposes several guidelines for studying the process of meaning-making in living systems in general, and in the immune system in particular. Drawing on a general framework for studying meaning-making in living systems, I suggest three basic organizing concepts for studying meaning-making-variability of the signal, context markers, and transgradience. Those concepts present a radical alternative to the information-processing approach that governs biological research and may shed new light on biological processes.
Neuman
Yair
Y
Office for Interdisciplinary Research, Department of Education, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. yneuman@bgumail.bgu.ac.il
D000818:Animals; D006801:Humans; D007107:Immune System / Q000502:physiology*; D008037:Linguistics; D019365:Metaphor; D011817:Rabbits; D015398:Signal Transduction / Q000502:physiology