Communication: The Dynamic
That Defines – and Gives Meaning To – Life
There are more things in
heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
Shakespeare - Hamlet
As in our recent essay The Mystery of Consciousness and Self, please join us again as we embark on an exploration – this time to examine the organizational processes of life as we humans know them. It will perhaps have been inferred by visitors to this Remedy site that – both in vocation and avocation – we have been intrigued by the marvel of life, its creation, maintenance and communicative mechanisms, and herein we shall try to lay out our findings in this matter.
Biocommunication >> Biosemiotics
First we acknowledge our universal human capacity for induction. This capacity enables humans to gradually accumulate information across generations and develop well-adapted tools, beliefs, and practices that are too complex for any single individual to invent during their lifetime. As a species, we owe our success to our uniquely developed ability to learn from others, yet – as in all gifts – there is an implicit downside, as this inherent faculty is tapped into for better or worse by organizations, teachers, elders and political/ religious leaders. Like a field of grass swaying in the breeze, our individual minds can be turned in accordance with the will of skilled, purposeful orators, and we may find ourselves pointed in the direction of heaven, or marching in unison to the drumbeats of hell or inhumanity. Thinking of ourselves as possessing free will, time and again we find ourselves influenced by others, and manipulated into group-think bouts of bias and prejudice against those who have done us no personal harm. Much effort and specialized skill goes into contouring the public mind and directing the society into feats leading to prosperity or destruction.
Generally, human communication is concerned with the making of meaning and the exchange of understanding, and its study embraces the fields of psychology, sociology, linguistics, anthropology and semiotics. Psychology is the study of human behavior; Sociology is the study of society and social process; Anthropology is the study of communication as a factor which develops, maintains and changes culture; Linguistics is the scientific study of human language, and can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context; Semiotics is the study of communication through signs and symbols [1]
Cultural and Personal
World-Views
We commence exploration through an
examination of culture’s affect on communication through the works of two
Canadians, Marshall McLuhan and his mentor, Harold Innis – both of the
University of Toronto, and both instrumental in the Toronto School of
Communication, which explored the primacy
of communication in the structuring of human cultures and the structuring of
the human mind. Innis' theories of political economy, media and society had a
significant influence on critical media theory and communications – and McLuhan
later offered groundbreaking Canadian perspectives on the function of
communication technologies as key agents in social and historical change.
Together, their works advanced a theory of history in which communication is
central to social change and transformation. Amongst the legacy of McLuhan’s
insights is his oft-repeated assurance that – during communication, “It is not so much the message as the sender which is
being sent. The message is the medium.” In plain-speak, this means that - when
one communicates, what is actually being conveyed is an extension of oneself as
the sentient product of a culture wherefrom
world-view is derived. Prior to McLuhan, Harold Innis had traveled the
Canadian frontier and studied how the world-view of different societies is
affected by the survival economics of the environments from which they derive
sustenance, and how these world-views can be drastically affected when
newcomers impose onto their stage. For example, in The Fur Trade in Canada Innis observed “In
Colonial times there was the encounter of European traders from a space-bound print
culture with aboriginal hunters from a time-bound oral culture.
Innovation meets tradition with disastrous, long-term results.” Here is a poignant example of what can
happen when two different civilizations meet --- one traditional and oriented
to preserving its tribal culture in time and the other bent on spreading
its influence over long distances. European guns used in war and
conquest, for example, enabled the indigenous peoples to hunt more efficiently,
but led to the rapid destruction of their food supply and of the beaver they
depended on to obtain European goods. Conflicts over hunting territories led to
warfare, made more deadly by European bullets. These examples reflect the
“clash of civilizations” that disturbed the balance that had grown up previous
to the coming of the European. [2]
Building on Innis’ theme, McLuhan later wrote: ... “If a new technology extends one
or more of our senses outside us into the social world, then new ratios among all
of our senses will occur in that particular culture. It is comparable to what
happens when a new note is added to a melody. And when the sense ratios alter
in any culture then what had appeared lucid before may suddenly become opaque,
and what had been vague or opaque will become translucent”.
This is not to imply that our existential states are completely determined
by our culture. While admittedly strongly infuenced thereby, many individuals
try to remain vigilant against the pressures of ideology and exploitation, and
cultivate – at least internally – a healthy scepticism. To do this, it is
necessary that one THINK for oneself, a process wherein one internally
communicates with images comprising aspects of oneself and representations of
others – an internal dialogue similar to discussions engaged in real time when
communicating with those outside ourselves.
As Martin Buber wrote in Dialogue: “Plato repeatedly called ‘Thinking’ a voiceless colloquy of
the soul with itself. Everyone who has really thought, knows that within this
remarkable process there is a stage at which an “inner court” is questioned and
replies.”
The existentialist theologian Reinhold Niebuhr noted the three types of dialogue in which the self is involved: “although there is no external evidence of the dialogue of the self with itself, every astute person knows it as an empiric fact. The internal dialogue of the self with itself means that the self in one of its aspects is using conceptual images to make another of its aspects its object of thought. Secondly, the dialogue of the self with various neighbors takes place on endless levels, depending upon the neighbor to bring it to completion. Thirdly, the self is also in dialogue with God, a realm beyond limits of empirical verification. ”
From the East, Chögyam Trungpa advises: “Sometimes
when we perceive the world, we perceive without language. We perceive
spontaneously.... But sometimes when we view the world, first we think a word
and then we perceive. In other words, the first instance is directly
feeling or perceiving the universe; the second is talking ourselves into seeing
the universe. So either you look or see beyond language - as first
perception, or you see the world through the filter of your thoughts, by talking
to yourself.”
The German-Swiss Nobelist poet-novelist Hermann Hesse wrote: “In reality, every ego –so far from being a unity, is in the highest degree a manifold world, a constellated heaven, a chaos of forms, of states and stages, of inheritances and potentialities. As a body everyone is single, as a soul never.. ….. And if ever the suspicion of their manifold being dawns upon men of unusual powers and of unusually delicate perceptions, so that, as all genius must, they break through the illusion of the unity of the personality and perceive that the self is made up of a bundle of selves, they have only to say so and at once the majority puts them under lock and key, calls science to aid, diagnoses schizomania and protects humanity from the necessity of hearing the cry of truth from the lips of these unfortunate persons.”
Solitary thinking is akin to the process of external dialogue explored
later. In solitude, an aspect of self
draws on memory to access experiences relevant to the current concern, and then
via a “stepping” process the internal dialogue between imaginal aspects proceeds: a positional signal (comment) from one aspect
of self is interpreted for ‘meaning’ by another aspect; the latter provides its
perspective (feedback) to the internal gathering to ‘step’ or further the
dialogue. Often the information that one needs in dealing with an
issue is somewhere within the organism; it’s just well-hidden, well down
in the unconscious. And it’s often inaccessible directly because one builds up
firewalls against it, yet other aspects of oneself may be able to flush the
necessary insight to the surface. A few thoughts for those intrepid souls who
might dare to engage this strange process of thinking:
· Imagine, if you will, a meeting room wherein you leading a brainstorming session to analyze a concern … you want to get the best perspectives from your colleagues, and some of these perspectives – in themselves – may be raw and distastful, yet those “voices” may turn out to be instrumental in evoking a subsequent key insight from another; this is the “stepping” analogy mentioned above, and it shows how necessary it is to “hear” all in attendance, especially in one’s solitary thinking;
· Within a group (as in an individual) there are some attendees who are more dominant or skilled in forcing their imprint in determining courses of action. As noted in the Introduction, we are all susceptible to induction, hence a certain detachment from the identifiable biases of others (and aspects of self) is necessary lest blunder pilot the ship.
· All forms of communication are platformed on the processes of suggestion and induction, esoterically known as natural hypnotism. That applies not only to group dynamics, but also to individual dynamics. And what has been accepted into oneself as “truth” or “reality” is quite durable against change. What one comes to believe, tends to stick. This gives rise to our need to look at the danger of deception (and its ugly sister, self-deception).
· An important comment on deceit was made by the 18th Century Scottish social philosopher of political economy Adam Smith. He pointed out that a major goal of business is to deceive and exploit the public. Our modern era is rife with the systemic institutionalization of deception, so that we now have huge industries deceiving the public [the military-industrial-political complex, the financial-economics dyad, and their religious-education-marketing-public relations adjuncts come quickly to mind]. These massive, interlocking industries of persuasion and deception induce forms of either ignorance or self-deception in listeners, whereby people may believe that they know the truth when in fact they’re just being manipulated. This systemic devolution arose in the freest countries – in Britain and the US – roughly around time of WWI, when it was recognized that enough freedom had been won that people could no longer be controlled by force. So modes of deception and manipulation had to be developed in order to keep them under control.
·
In everyday
life it possible for us to watch the external forces thus affecting our lives,
akin to when we’re watching something on stage, wherein we have a better view
than the actors on the stage have. If you can see events laterally, you can say
to yourself, my god, they’re doing this and they’re doing that. But if you’re
embedded in the whole systemic network it’s very difficult to be objectice. While
one has some shielding from the biases and manipulation of others [should one
care to develop an interest in social psychology, history, skepticism, etc AND
employ the lessons], it is much more difficult to protect oneself from own forms of self-deception, which are not
limited to social, religious, political or economic beliefs and preferences.
For example, we all know from our
personal lives that – if there’s something one wants to do – it’s really easy
to convince ourselves that it’s right and just. One erects information
firewalls and disappears any evidence that might reveal our error. This is
self-deception, and it’s so automatic that significant effort and energy has to
be mounted to try to see yourself from a distance. It’s hard to do, but unless
done one can bring much suffering around oneself.
·
While on the
topic of truth-sorting, we should look at the role of dreams, as they may clue
us to physical or social issues that, when awake, we try to ignore. In the
“Consciousness” section of Our World and Times, there is a link to our
earlier study notes entitled “Dreams: the royal road to the unconscious -
a natural healing system”
on the life-work of Montague
Ullman, from which the following quotes were excised:
“Our imperfections
are often hidden from us by what are known as mechanisms of defense. We
suppress, deny, we rationalize and we rely on other evasive techniques to
distance ourselves from certain truths. Such tactics are more apt to be
obvious to others than to ourselves. To the extent we rely on them, we are
falsifying our relation to the other as well as to ourselves. Whether we are
aware of these disconnects or not, they do resonate in our bodily tissues and
surface at night as the triggering focus of our dreaming consciousness. The
healing potential of our dreaming psyche lies in its ability to precisely
capture the often very subtle felt traces that a disconnect has occurred….
“Awake our communication
to others or to ourselves is often tinged (sometimes more than tinged) with
expediency. Dreams manage to consistently and insistently get at the
truth…. Our dreams are truth
seekers. They go by the
same rules that apply to animals in the wild: the more truthful perception of reality, the greater are the
chances of survival of the individual and the species….
“While
dreaming, conscious experience is organized along lines of emotional contiguity
rather than temporal and spatial contiguity. The affective scanning that takes
place while dreaming can, on occasion, bridge a spatial gap and provide us with
information independent of any known communication channel. Emotional
contiguity, under conditions we know very little about, appears capable of integrating
transpersonal as well as personal content into the dream. Anecdotal accounts
have for a long time pointed in this direction and the circumstances under
which they occur strongly suggest that in matters of life and death the
vigilant scanning of emotional
environment reaches out across spatial boundaries in a manner that has yet to
be explained.”
Before we leave the topic of Internal
Communications, it is noted that many
adherents of long-standing faith groups such as Christian Science and various
indigenous/ shamanic traditions that focus on healing processes, find
that "absent treatment" is the most efficacious healing technique;
healers utilize deep prayer to access the patient’s system, perform remote
diagnosis and then remotely transmit restorative 'signal lines' to the
afflicted. This process is claimed to be most effective when the afflicted
person is at distance and in deepest sleep. [A different slant on what we normally
think of in communication, yet the process was personally attested in our
travels by both practitioners and patients].
Carrying our intra-personal
dialogue to the inter-personal turf, we turn to F. David Peat, who – in
his biography of fellow physicist/ philosopher David Bohm Infinite
Potential: The Life and Times of David Bohm – wrote: “…And his other work of that period,
with dialogue groups, was not separate from that of physics because
again, he felt that his theory had to include consciousness as well as matter,
which led in this case to the idea that there could be a field of
information. His ontological interpretation of the quantum theory gives the
notion that matter is always responding to such a field. Up to that point we
had two levels in nature — matter and energy. And now Bohm in his
interpretation introduced a third, which he called "active
information" — information as an activity in nature. The electron moves
and does these curious things because it is responding to a field of
information, an active field. And the human body also responds to an active
field — that's how the immune system works. So he introduced this notion of
active information as something that is inherent both in matter and in
consciousness, a collective and non-local phenomenon to which the individual
human consciousness, or brain, is capable of responding.
Bohm believed it was possible to develop some sort of
collectivity if people worked at it together over a period of time, so he
developed his dialogue groups based on the idea that it might somehow be
possible, through this active information, to produce a transformation in human
consciousness. He may have believed that this is what had happened with
Krishnamurti — that if you were with Krishnamurti, in the presence of
Krishnamurti in a group of people, some change of consciousness took place. In
physics you don't always need an enormous amount of energy to effect a large
change—that maybe even a few of these small groups could affect human
consciousness.”
Our bodies are the main transmitters of presentational codes, and the following list of 10 such codes reveals the sort of meanings we convey to each other through our body language:
1. Bodily contact - Whom we touch, where and when we touch communicates a great deal about relationships. This code and the next appear to have the greatest degree of cultural variation.
2. Proximity - Physical distances are highly codified and vary between the nationality and social class of the participants. Generally, a distance closer than one meter is "intimate", one to three meters is personal, and beyond that is the semi-public range.
3. Orientation - How we angle our bodies to others is another way of signaling a message. Facing another person tends to signify either intimacy or aggressiveness. Angular positions up to 90 degrees indicates a co-operative attitude.
4. Appearance – impresses…especially aspects under voluntary control, such as hair, clothes, skin, body paint and adornment
5. Head nods - Mainly involved in interaction staging – such as turn-taking in conversation. One nod may be a silent permission for the speaker to continue. A serious of rapid nods may be a pre-emptive gesture indicating the wish to speak or break into another’s conversation.
6. Facial expression - Consists of a range of sub-codes of eye-brow position, eye shape, mouth shape, nostril size and so on. These sub-codes in combination determine the expression of the face and what its "grammar" signifies - Facial expression is the most cross-culturally stable of all presentational codes.
7. Gestures (Kinesics) - While hand and arm are the most efficient transmitters of kinesic information, the feet and head position are also important.
8.
Posture - The way we sit, stand and move can
communicate a limited but interesting range of meanings. Often they signify
inter-personal attitudes such as friendliness, hostility, flirtatiousness,
superiority etc.
Posture can also indicate if we're relaxed or tense. The posture often gives
away more than the face as it seems less consciously controlled.
9. Eye movement and eye contact - When, how often and for how long we meet others’ eyes is a way of sending very important messages about relationships, indicating for example how affiliate or dominant we wish the relationship to be. Usually the making of eye contact at the beginning of a statement indicats a desire to dominate the listener but eye contact at the end of a statement suggests a more affiliate relationship, a desire for feedback.
10. Non-verbal aspects of speech -
a) Prosodic codes affect the meaning of words used. Pitch, and loudness and stress are the main codes here. “How was that?” can indicate a statement, a question, or an exclamation of disbelief depending on the pitch of the voice.
b) Paralinguistic codes communicate information about the speaker. Tone, volume, accent, range of vocabulary, speech errors and speed of speech communicate something about the speaker’s emotional state, their personality, educational background, class and social status, and their perception of the listener, etc.
We know first-hand from our extended trips through Mesoamerica that – despite the lightness of our Spanish skills – when people wish to communicate they will find a way, and the codes of openness and body language are especially important. Conversely and universally we have also learned that deceptive and manipulative people can become very adept in employing the various aspects of interpersonal communication in furthering their agendas.
Carrying the idea of information induction via dialogue into the field of therapeutics, we turn to the insight of Ernest Lawrence Rossi whose field of expertise is hypnotherapy (hypnosis being recognized by practitioners and crisis counselors as an extremely effective mode of direct communication): “My current theory of psychosocial genomics in therapeutic hypnosis emphasizes the natural flow of information, communication and healing that takes place between the psychological levels of human experiencing and gene expression - the turning on and off of our genes in normal everyday life. When genes are turned on (transcribed) they generate the formation of proteins (transcription) that are the molecular machines of life. When we experience novel and enrichening activities, for example, a process called "activity dependent gene expression" takes place within neurons of the brain that can lead to neurogenesis - literally the growth of the brain. Notice that I do not separate mind and body - I emphasize their oneness by combining them into one word, "mind-body" just as Einstein emphasizes the connection of space-time in understanding modern physics. Information in the form of words, ideas, emotions, images and meaning undergoes many transformations from the brain down to the molecular-genetic level within each of the six trillion cells of the human body. The organized structure of the molecules, tissues and organs of our body contain information just as our organized words and thoughts do - only the form is different. So consciousness as well as life itself can be best conceptualized as the circular flow of information between so-called "mind" and gene that I now call "psychosocial genomics" - the science of how our subjective experiences of mind can modulate gene expression and visa versa to facilitate neurogenesis and real physical healing of the body on the molecular level. In my view therapeutic hypnosis is not an illusion - a so-called bending of sensation and perception so you think you feel good even when you are not. The science and art of therapeutic suggestion that I call "psychosocial genomics" engages real healing on the molecular-genetic level.”
Yet our capacity to beneficially affect each other is not limited to
words. Consider the findings of the scientists at the HeartMath Institute
concerning our communications with others that we are purposefully connected
with: “A
handshake, hug, or gesture of touch is a universal way of communicating. It
might surprise you to know what this simple act of touch is really doing! The
electromagnetic field generated by the heart not only radiates outward from the
body, but also appears to carry information about our feelings, in a manner
similar to how information is carried by radio waves. The HeartMath Research
team wanted to know if they could demonstrate scientifically a transfer of
information between people when they touch or are close to each other. This
research has indicated bioelectromagnetic communication between people is
indeed possible.” (to read more
see HERE)
Then let us consider the words of
Dr. Kurt Ebert, licensed Clinical Neuropsychologist and developer of Attractor
Field Techniques, a system using sound technology and meridian
stimulation to promote healing of hundreds of physical disorders: “That thoughts generate energy which affects our bodies is
beyond question. Approaching the mind from entirely different perspectives,
both David R. Hawkins. M.D., Ph.D., and the Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, M.D.
have concluded that the mind, through our thoughts, influences our physical
beings at the most elementary levels; that thoughts not only influence the
chemicals in our bodies, but even turn genes on and off, and cause the brain to
reconfigure itself!
Other
research indicates that this effect is accomplished via the impact that the
energy of our thoughts has on the energy pathways known as meridians. The
organizing centers (acupuncture treatment points) of the meridians are
responsible for biological morphogenesis. They retain all of their growth
functions after morphogenesis and communicate with one another to maintain
proper bodily form and function. Kinesiologic testing can demonstrate that the
connection between the mind and body is immediate. Positive thoughts make our
bodies strong, and negative thoughts make us go weak. Since the body's response
is immediate, our physical being is influenced from instant to instant to our
changing thoughts and emotions. It is the continuity and reiteration of various
thought patterns that can ultimately result in manifest disease. Thus, while
ideas of all sorts pass though our minds, it is the ones we habitually
entertain that impact us the most.
Fortunately,
the mind-body connection is a two way street: we influence the meridian energy
via the energetic pattern of our thoughts; we can also influence the energy
pattern of the meridians via direct or indirect stimulation of the meridian
points themselves. Proper stimulation of the meridians influences the pattern
of energy emitted by the brain, and can destabilize the self -perpetuating energy
fields of disease states. The energy fields of disease states are created by
our thoughts, and always precede observable disease states. Research has shown
that reliable changes in the bioelectric potential of meridian points occur months
before any physically observable signs of breast cancer appear in women for
example”. [3]
Biocommunication >>
Biosemiotics
Now, let us move on to even the deeper aspects of Communication, and to set the tone please consider the words of Theodore Roszak, professor emeritus of history at California State University and renowned for his teachings in the field of Ecophychology “Conceive of nature as a machine – any machine, even a ‘thinking’ machine, and you assume one relationship to the world. Conceive of it as a sentient mentality, and you take another stance. To see the world as a realm of interrelated ideas places us in a condition of dialogue; it connects In-here with Out-there as a continuum. It places us on ‘speaking terms’ with the universe.”
The field of biocommunication investigates communicative processes within
and among non-humans such as bacteria, animals, fungi and plants, and utilizes
information theory, which provides a mathematical model for measuring
communication within and among systems. In 1980 S.F. Scudder formulated The
Universal Law of Communication which states: "All
living entities, beings and creatures communicate. All life communicates
through movements, sounds, reactions, physical changes, gestures, languages,
and breath. Communication is a means of survival. Examples - the cry of a child
(communicating that it is hungry, hurt, or cold); the browning of a leaf
(communicating that it is dehydrated, thirsty or dying); the cry of an animal
(communicating that it is injured, hungry, or angry). Everything living
communicates in its quest for survival."
Modern biosemiotics is essentially
concerned with the interpretation of nature's sign universe in the context of
the semiotic tradition from Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) who noted
that a sign is a triadic unity of something (the sign vehicle,
e.g. a footprint) that stands to somebody (the interpretant) for something
else (the object, e.g. that a person has passed by). Peirce saw the sign as
the connective element in all experience and thought as well as in the universe
at large. The University of California regent, Gregory Bateson
(1900-1980) is among the pioneers of biosemiotics. Bateson did not himself use
the word ‘biosemiotics’ but his whole scientific project dealt with
communication between animals, people and machines. His conception of evolution
and thought as two related mind-processes fits nicely into the biosemiotic set
of ideas. [for more on the insights of Bateson, see this]
As Associate Professor of the
Copenhagen Institute of Molecular Biology, Jesper Hoffmeyer writes about
semiosis in nature:
”Biosemiosis, the processes whereby living systems
identify and interpret environmental states or events as signs - visual,
olfacory, auditive etc. - using them to guide their activities, has become the
focus of my research for the past 20 years. Little could I know as a young
biochemist setting out to do research at the University of Copenhagen in 1968
that I would end up in such an unexpected field. But gradually I have come to
see that there are no escape routes: Semiosis cannot be reduced to biochemistry
- and yet semiosis is inseparable from biochemistry. Life appeared on Earth
when complex systems acquired a capacity to use molecules as signs.
“…. Molecules and information have long been considered the major conceptual players at the core of scientific biology. I suggest that both these concepts fail to fully specify what life-processes are all about, namely semiosis – i.e. the sign processes by which living organisms must organize their internal and external relations. A sign is not the same thing as a piece of information. It is related to information but only becomes “information” through an act of interpretation. Only when an interpretant is formed (in a cell, in a tissue and, of course, in a brain) does “information” acquire biological meaning. Bio-molecules are always carriers of signs in this sense, and their function in the organism cannot be understood simply through an analysis of their chemistry. The Greek word for ‘sign’ is ‘semeion’, and biosemiotics literally means ‘the study of living systems from a semiotic (i.e., sign-theoretical) perspective.’ In my work, I try to give a comprehensive account of the state of the art of this new approach to biology, and to explore the scientific landscapes brought to life through a broader application of its core idea. It should be emphasized here that biosemiotics does not imply any denial of the anchoring of biological processes in well-established physical and chemical lawfulness. Rather, it is claimed that life-processes are both part of – and are organized in obedience to – a semiotic dynamic, and that this fact cannot be omitted from a true science of life.
“…In the
biosemiotic conception, the life sphere is permeated by sign processes
(semiosis) and signification. Whatever an organism senses also means something
to it, food, escape, sexual reproduction etc. and all organisms are thus born
into a semiosphere, i.e. a world of meaning and communication: sounds,
odours, movements, colours, electric fields, waves of any kind, chemical
signals, touch etc. The semiosphere poses constraints or boundary conditions to
population Umwelts (i.e.
the worlds around organisms as they themselves perceive them) since these are forced to occupy specific semiotic niches
i.e. they will have to master a set of signs of visual, acoustic, olfactory,
tactile and chemical origin in order to survive in the semiosphere. And it is
entirely possible that the semiotic demands to populations are often a decisive
challenge to success. Probably more than anything else, organic evolution has
to do with the development of ever more sophisticated means for surviving in
the semiosphere……. Millions of so-called receptors capable of
recognizing specific signal molecules in the cell environment are located in
the membranes of each of our cells. These receptors function as communication
channels through which our cells, tissues and organs are persistently
communicating with each other all around the body. Especially interesting is
the recent discovery that receptors on the surface of immune cells are capable
of decoding the messages exchanged among nerve cells and vice versa. The
psychosomatic integration of the nervous system, the immune system and the endochrinological
system in a healthy organism is the result of this gigantic semiotic
interaction among many thousand billions of cells, each of which is capable of
interpreting a limited range of molecular signs. Disease may be seen then as
the result of erroneous communication among our body parts. We fall ill
because our cells cannot quite succeed in uniting to create us.
“…biochemists
prefer to talk about information exchange… While information as understood by physicists
has no connection to values, relevance or purpose, biologists think about
information in a much more everyday language sense, and in fact biological
information always serves a purpose in the system, if nothing else it at least
serves to promote survival…. Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin once
said: “First, DNA is not self-reproducing,
second, it makes nothing and third, organisms are not determined by it”… What all this amounts to is a simple but crucial fact:
DNA does not contain the key to its own interpretation. In a way the molecule
is hermetic. In the prototype case of sexually reproducing organisms only the
fertilized egg ‘knows’ how to interpret it, i.e., to use its text as a manual
containing the necessary instructions for producing the organism. The
interpretant of the DNA message is buried in the cytoskeleton of the fertilized
egg (and the growing embryo), which again is the product of history, i.e., of
the billions of molecular habits having been acquired through the evolution of
the eukaryotic cell in general and the successive phylogenetic history of the
species in particular. Quoting Lynn Margulis “It took evolution two billion years to produce this
marvelous entity, the eukaryotic cell. Having accomplished this deed evolution
spent only one and a half billion years on producing all the rest”…. Cells, like organisms, are historical entities carrying
in their cytoskeleton and in their DNA traces of their pasts going back more
than three billion years. They perpetually measure present situations against
this background, and make choices based on such interpretations. Thus, one
might well claim that the sign rather than the molecule is the basic unit for
studying life…
“…
when life, and thus natural selection, emerged inside the Earth system we had
already passed beyond the secure sphere of physics into the sphere of
communication and interpretation. In this sphere the dynamics of history
(evolution) changed and began to become individualized, so that each little
section of history became unique and henceforward no big formulas could be
erected covering the whole process. Organic evolution is narrative rather than
law-like, and if quantification is wanted, it should be searched not at the
level of genetics, but at the level of the constrained thermodynamic system
framing organic evolution…. Rrganisms not only belong to ecological niches,
they are always also bound to a semiotic niche, i.e. they will have to master a
set of signs of visual, acoustic, olfactory, tactile and chemical origin in
order to survive. And it is entirely possible that the semiotic demands to
populations are often a decisive challenge to success….
“…
Semiotic freedom is an emergent property and should always be analyzed in
relation to the proper level. Thus the semiotic freedom of the cell probably
decreased to a certain extent when the unicellular organism became a
multi-cellular organism. The 'somatic ecology' of the body constrained the
freedom of single cells, but at the level of the organism an enormous gain in semiotic
freedom was thus attained. Through the differentiation of its tissues, the
multi-cellular organism has acquired a much bigger capacity for processing and
communicating knowledge in the sense that it can deal with bigger parts of its
environment in space as well as in time.
“The idea of seeing semiosis as a unifying concept in the study of life is often met with charges of vitalism. In fact I think on the contrary that the strategy of repressing the semiotic dimension of life is exactly what nourishes the continual revival of vitalistic notions. No vitalist principles are of course invoked in a biosemiotic understanding of life. Biosemiotics confronts the same ontological problem as does traditional biology: The problem of explaining how coding surfaces could arise in lifeless nature …. According to the biosemiotic conception, life was from the very beginning suspended in a universe of signification, and though the internal structure of cells or organisms is probably describable in purely biochemical terms, this will not give us a true understanding of such structures, since they were developed through a period of billions of years under the guiding logic of semiotic interactions. The semiotic ordering (through spans of evolutionary history) of chemistry holds the key to the function of this chemistry. In this sense, and only in this sense, is life an irreducible phenomenon.” [4]
In his recent essay entitled What Do Organisms Mean? Steve Talbott, a senior researcher at the Nature Institute and the editor of NetFuture, an online newsletter about technology and human
responsibility, writes:
“How, in fact, do we come to understand any context of
meaning — a dance, a painting, a novel, a human life, the choreography of a
developing embryo? Goethe noted the impossibility of capturing an “inner
nature” – say, a person’s character – in any kind of direct causal or
explanatory way. “But when we draw together his actions, his deeds, a picture of his
character will emerge.” That is certainly how we try to understand each other – and we, too, are
organisms….
“The International HapMap Consortium (a successor to the
Human Genome Project) summarizes the situation neatly in the lead sentence of a
report in Nature: “Despite the ever-accelerating pace of biomedical research, the root causes
of common human diseases remain largely unknown, preventative measures are
generally inadequate, and available treatments are seldom curative.”
“Because we’re dealing with meaning, the similarity to
the understanding of texts is not accidental: analyses of individual words and
their possibilities of meaning can be essential; without a knowledge of the
words, we can hardly grasp the whole. But at the same time, it is only the
meaning of the whole that gives the individual words their full and proper significance.
‘The organism, we have seen, is continually expressing
the because of reason. Possessed of a certain inwardness, it is a maker
of meaning, a fact most immediately presented to us in our own lives as
self-conscious beings, but further evident all the way down to the eloquent and
concerted molecular interactions of every living cell. We recognize meaning
in the vocalizations, body language, and gestures of animals; in the qualities
that make the oak tree a recognizable presence, consistently expressing its own
character, distinct from a willow tree; and in the active, directed
striving for self-realization in all organisms — a striving that enables us to
speak reasonably of their health and disease, wholeness and injury.
“We may not yet understand how the coordination comes
about — how living beings bring such meaningful, ideal relations to
manifestation in the world – but this is no obstacle to scientific
acknowledgment of the observed relationships. After all, our ignorance about
how gravity works or what energy or space or time or matter is does not
prevent us from teasing out certain observable, lawful relationships …Disciplined observation should be our
guide to the various sorts of order displayed in the world. And while
observation shows us an uninterrupted continuity of physical law when an
organism dies, it also reveals a striking discontinuity, marked by a loss of
the overarching coordination and the governing meaning through which a living
form had been sustained.”
Again, let us read from Jesper Hoffmeyer:
“… in
evolutionary biology, neo-Darwinism has been seriously challenged by a set of
ideas referred to as infodynamics which subsumes thermodynamics and information
theory, essentially animating the latter by means of the former. The general
idea is that information capacity (disorder) increases spontaneously in
developing systems, being produced along with physical entropy as the system
grows and differentiates. Since such self-organization is a prevalent property
of our universe, natural selection should not be seen as the dominating force
of evolution, but rather as playing the more modest role of pruning
down the novelty that is constantly and autonomously being generated by the
requirements of the second law of thermodynamics. There is a surprising
correspondence between these ideas and the 'cosmogonic philosophy' of Charles
Sanders Peirce… the real task of a unified biology, i.e. a modern synthesis, is
to understand how the world became a place for human beings, i.e. how life
originated in a non-living world and evolved into all the present day kinds of
living entities at all levels of complexity, including human beings. In one end
of this scale we have history in the sense of intentional and self-conscious human
beings and the cultures they created (or who created them), at the other end we
have the kind of self-organizing history predicted by the second law of
thermodynamics, and what connects the two ends is the subject matter of
evolutionary biology….
In his
published lecture entitled Semiotics
is a Theory of Life, Kalevi Kull,
an eminent biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia, said:
“…Darwin’s theory appears as a peak of the dissemination of
the tree-model of nature, adding the idea that, due to the lack of space, not
all branches of a tree can survive, and thus harsh competition takes place
between them, allowing a progress to occur as a result of competitive
exclusion.
A replacement of this model would
mean claiming that:
(a) there is no such thing as
progress in nature; instead, there are cycles and fluctuations;
(b) there is no reason to presume a single root; instead there are
possibly many beginnings;
(c) branching and competition are not the basic processes; instead there are recognitions and symbiosis;
(d) genealogies are neither
chain-like, nor tree-like, but web-like.
Thus arises the concept of
ecosystem, an ecological web on the one hand, and a communications
network, a semiotic web on the other hand. Also emerging is the idea of
biological, subjective time in non-human animals. This served very much as a
precursor of Uexküll’s concept of Umwelt (i.e. the worlds around animals as they themselves perceive
them). In considering the Semiotic theory of life, there are five crucial, concepts: recognition, categorization, codes,
evolution, and sign systems.” [….to read more]
Microbiology Professor in the Department of Geosciences at the
University of Massachusetts Lynn Margulis has been a
long standing critic of the keystone concept in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
- that natural selection alone is the driver of evolution. In a recent interview in
Discover Magazine, she said:
“All
scientists agree that evolution has occurred… The question is, is natural selection enough to explain
evolution? … This is the problem I have with neo-Darwinists: They teach that
what is generating novelty is the accumulation of random mutations in DNA, in a
direction set by natural selection… Natural selection eliminates and maybe maintains, but it doesn’t create.
… I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations
led to evolutionary change – led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence. … There
is no gradualism in the fossil record…
‘Punctuated equilibrium’ was invented to describe the discontinuity. … The critics, including the creationist critics, are
right about their criticism. It’s just that they’ve got nothing
to offer but intelligent design or ‘God did it.’ They have no alternatives that
are scientific. …
“In life, symbiotic partnerships are stable and drive evolutionary change. Symbiosis is an ecological phenomenon where one kind of organism lives in physical contact with another. Long-term symbiosis leads to new intracellular structures, new organs and organ systems, and new species as one being incorporates another being that is already good at something else. This major mode of evolutionary innovation has been ignored by the so-called evolutionary biologists. They think they own evolution, but they’re basically anthropocentric zoologists. They’re playing the game while missing four out of five of the cards. The five are bacteria, protoctists, fungi, animals, and plants, and they’re playing with just animals – a fifth of the deck. The evolutionary biologists believe the evolutionary pattern is a tree. It’s not. The evolutionary pattern is a web – the branches fuse, like when algae and slugs come together and stay together. From the very beginning the Russians said natural selection was a process of elimination and could not produce all the diversity we see. They understood that symbiogenesis was a major source of innovation, and they rejected Darwin.”
Imagine the complexity of the brain of an organism that itself has been
instrumental in bringing into existence some trillion sentient cells and
subsequently – as hub of the organism’s central control system – monitors and internally
communicates with the organism’s parts to ensure maintenance of all somatic
pattern, functions and self-healing;
a central organ itself comprising millions of signal transmissions nerves and
neurons that are intermixed yet do not get shorted out from the tens of
thousands of blood vessels necessay for cooling and energy supply, all within
the same three pound tissue mass. This is the brain of a human, yet in each
life form, whether that of a blade of grass, a tree, a fungus, bacteria,
crustation or animal, there is a comparable organizing agent which directs its
own physical formation and communicates within its parts to sustain life. One
remembers during a post-retirement stay in Mexico, coming across a book in the
library of our host (himself a retired Time correspondent). That book detailed
the life cycle of common sea crustations – with diagrams of their digestive and
reproductive systems. It was admittedly stunning to thereafter walk the beaches
and see the countless sea shells in a new light, and thereby glimpse the
immensity of Life’s effort. As to the life-processes
themselves, over time and research one increasingly appreciates the imagery of Ralph
Waldo Emerson, who wrote that “We
lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth
and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do
nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage to its beams. If we ask whence this
comes, if we seek to pry into the soul that causes, all philosophy is at fault.
Its presence or its absence is all we can affirm”.
Life and communication are
inseparable, and communications are the sign processes by which living organisms must organize
their internal and external relations. A sign is not the same thing as a piece
of information. It is related to information but only becomes “information”
through an act of interpretation. Again quoting Jesper Hoffmeyer, “Only when an interpretant is formed (in a cell,
in a tissue and, of course, in a brain) does “information” acquire biological meaning. Bio-molecules are always carriers of signs in this sense,
and their function in the organism cannot be understood simply through an
analysis of their chemistry.”
Most of us wonder at some stage about the origination, purposes,
processes and meaning of Life, and strive to delve into the mystery beyond the
capabilities of our forebears who created the scriptural dogmas of the past.
Scientists and philosophers are notorious with their ceaseless questing to
these ends. If a reader has followed this essay thus far, he or she would be
within the spectrum of those who desire to make sense of it all, according to
their tools and metaphors of understanding. For instance, appreciate these
recent thoughts from Rick Hanson, Ph.D., neuropsychologist, Affiliate Faculty at
UC Berkeley, and founder of Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative
Wisdom:
“In every moment, you and I and everyone and everything else
- from quantum foam to fleeting thoughts, intimate relationships, rainforest
ecosystems, and the stars themselves - are each a kind of standing wave, like
the ever-changing though persistent pattern of water rising above a boulder in
a river.
“We are the result of multiple causes flowing through
us. As Buckminster Fuller famously said, "I seem to be a verb."
“This fact is amazing, but it's corroborated by both
modern physics and deep ecology… As unique standing waves, you and I are
constructed each moment by the currents - the forces and factors, both internal
and external - flowing through us. We have no choice about being lived by these
currents, continually given over to them”
Together on this voyage of discovery, we have explored the role of
communications in societies and cultures, in personal thinking, in dialogue with
others as we share our perspectives, and within the enveloping web of the
planetary ecology itself as each life form strives within the bounds of its own
kind to seize the gift of life and create a vehicle within which its temporal
existence may be sustained.
All seems a complex and wondrous miracle, with
the main miracle features comprising It, You and I here to appreciate the
diversity and beauty of it all.
[1] Semiosis (the production
of meaning) is a term borrowed from Charles Sanders Peirce and expanded by
Umberto Eco to mean a process by which a culture produces signs and/or
attributes meanings to signs. For Eco the production of meaning (Semiosis) is a
social activity, implying the intrusion of subjective factors in each
individual act of Semiosis.
[2] In his later Empire and Communications
Innis examined the rise and fall of ancient empires as a way of tracing the
effects of communications media (oral, stone, clay, papyrus, parchment,
printing press). He looked at media that led to the growth of an empire; those
that sustained it during its periods of success, and then the communications
changes that hastened an empire's collapse. He tried to show that cultural
media biases toward time or space affected the complex interrelationships
needed to sustain an empire. These interrelationships included the partnership
between the knowledge (and ideas) necessary to create and maintain the empire,
and the power (or force) required to expand and defend it. Innis wrote that the
interplay between knowledge and power was always a crucial factor in
understanding empire: "The sword and pen worked
together. Power was increased by concentration in a few hands, specialization
of function was enforced, and scribes with leisure to keep and study records
contributed to the advancement of knowledge and thought. The written record,
signed, sealed and swiftly transmitted was essential to military power and the
extension of government." For Innis, balance was crucial in sustaining an empire, and he
examined each empire to discover how time-binding and space-binding media
contributed to the necessary balance between power and knowledge and among
ruling groups -- religious, political and military. As Innis wrote:
“Concentration on a medium of communication implies a bias in the cultural development of the civilization concerned either towards an emphasis on space and political organization or towards an emphasis on time and religious organization. Introduction of a second medium tends to check the bias of the first and to create conditions suited to the growth of empire. The Byzantine empire emerged from a fusion of a bias incidental to papyrus in relation to political organization and of parchment in relation to ecclesiastical organization.”
Innis taught that a balance between the spoken word and writing contributed
to the flourishing of ancient Greece in the time of Plato. Plato conveyed his
ideas by recording the conversations of Socrates. His philosophy thus preserved
"the power of the spoken word on the written
page." Plato's method of using poetic dialogues cast in prose
enabled him to arrive at new philosophical positions.This balance between the
time-biased medium of speech and the space-biased medium of writing was
eventually upset, Innis argued, as the oral tradition gave way to the dominance
of writing. The torch of empire then passed from Greece to Rome. In Empire and Communications, Innis
observed that “A successful empire required adequate appreciation
of the problems of space, which were in part military and political, and of
problems of time, which were in part dynastic and biological and in part
religious. In ancient Egypt, an imbalance arose because the priestly monopoly
over writing and knowledge supported an emphasis on time and religion, but
neglected the political problems inherent in ruling over an empire extended in
space.”
[3] for those so interested, Dr. Ebert further
advises: “… An
individual's existence does not begin with his conception nor his birth. We are
not our bodies. Rather we are eternal beings of energy, who have communication
devices we call bodies. Our bodies, through the influence of the meridians,
become a reflection of the projected energy of our being. As eternal beings,
existing in a temporal physicality, the energy of our current ‘here-now being’
is influenced by the energy of our past existence. This influence is our Karma,
a constant energetic breeze that colors the context of our current and earliest
awareness. At the end of our current physical form, our eternal energy - the
True Us - will carry unfinished remnants from this life, in addition to past
life unfinished remnants. What are these unfinished remnants? They are
energetic attractor fields which maintain our separation from All That Is, that
maintain our duality.
When we no
longer generate low-level energy patterns, we exit the temporal physicality and
become one with All That Is. While this may seem to be an unrealistic goal, it
is the path we are all on, and will remain on until it is finished. Every step
toward this goal is, in itself, a step toward freedom and a step toward love.
Love is ultimately total freedom and total acceptance. Love is beyond
forgiveness; Love sees no errors in need of forgiveness.”
[4] Extracts were drawn from on-line papers by Jesper Hoffmeyer at http://www.zbi.ee/~uexkull/biosemiotics/jespintr.htm and http://home.comcast.net/~sharov/biosem/hoffmeyr.html - both of which contain much further information and bibliographies.
Posted July
15th, 2011
Keith and Marnie
Elliott’s “REMEDY” Site
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