Thomas A. Sebeok Fellowship lecture1

“It is important to realize that only living things and their inanimate extensions undergo semiosis, which thereby becomes uplifted as a necessary, if not sufficient, criterial attribute of life ” (Sebeok 1994: 6). A statement as firm as this — the difference Sebeok makes — asks for attention. Moreover, both in biology and in semiotics, relating life to semiosis makes a big difference. Its role can be seen in the context of major paradigms in scientific approaches to living nature over the ages. This lecture is about the semiotic approach in biology. In other words — about the role of semiotics for biology, or about a semiotic theory of life, a semiotic biology — biosemiotics. Despite the fact that under any circumstances semiotics and biology would have found each other some day, sooner or later — because this is just a “necessity” of the development of human knowledge — despite this the whole story and the entire situation today would not be as it is without the work and role of Thomas A. Sebeok