Abstract
Developing a broader ecological perspective is both a big challenge and a necessity for biosemiotics . Without an ecological ground, biosemiotics as a paradigm would remain incomplete. On the other hand, the semiotic approach could in turn offer a fresh perspective to the natural sciences for understanding ecological processes. In 1981, system ecologists Bernard C. Patten and Eugene P. Odum described an informational layer in an ecosystem with a local regulatory capacity, without which the ecosystem would fall into a mass of chaotic processes. In 2007, theoretical ecologist Søren N. Nielsen proposed that this sphere of semiotic functions in the ecosystem could be called semiotype , referring to the parallel with genotype , phenotype and envirotype. Kalevi Kull , in his several writings (Kull 1998, 2008, 2010), has expressed the view that the ecosystem is semiotic in its nature, and that semiotic processes have much to do with the integrity of ecosystems.
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Notes
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This is so because of the third property: ecological codes use different memory types including evolutionary regulations. In some cases, semiotic thresholds can also be bypassed or counterfeited. The story of Clever Hans is, among other things, an example of how limited cognitive capacities do not restrict an animal from becoming involved in complex semiotic phenomena.
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I use the concept of “imagery” here to stress the analogical fuzzy nature of ecological codes.
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My replacement in square brackets in the quotation points to the essential difference between Jung’s archetypes and ecological codes. Jung’s theory is originally aimed at describing the psychology of the human species, whereas in the study of ecological codes, the notion of archetype should be widened to be applicable also to Umwelten of other animals as well as interspecific semiotic and ecological relations.
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Louise Westling (2016), a specialist in Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, has recently suggested how the concepts of ecological code and archetype could be actualised for reinterpreting human-animal communication. Historically, there is an interesting thread of thought stressing the role of general images in sense making that runs from C.G. Jung to Adolf Portmann to Maurice Merleau-Ponty.
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See also Jakob von Uexküll’s example of the “shadow from above” in the sea urchin’s Umwelt (von Uexküll 1992: 345–346).
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Maran, T. (2017). From Abstract Mimicry to Ecological Codes. In: Mimicry and Meaning: Structure and Semiotics of Biological Mimicry. Biosemiotics, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-50317-2_11
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