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BIOSEMIOTICS AND THE RELATIONAL TURN IN BIOLOGY

This contribution attempts to synthesize and expand ideas previously presented at these meetings by placing them into a wider framework at the intersection of biosemiotics and current philosophy of biology. In previous investigations I aimed mainly at exploring the connections between two special kinds of relational structures: the networks of self-referential circular loops that appear pervasively in living systems, and the triadic relational structures that Peircean semiotics envisions as the basis of all semiotic transactions. On the present occasion I attempt to place these concerns within a wider set of emerging ideas that have recently coalesced through both new and concurrent tendencies in separate areas of biology and the philosophy of science. For lack of a better expression, I characterize these partially overlapping trends as the outcomes of a ―relational turn‖ in these disciplines. Indeed, one of the salient commonalities connecting these developments is a shift of attention away from objects and things and towards relational structures and processes, both as the central targets of experimental research, and as the principal conceptual vehicles for explanatory modeling and theorizing. Increasingly sophisticated research technologies of molecular biology have generated an enormous quantity of experimental data, subsequently sparking a renewed need for relational approaches that help to discern recurrent patterns. Earlier conceptions of relational biology and cybernetics, once deemed too abstract and speculative to make contact with experimental praxis, are now being resurrected and applied through the application of methods made possible by current computational, modeling and simulation tools. With this in mind, I briefly review aspects of systems biology and some new directions in evolutionary theory, such as epigenetic inheritance, niche construction and ecological engineering. My focus is on the role of circular, downward and reciprocal causation in the constitution of relational structures and dynamical circuits or networks. Finally, I explore possible avenues of integration and conceptual cooperation between ideas and goals of biosemiotics and ones emerging from the examined new currents in biology. For this purpose I sketch the main features of a parallel relational turn presently manifest in the philosophy of science, rooted in the philosophy of physics and mathematics. This relational turn is a main, explicit tenet of different varieties of structural or relational realism and informational realism. I attempt to assess the potential of this philosophical platform for grounding the integration of biosemiotics with the rest of biology, as well as natural philosophy in general, across disciplinary boundaries.