Interdisciplinarity
Interdisciplinarity

Summary/Abstract: In the following passages, I intend to make a few annotations on the nature of the interdisciplinarity character that is claimed for biosemiotics in the above quote from Jesper Hoffmeyer. Interdisciplinary scholar J. T. Klein (1990: 43) explains that interdisciplinarity refers to integration, or the practice of borrowing from other disciplines. Following this definition, Hoffmeyer’s remark on the interdisciplinarity of biosemiotics appears to refer to the way in which this type of biology borrows concepts from semiotics. But there are two problems with this conception: (1) it does not specify which ‘version’ of semiotics is being borrowed, (2) it fails to recognize that biosemiotics also borrows from cybernetics and systems thinking.

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