Chapter 4: Information and semiosis in Peirce’s science of signs
Chapter 4: Information and semiosis in Peirce’s science of signs

Summary/Abstract: When Peircean semiotics is used as a theoretical framework for case studies about specific meaning processes in biology, one should remember that the notion of Sign in Peirce is not the same as a simple ‘unit’ of information or communication as these terms are often used in several fields of research. It is a notion related to formal attempts to describe mind processes in general (Skagestad 2004). It is our primary aim here to apply some central notions of Peirce’s semiotics to understand the nature of genetic information. Nevertheless, such an application necessarily involves interpretation and, thus, decisions about how to see, for instance, the relationship between what molecular biologists and geneticists call forms of information processing (i.e., production and interpretation of Signs) in a complex living system such as the cell and forms of causality in that system.

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