Seminar on Biosemiotics

Moscow State University has a long tradition of studying theoretical biology. By theoretical biology I mean attempts to understand the phenomenon of life itself rather than a set of specific theories (e.g., evolutionary theory, theory of population dynamics). Specific theories help to predict the structure and dynamics of biological systems but they do not answer the question what is life, what are possible forms of life, what are major trends and possible mechanisms of evolution. Expected answers should be universal, i.e., applicable not only to the life as it exists on Earth, but to any form of life. Theoretical biology is a general theory of life, which may include specific biological theories but can not be reduced to these theories.

In 1974 a working group on Theoretical Biology was organized by Alexander Levich. Activities in this group included regular seminars, classes on advanced mathematics (mathematical logic, set theory, group theory, topology, categories), and winter schools which usually had >150 participants. Ideological leaders were Sergei Meyen (biologist), Yuli Schreider (mathematician), and Alexander Levich (physicist). Unfortunately, in 1978 the group was dissolved by the order of the dean who suspected that the meeting were not politically correct. Then Alexander Levich organized another seminar on the study of phenomenon of time in various sciences. But this seminar was no longer focused on theoretical biology. The seminar on biosemiotics was organized by me in 1988, and I tried to follow the traditions of our previous working group on theoretical biology. The name "biosemiotics" was suggested because I believe that life has semiotic nature. The goal was to understand how signification can arise in the inorganic world, and lead to a biological evolution.

I taught classes on advanced mathematics, and Yuli Schreider taught a course on information theory. In January-February 1989 we had our first winter school on biosemiotics in Soushnevo (near Moscow). The second winter school was in January-February 1990 in the same place. We had 100-120 participants, some of them can be found on the photograph below which was taken in 1990 in Soushnevo (click on the photograph to enlarge it).

Below find some topics of our discussions.

• Alexei Sharov (me) developed several concepts that can be found in my papers: "Biosemiotics: A functional-evolutionary approach to the analysis of the sense of information" and "Theory of self-reproducing systems". Self-reproduction is necessary for development of information because self-reproducing systems (SRS) have internal goal - to reproduce, and this goal determines the value of information. Information develops only if it has value.
• Sergei Chebanov develops the theory of biohermeneutics. He thinks that the term biohermeneutics is better than biosemiotics because hermeneutics considers integration of a text with personal activity of the author and the reader. The methodology for studying living systems has not been developed yet. It is mostly adopted from physics, which is targeted at studying non-living systems, and humanities which are anthropomorphic. Chebanov suggests to consider living organisms as centaur-objects which combine physical-chemical structure with semiotic content.
• Vasili Ogryzko considered evolutionary adaptations as analogs of cognition. Genotype describes not only morphology, but also organism’s activity in the world. Heredity is not determined solely by genes but also by epigenes which allow to read and interpret genetic information. Epigenes evolve parallel to the evolution of the genotype. Language is a part of the epigenetic system. He also discussed possible quantum-mechanical mechanisms of adaptive evolution without natural selection.
• Alexander Sedov discussed the semantics of forms (morphology) and coding texts (DNA sequence) in the systematics of organisms. He thinks that the analyses of texts and forms are complimentary and both essential for biology. Molecular biology becomes a genolinguistics.
• Andrei Igamberdiev developed the conception of biological whole based on principles of quantum mechanics. He argued that irreversibility and wholeness of organisms result from non-local dynamics (Prigozhin). There is no instantaneous "states" of an organism; present time has a non-zero duration. Non-local dynamics is essential for stable functioning and homeostasis of biological systems.
• S. A. Titov discussed the use of the notion "context" in biological systems.