From biosemiotics to physiosemiotics

Towards a speculative semiotics of the inorganic world.

Abstract

In the first part of the article, biosemiotics will be presented in its historical and theoretical dynamics. New areas of research that have emerged in the speculative field of biosemiotics, such as ecosemiotics, will be explored. In all its developments, biosemiotics, which identifies semiosis with life, excludes inorganic matter from any semiotics processes. However, the inorganic world is a fundamental part of the biosphere, especially if we consider the emergence of life. In order to include inorganic matter within semiotic processes of the biosphere we will use James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis reinterpreted in the light of semiotics. If we use the hypothesis of planet Earth as a living system in its complexity and if we consider that every living system is intrinsically semiotic, then inorganic matter must also participate in semiotics processes. In this sense, the semiotics of the inorganic world reveals that it participates in a sort of non-human agency. This type of speculative semiotics engages semiotics processes that are constitutive of matter and that can be read as the story of the planet itself. In conclusion, I will propose a physiosemiotics as semiotics of matter.