ISI Library

Annotation: This book, in this re-edition, contains a broad update of the research on the topic of prenatal styles. What is proposed here is a psychophysiological aesthetics and at the same time a semiotics that provides tools to diagnose "senseless" pathological behaviors as symptoms of an obsessive or regressive condition corresponding to a certain prenatal evolutionary phase. The volume is aimed at a wide and varied audience. In particular, it is proposed as a training tool for teachers of verbal and non-verbal expressive disciplines, for teachers and students of humanistic disciplines, for educators, animators, community assistants and health personnel.

Identifier: 9788869922787

Status: Available

Other title information: Structure and Semiotics of Biological Mimicry

Annotation: The present book analyses critically the tripartite mimicry model (consisting of the mimic, model and receiver species) and develops semiotic tools for comparative analysis. It is proposed that mimicry has a double structure where sign relations in communication are in constant interplay with ecological relations between species. Multi-constructivism and toolbox-like conceptual methods are advocated for, as these allow taking into account both the participants’ Umwelten as well as cultural meanings related to specific mimicry cases. From biosemiotic viewpoint, mimicry is a sign relation, where deceptively similar messages are perceived, interpreted and acted upon. Focusing on living subjects and their communication opens up new ways to understand mimicry. Such view helps to explain the diversity of mimicry as well as mimicry studies and treat these in a single framework. On a meta-level, a semiotic view allows critical reflection on the use of mimicry concept in modern biology. The author further discusses interpretations of mimicry in contemporary semiotics, analyses mimicry as communicative interaction, relates mimicry to iconic signs and focuses on abstract resemblances in mimicry. Theoretical discussions are illustrated with detailed excursions into practical mimicry cases in nature (brood parasitism, eyespots, myrmecomorphy, etc.). The book concludes with a conviction that mimicry should be treated in a broader semiotic-ecological context as it presumes the existence of ecological codes and other sign conventions in the ecosystem.

Identifier: 9783319503158

Status: Available

Other title information: Zoosemiotic perspectives

Notes: Editors of the series: Kalevi Kull, Silvi Salupere, Peeter Torop

Annotation: This book is a collective effort. Its authors belong to the research group in zoosemiotics and human-animal relations based in the Department of Semiotics at the University of Tartu in Estonia, and in the Department of Semiotics at the University of Stavanger in Norway. The two opening chapters are written and edited collectively and present a framework of philosophical, historical, epistemological and methodological matters of zoosemiotic research. These initial considerations are followed by specific case studies that have been conducted by individual authors. The specific chapters, however, have been cross-edited and commented on by other authors of the book so that the whole collection forms an integrated set of view-points.

Identifier: 9789949772803

Status: Available

Annotation: This is the first book to consider the major implications for culture of the new science of biosemiotics. The volume is mainly aimed at an audience outside biosemiotics and semiotics, in the humanities and social sciences principally, who will welcome elucidation of the possible benefits to their subject area from a relatively new field. The book is therefore devoted to illuminating the extent to which biosemiotics constitutes an ‘epistemological break’ with ‘modern’ modes of conceptualizing culture. It shows biosemiotics to be a significant departure from those modes of thought that neglect to acknowledge continuity across nature, modes which install culture and the vicissitudes of the polis at the centre of their deliberations. The volume exposes the untenability of the ‘culture/nature’ division, presenting a challenge to the many approaches that can only produce an understanding of culture as a realm autonomous and divorced from nature.

Identifier: 9789402408577

Status: Available

Annotation: This book gives a concise history of biophysics in contemporary China, from about 1949 to 1976. It outlines how a science speciality evolved from an ambiguous and amorphous field into a fully-fledged academic discipline in the socio-institutional contexts of contemporary China. The book relates how, while initially consisting of cell biologists, the Chinese biophysics community redirected their disciplinary priorities toward rocket science in the late 1950s to accommodate the national interests of the time. Biophysicists who had worked on biological-sounding rockets were drawn to the military sector and continued to contribute to human spaceflight in post-Mao China. Besides the rocket-and-space missions which provided the material context for biophysics to expand in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Chinese biophysicists also created research and educational programs surrounding biophysics by exploiting the institutional opportunities afforded by the policy emphasis on science's role to drive modernization. The book explores and demonstrates the collective achievements and struggles of Chinese biophysicists in building their scientific discipline.

Identifier: 9783319180922

Status: Available

Annotation: Our relationship with "other" animals is not only becoming socially ever more significant, it has also been rediscovered as a topic for the humanities and sciences. This volume is the first encyclopedia to devote itself comprehensively to the relationship between humans and animals. In contrast to traditional introductions into animal ethics, the large-scale work does not limit itself to issues of moral philosophy but also explores the human-animal relationship from a historical, sociological, ethological and cultural perspective

Identifier: 9783837622324

Status: Available

Notes: Editors of the series: Kalevi Kull, Silvi Salupere, Peeter Torop

Annotation: This is a special commemorative edition of Gatherings in Biosemiotics. It includes new material on the basics of biosemiotics, as well as a complete history of the Gatherings as told by their organizers. The first part, Approaches to Biosemiotics, includes five short papers on the importance of semiotics for biology. The second part, History of the Gatherings, begins with two retrospectives, by Jesper Hoffmeyer and Donald Favareau. The third part features nearly the entire set of submitted abstracts for this year's conference.

Identifier: 9789949320486

Status: Available

Other title information: An examination into the signs of life and the life of signs

Notes: originally published in Danish as Biosemiotik. En afhandling om livets tegn og tegnenes liv (2005)

Annotation: Recent debates surrounding the teaching of biology divide participants into three camps based on how they explain the appearance of the human race: evolution, creationism, or intelligent design. Biosemiotics discovers an intriguing higher ground respecting those opposing theories by arguing that questions of meaning and experiential life can be integrated into the scientific study of nature. This groundbreaking book shows how the linguistic powers of humans imply that consciousness emerges in the evolutionary process and that life is based on sign action, not just molecular interaction. Biosemiotics will be essential reading for anyone interested in the nexus of linguistic possibility and biological reality.

Identifier: 9781859661691

Status: Available

Annotation: Proceedings of the Gathering in Biosemiotics in Salzburg 2006

Identifier: 9789525576030

Status: Available

Annotation: In Volume 2 the practical application of the early developed pragmatic philosophy of body follows. Articles from 1 to 5 are reviews which cover all organismic kingdoms in special examples, except that of Archaea. The aim was to demonstrate Bio-communication in all domains of life as rule-governed sign-mediated interactions.

Status: Available

Other title information: proposals for a handbook

Annotation: Zoosemiotcs is more than forty years old. It was in 1963 when Thomas Sebeok established its birth and, partly, definitons. As most people in their forties, zoosemiotics, too, seems to be driven by a desire to reflect about its life, its identity and its experiences. We know very little about zoosemiotics, and the amount of information at our disposal is sometimes quite confusing, if not confused. Forty years is a very young age, scientifically speaking, for a discipline to answer its most important questions. The present book consists of a series of esssays with a homogenous and causally correlated structure. It summarises all the author's interests in the field, including his attempt to extend the field to the areas of anthrozoology (i.e., the study of the human-other animal relationship) and a string ethical input.

Identifier: 9789525431162

Status: Available

Annotation: In this book the authors develop a theory of styles of expression that are constituted before birth. The basic assumption is that prenatal life leaves a deep trace on the persons' further development. The authors use this hypothesis to interpret artistic expressions.

Identifier: 9525431150

Status: Available

Annotation: This book opens a new perspective on living nature through the philosophical foundation of biology as an understanding social science. The contributions integrate the pragmatic turn of the theory of science discussion, replacing the solus ipse subject of knowledge of objectivism by the intersubjective - communicative character of thought, experience and research. A three-leveled biosemiotics investigates rule-governed sign-mediated interactions within and between organisms of all organismic kingdoms. This approach underlines the complementarity of syntactic, pragmatic and semantic rules as a precondition for adequately investigating the languagelike structure of the genetic code and the communicative organization of interacting living nature.

Identifier: 9525576019

Status: Available

Notes: The title in English - Mimicry as a communication semiotic phenomenon

Annotation: Timo Maran's PhD Dissertation, studying the phenomenon of mimicry in from a biosemiotic standpoint.

Identifier: 9949110912

Status: Available

Annotation: Marcello Barbieri sets out his theory that there are many more organic codes in nature than the genetic code. The existence of these codes can be used to explain the major steps in the evolutionary history of life, and processes like epigenesis and complexity generation in embryos

Identifier: 0521824141

Status: Available

Annotation: The "chicken-and-egg" enigma of how genetic information and the body intermingle in "performing life" is a fascinating challenge for biology. The "Jurassic Park Fallacy" is a more traditional interpretation, stating that all the information necessary to build a body is present in DNA; the cell is but a "juke box" playing unambiguously what is in its genetic text and tuning the performance to the environment. Anton Markos suggests a complementary approach: to assume that living beings are endowed with a capacity analogous to a human reader, who is able to extract meaning from a given text, according to her or his personal experience and cultural background. Hermeneutics was developed in the humanities as a method to achieve understanding, in a given context, of texts, history, and artwork. The author takes living beings as hermeneutical interpreters of "texts" encoded in DNA." "This book should interest scholars in both biology and the humanities. To bring both kinds of reader to a common platform, the first part compares two problem-solving strategies: the "objectivist" approach common in natural sciences and hermeneutics as used in the humanities. The second part surveys aspects of the development of twentieth-century biology, also accentuating branches that never became part of today's mainstream. The third part reviews a large body of recent evidence, which can be interpreted in favor of the author's arguments."

Identifier: 0195149483

Status: Available

Annotation: This book is about biosemiotics - a paradigm for both biological and semiotic thinking - as approached through the work of one of its pioneers, Jesper Hoffmeyer.

Identifier: 9985566327

Status: Available

Other title information: biofotonica, stiinta a complexitatii

Annotation: This book is an attempt to create an interdisciplinary perspective to light as a physical and biological henomenon.

Identifier: 9739899765

Status: Available

Annotation: Semiotic theory, which has restricted its focus largely to human forms of signification, is transformed by Robert S. Corrington into a semiotics of nature itself. Corrington situates the divide between "nature naturing" and "nature natured" within the context of classical American pragmaticism and postmodern psychoanalysis. At the heart of this new metaphysics is an insistence that all signs participate in larger orders of meaning that are natural and religious. Meanings embodied in nature point beyond nature to the mystery inherent in positioned codes and signs

Identifier: 0253314410

Status: Available

Annotation: Scientists act within a social context and from a philosophical perspective that is inherently political. Whether they realize it or not, scientists always choose sides. The Dialectical Biologist explores this political nature of scientific inquiry, advancing its argument within the framework of Marxist dialectic. These essays stress the concepts of continual change and codetermination between organism and environment, part and whole, structure and process, science and politics. Throughout, this book questions our accepted definitions and biases, showing the self-reflective nature of scientific activity within society.

Identifier: 067420283X

Status: Available

Other title information: an annotated bibliography, 1971-1981

Annotation: 1410 references to published literature in English, Spanish, German, French, Italian, Dutch, and Portuguese. 12 annotators wrote the abstracts and prepared a subject index. The bibliography includes works published in six languages that are directly concerned with the psychology or anthropology of body movement. Articles or books from areas such as dance therapy, motor learning, psycholinguistics, ethology, and physical education are included only if they deal in some way with behavioural aspects of movement per se and if they are focused clearly on body language – particularly research in body language as opposed to clinical or training program reports.

Identifier: 0253341019

Status: Available

Annotation: This series of the Approaches to Semiotics series, edited by thomas A. Sebeok, features monographs, including reprints of classics in the field, translations of imortant books from languages other than English, French, or German, collections of articles by a single author or on some unified theme, and relevant conference proceedings.

Identifier: 9783110862850

Status: Available