Biosemiotics’ greatest potential contribution to biology

Abstract

Encouraging biologists to factor semiotics into their research is likely to fall on deaf ears because they already factor it in through an accepted life science methodological standard here called Parallel Engineering (APE). Biosemiotics’ most significant contribution to biology – a contribution that biologists would come to depend upon – would be a more rigorous alternative methodology to APE through a proof-of-concept explanation for how semiotics – here defined as beings making functional interpretive effort – can emerge within nothing but physical phenomena. It would explain organisms’ most basic agency – their struggle for existence – ergodynamically (i.e., an emergent change in likely physical work) that results in work (effort) that works (functions) to keep a chemical system working (a being) in semiotic response to their workspace (interpretation).