What we can learn from semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology to understand religious communication

Abstract

If religion is a socio-cultural meaning system as part of the socio-cultural sphere, then how does it relate to mental, organic, and physical processes that belong to the environment of religion? Th e article contributes to answering this question by referring to semiotics, systems theory, and theoretical biology. Th e starting point is understanding religious evolution as a co-evolution to societal evolution, namely, as one of the latter’s internal diff erentiations. In turn, societal evolution is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. Th ese evolutionary spheres mutually constitute one another’s environments. Th e eigenstate of the socio-cultural sphere consists of language activated via communication. Language is the replicator of socio-cultural processes corresponding to the function of the genome in organic processes. Th e diff erentiation of spheres in general evolution concerns respective organic, mental, and socio-cultural substrates, while the substrate-neutral structure of the two evolutionary dimensions of organic and societal processes, including religion, is revealed as semiotic patterns that organic and societal processes have in common. Organic and religious processes of generating information are isomorphic. Th us, semiosis mediates between religious communication and its environment.