Biosemiotics is a new disciplinary enterprise that appears scientific, but not the same way as physics and chemistry. Biology is different. Biological processes depend on normal contexts and potentials. We can label a primal normal context as "life" and its corresponding potential as "staying alive". A living thing is not the same as a physical and chemical thing.
The causalities of physics and chemistry can be mathematically and mechanically modeled. The causalities of biology are similar, yet different in a crucial fashion. Sign relations are critical for biology, but not for physics and chemistry. So, how does one account for sign-relations?
One must reconsider the reality of the noumenon, the thing itself.
The biosemiotic noumenal overlay reifies the specifying, exemplar and interventional sign relations into two dyads, semiotic agency and the interventional sign. The scholastic interscope, the question of potential meaning, constructivism, hierarchies and anchors of meaning are discussed and reviewed. Part 4 ends with a brief presentation of the innovative ideas that Razie Mah offers biosemioticians.
This commentary collects blogs for May and June of 2025 and covers chapters from the books, "Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism", published in 2021, authored by Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen, as well as "Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe", published in 2024, edited by Alexei Sharov and George Mikhailovsky.