Donald Favareau – författare

An edited volume bringing together 25 of today’s most forward-thinking biologists and philosophers on sign processes and meaning-making in organisms.Theoretical biology is concerned with providing science with explanatory frameworks within which to fit its findings. Biosemiotics is the study of sign-processes within life processes.In the tradition of the field-changing four-volume essay collection Towards a Theoretical Biology issued by developmental biologist Conrad Hal Waddington from 1968 to 1972, this volume brings together many of today’s leading scientists to discuss what they consider to be the most important and pressing problems in our current understandings of the biological world—and how best to advance our understandings of such life processes scientifically.

Synthesizing the findings from a wide range of disciplines – from biology and anthropology to philosophy and linguistics – the emerging field of Biosemiotics explores the highly complex phenomenon of sign processing in living systems. Seeking to advance a naturalistic understanding of the evolution and development of sign-dependent life processes, contemporary biosemiotic theory offers important new conceptual tools for the scientific understanding of mind and meaning, for the development of artificial intelligence, and for the ongoing research into the rich diversity of non-verbal human, animal and biological communication processes.Donald Favareau’s Essential Readings in Biosemiotics has been designed as a single-source overview of the major works informing this new interdiscipline, and provides scholarly historical and analytical commentary on each of the texts presented. The first of its kind, this book constitutes a valuable resource to both bioscientists and to semioticians interested in this emerging new discipline, and can function as a primary textbook for students in biosemiotics, as well. Moreover, because of its inherently interdisciplinary nature and its focus on the ‘big questions’ of cognition, meaning and evolutionary biology, this volume should be of interest to anyone working in the fields of cognitive science, theoretical biology, philosophy of mind, evolutionary psychology, communication studies or the history and philosophy of science.