Jesper Hoffmeyer
University of Copenhagen
Department of Biological Chemistry
Solvgade 83
DK 1307 Copenhagen Denmark
hoffmeyer@mermaid.molbio.ku.dk

From: Jesper Hoffmeyer
To: Marcello Barbieri
Date: 6 March 2001

Dear Marcello Barbieri

Thank you very much for sending me your book of which I have already
consumed the first half. It's fascinating to see your approach to the
same kind of problems which triggers my own curiosity. Your approach
of course is very different from mine, but they certainly converge.
Please tell me if you know my book "Signs of Meaning in the Universe"
since otherwise I shall send it to you.

With my best wishes

Jesper

From: Marcello Barbieri
To: Jesper Hoffmeyer
Date: 9 May 2001

Dear Hoffmeyer

I have just finished reading Signs of Meaning, surely one of the best books I have read in a very long time.
I deeply enjoyed it, and I am thoroughly grateful to you for sending it.
There are a few minor points which I would object to (the bacterial theory of life, for example), but they are irrelevant in comparison to the stumbling-block that seems to be dividing us: the philosophy-versus-science issue. This is going to be a sore point for years to come if we don't face it now, and so I have decided to come clean with it.
You have stated your position at page 90 in these terms:
"Questioning the nature of life comes under the heading of philosophy...For the most part scientists could not care less about such "philosophical jiggery-pokery". To the scientists, reality amounts to data plus those theories which make sense of the gathered data. So questioning the connection between data and reality means betraying, right at the start, that one is not a true scientist".
I must underline that I do not accept that. A scientist MUST question the nature of life, otherwise he is betraying science. The people you are referring to are not scientists but technicians, and your complaint is right only in so far as most self-appointed scientists are in fact only technicians.
This amounts to saying that "questioning the nature of life" in not philosophy's private property. There is a road from philosophy and a road from science toward that goal. So the real issue is: what is the difference between the two approaches?
You have already provided the answer at page 131 with these words:
"Scholarship is worth no more than the foundation on which it is built, and anyone who does not pay some heed, at regular intervals, to the foundations of their scholarship, is not much of a scholar".
Very well then. Questioning the nature of life means looking for a theory of life, and a theory of life is worth no more than its foundational propositions.
So the difference lies in the nature of those propositions. A scientific theory is one that is built on falsifiable propositions, whereas a philosophical theory does not have such a constraint. If you are not a Popper's follower, you may prefer to replace "falsifiable" with a different term (for example "testable", or others), but the point does not change. There is a "demarcation line" between science and other forms of enquiry, and even if we do not agree about its precise formulation, we "know" that that borderline does exist.
Semantic Biology is built on 8 foundational propositions which are all falsifiable (or testable or whatever you want to call it), and so I can rightly claim that it is science.
I am not sure, instead, that the same is true for Biosemiotics.
One of the foundational propositions of Biosemiotics (if I got it right) is that "life is a world of signs".
I do see your point (we both agree that meaning is a natural entity which belongs to the very heart of life), but I also know that some organic processes are catalyzed and others are codified reactions, and so I need a criterion that allows me to recognize which is which. It is not true that "everything" is sign, and so that statement cannot be a foundational truth (it amounts to accepting a sort of Hegel's night "where all cows are black").
I am not saying that Biosemiotics cannot be founded on falsifiable propositions. I simply do not see them now, and so I must conclude, for the time being at least, that it is a philosophical theory.
And there is nothing wrong with that, because we do need philosophy. Being free from the "falsifiability" constraint, philosophy has much more "semiotic freedom" (as you would call it), and that is important because it allows us to cover more ground than science and to experiment with new scenarios.
My point, in conclusion, is that philosophy and science are both valuable means of "questioning the nature of life", and we should explore both of them. When I say that Biosemiotics is philosophy, in other words, I do not intend to belittle it, and I sincerely hope that you do not take that as a demeaning remark, because it is not what I have in mind.
With this I have put my cards on the table, and I look forward to your reply.
With my very best regards,

Yours Marcello Barbieri

From: Jesper Hoffmeyer
To: Marcello Barbieri
Date: 10 May 2001

Dear Barbieri

I shall return later with the addresses you asked for. But first let me thank you for your kind words in your last mail and the attempt at stating our difference in clear terms.

I think you are somehow fundamentally right in pointing out that your work is scientific in the sense that it "is built on falsifiable propositions", and you may be right that biosemiotics is not scientific in this sense. I also think Popper, and long time before him (though never acknowledged by Popper) Peirce, captures something important by stating this criterium of falsicification.

And yet to me science is better represented by the German word "wissenshaft" (in Danish "videnskab") and as such it encompasses our systematic endeavor to get consistent knowledge and understanding of nature. If such knowledge cannot be stated in the form of falsifiable propositions, is it then not knowledge? I think it would be unfruitful to claim such a thing. As Popper himself saw falsification cannot itself carry the burden of an absolute criterion, because a falsification ultimately has to be verified as a falsification - but then we end up in the positivist impass. (The famous example is Lord Kelvin's falsification of Darwinism, based on his calculations of the rate of cooling of the Earth. Kelvin was wrong of course, but how could he know when radioactivity was not yet known to him).

So, I guess my point is, that the distinction between science and philosophy, is not - and ought not be - as waterproof as one might perhaps think.

Nevertheless, as I said, I share your conception of semantic biology as far more close to science as science is normally seen. And yet, I understand, that scienctist generally do not like it. No wonder then, they dont like biosemiotics either.

As for your concrete remarks:

You have stated your position at page 90 in these terms: "Questioning the nature of life comes under the heading of philosophy...For the most part scientists could not care less about such "philosophical jiggery-pokery". To the scientists, reality amounts to data plus those theories which make sense of the gathered data. So questioning the connection between data and reality means betraying, right at the start, that one is not a true scientist".
I must underline that I do not accept that. A scientist MUST question the nature of life, otherwise he is betraying science. The people you are referring to are not scientists but technicians, and your complaint is right only in so far as most self-appointed scientists are in fact only technicians.

I fully agree, that was in fact exactly what I meant

One of the foundational propositions of Biosemiotics (if I got it right) is that "life is a world of signs". I do see your point (we both agree that meaning is a natural entity which belongs to the very heart of life), but I also know that some organic processes are catalyzed and others are codified reactions, and so I need a criterion that allows me to recognize which is which. It is not true that "everything" is sign, and so that statement cannot be a foundational truth (it amounts to accepting a sort of Hegel's night "where all cows are black").

I would not have expressed myself exactly like that today. Now, let me try to explain this. An old biochemist's "rule-of-thumb" has it that whenever there exist in nature a stock of energy, there will also exist a species for whom this particular stock of energy is a source of nutrition. Diamond may be an exception, but exceptions are certainly rare. Now, as I see it, the same holds true for communcation: whenever there exist in nature a regular behavior or activity (a habit), there will also exist a species for whom this particular behavior or activity ( habit) has become a cue (sign) serving to assit its survival. It will be hard to prove this, but I am convinced it contains a lot of truth.

Now at the biochemical level, I think the same is true. The origin of cAMP as a signal is probably metabolic, but due to metablic regularities the molecule gradually became used as a metabolic sign by cells, and from there on it took on all other kinds of meaning. But the millions of intracellullar protein-protein interactions might also have acquired such "meanings". So, that a molecule is a sign does not preclude it from being involved in catalytic tasks. On the contrary in fact. This is like two faces of a coin.

But hidden in all this is what I would call a fruitful problem. You have a very strict notion of code, where I and perhaps most biosemioticians has a much more fluent conception of interpretants. My intuitive feeling here - but you may persuade me I am wrong - is that your code concept owes a lot to structuralist linguistics, i .e. it belongs to the Sausurian linguistic tradition (like Umberto Eco) which takes human language as the prototype sign systems. I believe this is the main line of separation between Peircean semiotics and Saussurian semiotics. Peircean semiotics takes human language as a highly specialized late point in evolution and not as a general type of a sign system.

Personally I think the code concept is very useful when we talk about digital codes like language and DNA. But my idea of analogue (indexical or iconic) codes broadens the code concept out to cover less formalized semiotic interactions.

I am not saying that Biosemiotics cannot be founded on falsifiable propositions. I simply do not see them now, and so I must conclude, for the time being at least, that it is a philosophical theory.

OK. But perhaps this may change.

And there is nothing wrong with that, because we do need philosophy. Being free from the "falsifiability" constraint, philosophy has much more "semiotic freedom" (as you would call it), and that is important because it allows us to cover more ground than science and to experiment with new scenarios.
My point, in conclusion, is that philosophy and science are both valuable means of "questioning the nature of life", and we should explore both of them.

So, perhaps we agree at a deep level, but disagree on the use of the term science.

When I say that Biosemiotics is philosophy, in other words, I do not intend to belittle it, and I sincerely hope that you do not take that as a demeaning remark, because it is not what I have in mind.

A final remark on proceedure. I am now increasingly absorbed in organizing this Gatherinsg meeting, and it is very hard for me to get time for making thoughtful comments. So I ask for your indulgence in case I will be a unduely brief in our communication during the next few weeks.

With my best wishes

Jesper Hoffmeyer