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Biosemiotics (from the Ancient Greek βίος bios, "life" and σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, production of signs and codes and communication processes in the biological realm.Favareau, Donald (ed.) 2010. Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary. (Biosemiotics 3.) Berlin: Springer.
Biosemiotics integrates the findings of biology and semiotics and proposes a paradigm shift in the scientific view of life, in which semiosis (sign process, including meaning and interpretation) is one of its immanent and intrinsic features. The term biosemiotic was first used by Friedrich S. Rothschild in 1962,On the early use of the term, see: Kull, Kalevi 2022. The term ‘Biosemiotik’ in the 19th century. Sign Systems Studies 50(1): 173–178. but Thomas Sebeok, Thure von Uexküll, Jesper Hoffmeyer and many others have implemented the term and field.Kull, Kalevi 1999. Biosemiotics in the twentieth century: A view from biology. Semiotica 127(1/4): 385–414. The field is generally divided between theoretical and applied biosemiotics.
Insights from biosemiotics have also been adopted in the humanities and social sciences, including Anthrozoology, human–plant studies and cybersemiotics.
According to the dominant aspect of semiosis under study, the following labels have been used: biopragmatics, biosemantics, and biosyntactics.
In the 1980s a circle of mathematicians active in Theoretical Biology, René Thom (Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques), Yannick Kergosien (Dalhousie University and Institut des Hautes Etudes Scientifiques), and Robert Rosen (Dalhousie University, also a former member of the Buffalo group with Howard H. Pattee), explored the relations between Semiotics and Biology using such headings as "Nature Semiotics",Kergosien, Y. (1985) Sémiotique de la Nature, IVe séminaire de l'Ecole d'automne de Biologie Théorique (Solignac, juin 1984), G. BENCHETRIT éd., C.N.R.S.Kergosien, Y. (1992) Nature Semiotics : The Icons of Nature. Biosemiotics : The Semiotic Web 1991, T. Sebeok et J. Umiker-Sebeok (eds), Berlin : Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 145-170 "Semiophysics",Thom, R., (1989) Semio physics: a sketch. Redwood City, Calif. : Addison-Wesley Pub. Co. or "Anticipatory Systems"Rosen, R. (1985) Anticipatory systems, Pergamon Press and taking a modeling approach.
The contemporary period (as initiated by Copenhagen-Tartu school)See an account of recent history in: Petrilli, Susan (2011). Expression and Interpretation in Language. Transaction Publishers, pp. 85–92. include biologists Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche, Terrence Deacon, semioticians Martin Krampen, Paul Cobley, philosophers Donald Favareau, John Deely, John Collier and complex systems scientists Howard H. Pattee, Michael Conrad, Luis M. Rocha, Cliff Joslyn and León Croizat.
In 2001, an annual international conference for biosemiotic research known as the Gatherings in BiosemioticsRattasepp, Silver; Bennett, Tyler (eds.) 2012. Gatherings in Biosemiotics. (Tartu Semiotics Library 11.) Tartu: University of Tartu Press. was inaugurated, and has taken place every year since.
In 2004, a group of biosemioticians – Marcello Barbieri, Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer, Kalevi Kull, and Anton Markoš – decided to establish an international journal of biosemiotics. Under their editorship, the Journal of Biosemiotics was launched by Nova Science Publishers in 2005 (two issues published), and with the same five co-editors Biosemiotics was launched by Springer Science in 2008. The book series Biosemiotics (Springer), edited by Claus Emmeche, Donald Favareau, Kalevi Kull, and Alexei Sharov, began in 2007 and 27 volumes have been published in the series by 2024.
The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies was established in 2005 by Donald Favareau and the five editors listed above.Favareau, Donald 2005. Founding a world biosemiotics institution: The International Society for Biosemiotic Studies. Sign Systems Studies 33(2): 481–485. A collective programmatic paper on the basic theses of biosemiotics appeared in 2009.Kalevi Kull; Terrence Deacon; Claus Emmeche; Jesper Hoffmeyer; Stjernfelt, Frederik 2009. Theses on biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a theoretical biology. Biological Theory 4(2): 167–173, and in 2010, an 800 page textbook and anthology, Essential Readings in Biosemiotics, was published, with bibliographies and commentary by Donald Favareau.
One of roots for biosemiotics has been medical semiotics. In 2016, Springer published Biosemiotic Medicine: Healing in the World of Meaning, edited by Farzad Goli as part of Studies in Neuroscience, Consciousness and Spirituality.
Since 2021, the American philosopher Jason Josephson Storm has drawn on biosemiotics and empirical research on animal communication to propose hylosemiotics, a theory of ontology and communication that Storm believes could allow the humanities to move beyond the linguistic turn.Jason Ananda Josephson Storm (2025). 9780226786650, University of Chicago Press. . ISBN 9780226786650
John Deely's work also represents an engagement between humanistic and biosemiotic approaches. Deely was trained as a historian and not a biologist but discussed biosemiotics and zoosemiotics extensively in his introductory works on semiotics and clarified terms that are relevant for biosemiotics. Although his idea of physiosemiotics was criticized by practicing biosemioticians, Paul Cobley, Donald Favareau, and Kalevi Kull wrote that "the debates on this conceptual point between Deely and the biosemiotics community were always civil and marked by a mutual admiration for the contributions of the other towards the advancement of our understanding of sign relations."
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