1The present paper stems from the assumption that the form of any semiotic theory is both conceptual and topological, with a process of translation between them. In fact, the global interpretation of a conceptual form involves a transposition into a spatial and temporal arrangement of concepts, and the relationships they maintain between each other. For instance, the conceptual principle of “inter-definition” induces reciprocal links between concepts, as well as a global organization of the paths of their inter-definition; it forces any global representation of conceptual theory to adopt a topological form that accounts for these paths.
2The topological form is the visual translation of this “mental image” of conceptual organization. It is often made explicit, that is, translated into a diagram, and the (meta)semiotic analysis of these diagrams is one of the ways to access the topological meaning. But it can also remain implicit, and the epistemological study begins with an analysis of the conceptual form, to understand its underlying topological organization. We then identify, by confronting the difficulties of this intersemiotic translation, critical zones and hiatuses in the conceptual form: the search for an explicit topological form constitutes in this case a coherence test for the conceptual form, or even an agency test for its capacity to propose an imaginable or perceptible form, which is transposable into a method.
3The topology of Greimassian theory, for instance, is the visual translation of the generative path, and the resulting diagram is a table of theoretical hierarchical levels. Coquet (1997, 2007) clearly defines the topology of the subjectal semiotics of instances as a “centered topology”, but never visualizes it in any of his writings. In Sens et textualité (1989, p. 103), Rastier describes and visually represents the topology of interpretative semantics in the form of four components (i.e. thematic, dialectical, dialogical and tactical components) and five types of interactions. In a commentary on the resulting diagram, he also specifies the choices that led him to the form of this diagram, distancing himself from the respectively “sequential” conceptions of generative grammar, and “modular” conceptions of cognitive linguistics. We note in these reflections by Rastier a clear awareness of the epistemological stakes of the topological form of the theory. However, twelve years later (Rastier 2001), his presentation of anthropic zones, supposed to encompass all particular semantics and semiotics, is marked by a strong gap between (i) on the one hand, the conceptual commentary, which is based on a centered topology with a subjectal and centric zone, and targeting the objectal zone (identity zone < proximal zone < distal zone), and, (ii) on the other hand, the visualizations proposed, which are double-entry tables or Porphyry trees.
4Furthermore, if we assume the hypothesis of solidarity between the conceptual and topological forms of a theory, we must expect that the evolution of the former leads to that of the latter. In this regard, the study that Winfried Nöth (2015) devoted to Lotman’s semiosphere shows that the topological form of the semiosphere evolves according to successive categorical shifts. The variants identified by Nöth include, among others: the sphere opposed to chaos, the sphere composed of two hemispheres, the border as a third space, etc. It is clear that in about thirty years, the semiosphere topology evolved with the conceptual form, which itself evolved with theoretical reconfigurations. The topology of the semiosphere is not described by Lotman in one go: to grasp all of its details, it is necessary to reconstruct and gather its properties (i.e. centers, peripheries, interior and exterior spaces, boundaries, movements between the center and the periphery, or between the interior and the exterior, and specific operations at the center, around the center, at the periphery, on the boundary, and even outside of it). And above all, he himself did not produce (at least to our knowledge) synthetic diagrams of this topological form and its variants. But others have taken care of that.
5On the subject of the semiosphere, Lotman insists on the epistemological status of a theoretical topology, which is precisely the one that founds our approach. According to him, the semiosphere is not a metaphor, but a kind of epistemic model of the human world:
The space of the semiosphere carries an abstract character. This, however, is by no means to suggest that the concept of space is used, here, in a metaphorical sense. We have in mind a specific sphere, possessing signs, which are assigned to the enclosed space. Only within such a space it is possible for communicative processes and the creation of new information to be realised. (Lotman 1984, English trans. 2005, p. 207, emphasis added)
6The problem we are entering into therefore involves the conceptual form of theories, their topological form, and the modes of visualization adopted. These three dimensions are not all necessarily present, nor is each necessarily the image of the other two.
- 1 The present paper does not intend to account for the author’s entire work, which is certainly much (...)
7To test our general hypothesis concerning the relationship between the conceptual and topological forms of a semiotic theory, we will examine Kalevi Kull’s work1, and more precisely some of his publications dedicated to conceptual forms already associated, in the community of semioticians, with topological forms (e.g. the biosphere, the semiosphere, the Umwelt, and the niche, among others). From this point of view, we know that our investigation will be arduous.
8The relationship between conceptual and topological forms has been a primary concern for Kalevi Kull himself, who dealt with it in his reflections on the history of biological understanding. In fact, Kull focused on the different “ages” of biology, going through the structuring metaphors that characterize them, and using the topological forms they took in each period as an analytical grid. More specifically, he identified three (or four, depending on how one reads them) of them: the ladder, the tree, the network (and the web).
9According to Kull, the three stages in the history of biology are marked by a “deep model of understanding” of life, each “archetypal model” (Kull 2003, p. 589) being a topological form, namely a diagrammatic translation of the conceptual form—and, in this case, of the general form of understanding of the living.
10The ladder-model is the scala naturae, sometimes also described as a chain. This topological model of the conceptual form is holistic, non-temporal, stable, complete, and closed. It extends from Aristotle to the 18th century, the time when modern biology began to take shape.
11The tree-model is the arbor vitae. This topological model is branched, hierarchical, sequential, evolutionary, progressive, open, and always incomplete. It is the one from which the main biological theories (i.e. inheritance, evolution, infectious pathologies, etc.) develop. It presents bifurcations, which are points of choice and divergence, perfectly adapted to the classical theory of evolution:
The frequent usage of tree-like schemes as representations of the systems of organisms does not go back much more than the first decades of the 19th century, according to M. Ruse (1996) who has made an attempt to trace the early usage of tree diagrams. There has also been found, for instance, a tree-diagram of types of ontogenesis, drawn by K. E. v. Baer in 1827. Since E. Haeckel, the tree diagrams have been extensively used for representation of phylogenies. (Ibid., p. 593)
12In a tree-like conception, the main threshold is the one that separates nature and culture. As long as we are in the natural domain, the tree-structure is the rule; when we move into culture, another topology imposes itself: the semiosphere.
13The network-model is the tela. Its conceptual form is symbiotic and translational, corresponding to the recent period of semiotization of biology. Its topological form is non-hierarchical, making room for interdependent living entities, within larger domains, namely the semiosphere and the biosphere. This topological form is particularly suited, for example, to understanding the circulation of food and energy in an ecosystem (in this case we speak of a trophic network). It is also the only topological form that can account for social communication in the animal world in general. According to Kalevi Kull,
The contemporary biology is using the web-metaphor widely. This includes cell biology (‘metabolic network’), ecology (‘trophic web’, ‘web of life’, Capra 1996), evolutionary biology (e.g., ‘the tangled web of life’, Katz 1998). However, Darwin, for instance, did not use the term ‘network’ at all, and ‘web’ appears in Origins of Species only twice. (Ibid., p. 594)
14Unlike the arborescent conception, which insists on the semiotic threshold between nature and culture, such a reticular conception distinguishes between the living and the non-living, subsuming everything that pertains to the living, including culture and social life, to the topology of the network. According to Kull, the nodes of the web are points of meeting, recognition, co-existence and symbiosis. Thus the web emerges as a model for a communication network, not for inheritance or progress (which are typical of the tree-model).
15In the following paragraphs, we will take the risk of examining in detail what are the topological forms that support the conceptual architecture of Kalevi Kull’s work, not only to verify if they correspond to those he identifies in the history of biology, but also, and above all, to identify and discuss the path and the specific problems deriving from them.
16Kalevi Kull’s main field of research is biosemiotics. More specifically, he seeks to systematically maintain the connection with biology, on the one hand, and general semiotics, on the other hand. As regards general semiotics, biosemioticians (and especially Kalevi Kull) consider themselves as the “guardians” of the border between what is semiotic and what is not. They are mainly concerned with pushing back this border to the confines of possible meanings, defining a critical “threshold”. This threshold is indeed the first topological figure which allows biosemioticians to circumscribe their object of research.
17A threshold, better than a border, is a topological form that, while separating two domains, is oriented towards one of them. Literally, it is the mark on the ground of the entrance to a dwelling or a room in a dwelling; by extension, it is the identification of the critical zone from which any entity, including an abstract one, changes its status or meaning. This is why, when a threshold is moved, backwards or forwards, the share of each of the domains increases or decreases jointly, without changing the general orientation. In Kalevi Kull’s work, such a threshold is indeed very often pushed back and exceeded.
18Furthermore, crossing a threshold belongs to a basic topological scenario, since it serves precisely to index the place (and/or the moment) of entry into the targeted domain, and this indexing is specially intended for an actant in motion. The main difference distinguishing the threshold from the border is precisely the nature of the scenario involved: the latter is designed to be crossed in both directions, under the constraint of norms and processes that are external to the movement of the actants. In this sense, it has a strictly objectal nature (during conflicts, in particular, it remains a border, the same border, from the point of view of both the attackers and the defenders), while the threshold has an oriented, subjectal, and even embodied nature.
19According to Kull (1998a), semiotics, in its relations with biology, faces another fundamental problem, that is to say, the need to account for the way in which one passes from a non-semiotic stage of explanation (which is physical-chemical) to a semiotic stage (composed of signs, and governed by semiosis). In short, one must generate semiosis, or assume that it is already constituted. In this sense, the threshold corresponds to the starting point for establishing the conditions for semiosis to be possible. Thus formulated, the role of the threshold is comparable to that of the semiosphere, which must include all the minimal conditions for signs and communications to be able to take place within it. More precisely, in Lotman, this would be what distinguishes the biosphere from the semiosphere, namely the capacity for self-description of the latter, which implies reflexivity.
- 2 The privilege here granted to the border between the physical-chemical domain and the semiotic doma (...)
20Kull, as we will show in detail below, devotes particular attention to reflexive operations (i.e. self-repair, self-reproduction, autopoiesis, self-reading, etc.), also insisting on another very “Lotmanian” process, translation. A question therefore arises: if there is translation in every semiotic process, could we consider the threshold separating what is “semiotic” from what is “non-semiotic” as a place of translation—i.e. the translation of physical-chemical mechanisms into semiotic processes? Even if we adopt a very broad definition of translation, including the transposition between genres and supports and the transduction between types of semiosis—as Lotman, Kull, Fabbri (and ourselves) do—, the question is far from trivial, since it concerns the very nature of the threshold between the living world and the physical world, and hence the dialogue between the natural sciences and the human and social sciences. Lotman addressed this point in Culture and Explosion (Lotman 1992, English trans. 2009), where he maintained that at least one non-semiotic domain, related to the semiotic domain, is needed to explain cultural explosions. Kull does not address this point directly and explicitly, and we must therefore carefully examine whether his conception of translation in the living world also allows us to envisage a translation between the physical-chemical and the semiotic domain.2 In other words, we should scrutinize whether or not, according to Kull, the semiotic threshold is the starting point of all translations: one of the issues is the difficult topological compatibility between the threshold and the semiosphere, which he also claims, and which notably translates what is external to it in order to integrate it into its interior.
21Kull et al. (2009) investigate the relationship between semiosis and biological function. Their equivalence is established based on the observation that both refer to an entity, a situation, or a role that are absent. As related to the representamen: the absence of the dynamic object. As related to the substance or the organism: the absence of the function. In fact, in both cases, the absence is assessed in relation to what is “present”, that is to say, the representamen, or the biological substance or organism. Presence and absence then relate to two different modes of existence, realized and virtual, or more precisely, actualized and actualizable. As such, the relationship between the morphology of a living being, a substance or an organ, on the one hand, and a function likely to transform the mode of existence, on the other hand, would therefore be by right a semiosis.
22In addition, Kalevi Kull specifies that the tension of the present towards the absent is specific to telos; it is the tension between an observed fact and its purpose. For contemporary biosemiotics, such a purpose is not transcendent, decreed outside the present entity. On the contrary, it is immanent, anchored in the organization of the present entity, in its morphology, and oriented towards what it will become. A question then arises as related to the status of the distance that separates these two modes of existence: is it spatial, temporal, or both of them? In general, the telos is based on a temporal absence, prospectively oriented towards the future; it is what the substance or organism will become. Kull reduces the problem to a question of utility: completely describing a substance or organism does not give access to its function, it is also necessary to consider “what it is for”. This question points to an answer, with the latter being a continuation of the former, and therefore following it in the (semiotic) time of their enunciation. We must then remember that the morphology of the living belongs to the bio-physical-chemical domain, and that the function already makes us switch, because of this projection of the present towards the absent, into the semiotic domain. And we note that, in this perspective, the “threshold” would be both spatial (the entrance) and temporal (the moment turned towards the future).
23This situation is typical of an aspectual configuration, an aspectuality that would bear on both the spatial and the temporal dimensions. This is an opportunity for us to specify that a “topology” is not only a “space”, and that what we call a “topological form” is a dynamic spatio-temporal form, and not just a spatial and static one: operations, paths, advances, and refluxes animate and temporalize the spatial device; obstacles hinder or slow them down; internal forces accelerate them or support them in overcoming obstacles; and so on.
24Let us go into the details of this spatio-temporal aspectual configuration. As it is targeted by a prospective projection from presence, absence induces a relationship of re-presentation between a functional entity, a morphology available for a function, and the function itself. The re-presentation obeys a prospective orientation, from a prior presentation: a posteriority of the represented (the function) in relation to the representative (the organism or substance); an anteriority of the representative in relation to the represented.
25But this aspectual-temporal relationship then masks the fact that it would be the represented (by the function), which, in evolution, would have selected the representative (the morphology). To take up an example commented on by Kalevi Kull himself, if we posit that hemoglobin represents the function of transporting oxygen in the blood, we obliterate the fact that it is the morphology of hemoglobin which makes this transport possible, and that it is the transport function which selected this morphology: what is before would be selected by what is after.
26The first aspectual relationship must therefore be completed by another one, in a retrospective orientation. According to Kalevi Kull, the support of this orientation is a process of “self-maintenance”. In fact, Kull subsumes all the relationships between biological entities and their functions under the name of “self-maintenance”: the example of hemoglobin and oxygen, in the body of a living being, is representative of a “maintenance” of a certain energy level in the body and by the body itself. The organism, to maintain itself, must know itself in one way or another. To maintain oneself is at least to maintain one’s own form in a state that remains approximately identical at all times of its existence. Self-maintenance therefore implies a minimal “self-knowledge” of the original bio-form, and a surprising condition follows from this: to “self-maintain” itself, the living entity must have the capacity to remember its previous “bio-form”, or more precisely its mode of production, which is already implemented, and would be memorized and recognizable. This relationship between the recognized and the recognizable, carried by a memory of life, is retrospective. Kull specifies in this regard:
All biological interactions work by recognition, i.e., by reading what is out there and if recognizing then responding according to the previously stored ‘image’ of the recognized and translating its message into some product or behavior, which is actually a new message. (Kull 1998a, p. 307, emphasis added)
27The reflection on the threshold of semiosis, that is to say, on the relationship between the morphology of an organism and its biological function, therefore highlights a process that is subjected to two aspectual-temporal orientations that are both inverse and united. These two complementary and associated aspectual orientations constitute a topological form composed of two semiotic processes: on the prospective side, a re-presentation; on the retrospective side, a re-cognition.
28In their relations of re-presentation and re-cognition, the bio-form, the function, telos, and memory globally constitute a topological outline comprising three instances (i.e. bio-form, memory and function-telos) distributed on an aspectual-temporal axis oriented in the two opposite directions of prospection and retrospection. This device invents, without it being explicitly said in Kull’s work, a central zone, namely the site from which one can deploy, on one side and prospectively, the relationship with function, and, on the other side and retrospectively, the relationship with memory. This site is occupied by the bio-form. The topological form could be represented as follows.
Figure 1
29In this elementary centered topology, the bio-form is the central zone—i.e. what one could call, similarly to anthropomorphism, a biomorphism. It can be considered as the very form of the “semiotic threshold”, provided that it is clearly specified that the orientation of the entry movement (the movement of the actant who crosses the threshold) remains linked to a retrospective orientation, which is not that of movement, but that of biological memory.
30It is assumed as a principle that any process relating to the living world is based on an event anchored in a practice of relation, particularly as related to practices of communication or transmission. Such practices involve processes of interpretation and translation (intended in the broad sense described above). Interpretation and translation imply a definition of their object, which in this case is not an isolable sign, but a text.
31For Kalevi Kull et al. (2009), as for Sebeok and many others, the organism is a text, in Lotman’s sense—as Kull himself clarifies:
Text, according to Lotman (1986) and Torop (1982), is not a structure, but a process. A sequential pattern is not necessarily a text, but it may become one through the process of reading. Thus, text is a readable pattern. Reading, at the same time, assumes recognition and translation, i.e. a building of new texts (e.g., texts in the reader’s memory) as a result of the recognition of text. Also, all text is a result of translation, i.e. it has to be created through the translation, or reading of a previous text. […] Also, all text is both the result and source of translation. (Kull 1998b, p. 94, emphasis added)
32Maintaining that the text is a process, that something becomes a text (i.e. a process in itself) in the process of reading, and that the text is a “readable pattern”, is a tautology: to be realized as a text, the text must be read, but to be read, it must first be readable. However Kull escapes the tautological dimension by defining the text as “a sequential pattern” and clarifying that, among all sequential patterns, only those that can be read (“readable”) are texts, thus echoing the idea of the threshold: if the text is a sequential model, its sequential character can make the difference between what is semiotic and what is not. In a complementary approach to the semiotic threshold, the latter would therefore seem to be placed between sequential and non-sequential models—and, more precisely, between the sequential models that can be read, and those that do not lend themselves to reading.
33Apparently, therefore, the threshold recalls two steps: one that selects the sequential models; and one that selects, within such models, “those that can be read”. However, this apparent topological refinement is misleading, because Kull’s formulation is dynamic: “A sequential pattern is not necessarily a text, but it may become one through the process of reading”. This tells us that any sequential model can become a text if it is read, which removes the second step, replacing it by an operation, i.e. reading, which consists precisely in crossing the threshold, since it includes the possibilities of recognition and translation (“Reading, at the same time, assumes recognition and translation”). Hence, the introduction of the notion of text and the emphasis put on reading does not modify the centered topology described above, but specifies and thematizes differently the crossing of the threshold. In summary, before the threshold, we only have sequential (Fabbri 2003 [2000]) models (or not), and by crossing the threshold, we read such sequential models, thus making texts out of them.
34In such a theoretical perspective, textuality is only actualized by reading-translation, since it is reading that produces texts. It is therefore translation, and the translatability of the living, that makes the living a text, delivering the meaning of the biological text. This is how the concept and process of translation leads to that of semiosis:
I define semiosis as a process of translation, which makes a copy of a text, suitable to replace the original text in some situations, but which is also so different from the original text that the original cannot be used (either spatially, or temporally, or due to the differences in text-carrier or language) for the same functions. (Kull 1998a, p. 302)
35In this definition by Kull, translation is presented as a general process, which is not necessarily semiotic. To be semiotic (i.e. to produce semiosis, in the definition), translation must lead to differences in “situations” and “functions”. In other words, semiosis can be found in the interval between two situations and two functions. This conception recalls Lotman’s observation (itself reformulated and reconfigured in particular in Fabbri 2003 [2000]) that translation produces meaning, provided that it is conceived, at most, as a “translation of the untranslatable”, and that it reveals in the target text something that, without it, one would not find in the source text. This conception of translation induces a topological form composed of two sets, i.e. the source text and the target text, between which semiosis operates, carried by an interpretant-translator.
- 3 This possibility is foreseen in Peircean theory, which distinguishes an “interior” and an “exterior (...)
36But, as far as the biological text is concerned, such as in the case of an organism, there is no other interpretant-translator of the organism than the organism itself. It translates itself, thus anticipating its own future. In such a perspective, “organisms are self-reading texts” (Kull 1998a, p. 303).3 Since the interpreter is the organism itself, coupled with its environment, interpretation-translation emerges as a “recursive process of producing self-referential signs” (Kull et al. 2009, p. 171). In his analysis of the “Organism as a self-reading text”, Kull insists precisely on the diversity of the products of this process: “the development of new organs, the reconstruction of existing structures or relationships, or the generation of movements, patterns of muscular activity, the generation of a behavioral model” (Kull 1998b, p. 95).
37For a biological sequence, self-translation implies that the organism does two things at once: (i) it maintains and sustains life, and (ii) it reads-translates and manifests that life is maintained and sustained. This dual configuration is reflexive in nature: reading-translation supports and manifests self-sustainment. Furthermore, the two processes are differently oriented. If we assume, following Kalevi Kull, that any text results from the translation of previous texts, and will be translated into later texts, then the text is always caught in a prospective spatio-temporal aspectual chain of ongoing translations. But the principle of self-reading (“organism is a self-reading text”, Ibid., p. 3), makes the organism, as a translator, the organizing center of the aspectual chain. On the one hand, this center retains, retrospectively, what must be maintained and preserved, which is the product of previous readings-translations; on the other hand, it projects, prospectively, the new state of the organism, made available for later readings-translations. We find here the same topological form we identified above for the coupling between telos and memory. The conceptual form remains the same, since translating means recognizing the structure or sequence to be translated, by calling upon a memory of the text, and transposing it into a new form to come.
38To complete the generalization of the principle of translation, and its systematic articulation with semiosis, Kalevi Kull (2000) recalls the opposition between “copying” and “translating”. In fact, this is the generative duality from which one can foresee the coherence of two paradigms: that of non-semiotic (i.e. physical-chemical) biology, which practices mechanical copying; and that of semiotic biology, which practices creative translation. In short, we have always the same “semiotic threshold”, though grasped from a more general point of view. The topological form of such a proposition is a two-column table:
Figure 2
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Mechanistic Biology
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Semiotic Biology
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To copy
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To translate
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Transitive
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Non transitive
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Non-textual
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Textual
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Same
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Sign
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Catalytic
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Autopoietic
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Determinism
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Interpretation
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Competition
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Symbiosis
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Evolution
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Development
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Darwinian
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von Baerian
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39To understand this difference between “copying” and “translating”, we can focus on a major specific genetic problem, namely that the relationship between the genotype and the phenotype is not a strict determination. In an old article (Fontanille 2004), I myself commented on this relationship, which non-semiotic biology treats as a statistical relationship, wondering about its possible semiotic interpretation. Let us examine Kalevi Kull’s argument in detail:
What the semiotic approach to organisms teaches us, is that the genome does not determine the phenotype, but that the organism, at each stage of its development, interprets its genome when producing the phenotype, and this interpretation can be shifted depending on the context of Umwelt. The genotype-phenotype interaction is not that of determination—it is interpretation.
In other words, the DNA sequence does not specify many features of organisms. For instance, organisms with identical DNA may vary in gene expression, in their morphology and physiology, in behavior and language. Also, these differences can be inherited over several generations, even if no change in the genotype occurs. Emergence of new features in organisms can, therefore, appear due to changes in any inheritance system, or in the environment. (Kull 2000, pp. 109-110)
40On the one hand, from a biologist’s point of view, the transition from the genotype to the phenotype is determined by a statistical relationship. On the other hand, from the semiotic immanent point of view of the expression or manifestation of the genotype, it is the organism itself that interprets it and translates it into a phenotype, under the influence (but not the determination) of the Umwelt. Since translation operates between two texts, this amounts to inserting, between the genotype and the phenotype, the equivalent of an enunciation. For an organism on a micro- or meso-scale, such an equivalent of the enunciation is only a self-presentation. The organism “presents” itself figuratively (phenotype) as a member of a class of living beings, after the translation-interpretation of its genotype. There is a change in scale and point of view: transcendent and external from the biologist’s point of view—for statistical description—, it is instead immanent and interior from the point of view of the organism — for semiotic description.
41In terms of self-presentation, we can notably mention the specific, apparently non-functional figurative attributes by which organisms present themselves as members of a species or breed. The genetic analysis of organisms carrying these figurative attributes can find the gene or genes that correspond to them (for instance, those associated with the coat color of the Limousin cattle breed). However, starting from genes, we do not find a systematic correspondence to figurative features, because the path of manifestation (we can also, by approximation, say “of expression”) of genes passes through the mediation of a self-presentation, which is a particular case of biological translation. It is this semiotic and weakly determined character that is treated by statistics in biology.
42Among the phenomena and influences that make the causal reasoning of non-semiotic biology inoperative, the best known relate to the environment, or even to the Umwelt. But neither the environment nor the Umwelt are homogeneous “agents” of a specific influence, because both comprise a multitude of disparate agents, bearers of heterogeneous influences. The epigenetic results of such influences, giving rise to this or that phenotype, may seem homogeneous, and even unified, but have no retroactive effect on the irreducibly composite nature of the influences from which they arise. In short, an overdetermination by the multiplication of influences is converted into an underdetermination, which itself makes way for interpretation. Such situations are not limited to the biological domain: in the social sphere, composite sets of great heterogeneity and vast diversity also encounter a threshold, beyond which multiple causalities are so entangled that they can only be disentangled by interpretation and semiotic translation into other texts.
43At this stage of the analysis, we learn that not only is translation (or transposition) the general operation that constitutes the semiotic character of the global conceptual form of the semiosphere, but it also intervenes in the detail of the functioning of subdomains (such as Umwelten), or even at the level of individual organisms, in their relationship with their species, with their congeners and with their Umwelt.
44We can already notice that the topological form has a stronger power of generalization than the conceptual form, probably because it is not specified from a thematic point of view, while the conceptual form is necessarily thematized by the semantic content of concepts.
45As Kull et al. (2009) remark, the Umwelt includes all the elements of the environment that are distinguished by the organism, i.e. that are relevant to it, thus being in some way “internalized” in the form allowed by its capacities for sensitivity, reception of information, and processing. Conversely, this internalization can be described as a selection, performed by the environment, of the relevant capacities of the organism. The Umwelt is the product of this reciprocal selection, of which the organism is the center, either as an individual or as a member of a species. The centrality of the organism (we can still speak of “biocentrism”) gives it a position of reflexivity, which is reflected in particular by figurative features (for instance, colors and graphics on the wings of butterflies), which are not directly relevant to the environment, but testify to an identity of species or of an individual, and, by being presented to congeners and members of other species, distinguish such an organism from other species or individuals whose Umwelt interacts with its own.
46In addition to the Umwelt, there is the “ecological niche”, the set of signs and indices relating to the persistence and well-being of the organism. These are in a way the objective conditions that, in the environment, guarantee the life and survival of the organisms and species. It is therefore no longer exclusively a question of “self-maintenance”. According to Kull, we must distinguish the “ecological niche” from the “semiotic niche”, which includes all the interpretative challenges that the ecological niche imposes on a species. These interpretative challenges lead in particular to the co-selection of properties and capacities that result in the Umwelt.
47Since the ecological niche brings together objective elements, independent of what the organism perceives and grasps from its point of view, we can distinguish and articulate the ecological niche as an externality and the Umwelt as an internality. From such a perspective, the “semiotic niche” is the bridge between the former and the latter, since it is the place of negotiation and interpretation of the outside by the inside. What is more, it is the place where the translation of the elements of the niche into elements of the Umwelt takes place. Kull, Deacon, Emmeche and Hoffmeyer conclude that “one may pose the question of whether the umwelt of a species is sufficiently differentiated to meet the challenges posed by the available semiotic-niche conditions” (Kull et al. 2009, p. 172). Hence, we can deduce that, for the authors, the semiotic niche plays the same role with regard to the Umwelt as the semiosphere does in regard to semiosis, functioning as a system of conditions of possibility.
48From a topological point of view, the ecological niche is acentered, while the Umwelt is centered. It is the semiotic niche which, through the reflexive accumulation of the interpretations it carries, induces the centering of the Umwelt. In this sense, the semiotic niche translates an acentered topology into a centered topology.
49Moreover, in Jacob Von Uexküll (but not in Kull), we find some elements that allow us to structure the Umwelt, under the interpretative pressure of the semiotic niche, into several biotopic zones, each characterized:
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by its position in the territorial space (here, the habitat; around, the neutral zone; far away, the hunting and defense zone; beyond the territory, the zone of dangers, wanderings and perditions);
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by its thematic role in the practices of maintaining life (reproducing and caring for offspring, feeding, defending oneself against predators, seeking other territories);
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by the type of other living beings that occupy it (cohabiting congeners, congeners of the herd or pack, competing congeners, predators, etc.) (Uexküll 2015 [2010]).
50The topology of the Umwelt is therefore not only centered; it is also made up of concentric zones, whose topological form is comparable to that of Rastier’s anthropic zones (Rastier 2001).
51Two models interfere in Kalevi Kull’s work (Kull 1998a): the Umwelt and the semiosphere. Their articulation is problematic, because the former gives a semiotic form to the environment of the animal world, without considering the specific features of the human sub-world, while the latter gives a semiotic form to the world of human communication, without considering the fact that the animal world also has a semiotic form. The problem to be addressed does not relate directly and solely to Kalevi Kull’s work, but also to the ideas and concepts he recalled from other scholars. In fact, the articulation between the biosphere and the semiosphere, in Lotman as well as in his successors, has never been completely resolved. There are both proposals aimed at making the latter a metaphor for the former, and others simply adding particular properties to the biosphere to make it a semiosphere. In Kull’s work, the interference with the concepts of Umwelt and niche complicates the situation, but at the same time raises the possibility of a more effective solution.
52The Umwelt is in fact the semiotic world of the organism or its species, which must include all the signals and signs specific to a species or an individual, and therefore the totality of the semiotic processes in which the organism is involved. The Umwelten should in principle be components of the biosphere—although this was not foreseen by Vernadsky (2002 [1929]). Moreover, according to Kull, the semiosphere is always distinct from the biosphere (this is the semiotic threshold), but it is co-extensive with it. Hence, logically, it should group and interconnect at least all human Umwelten, but without any plausible reason to exclude the Umwelten of other animals. Any two Umwelten, in order to interact, must be part of the same semiosphere. It is therefore assumed that a given semiosphere can group a certain number of connected Umwelten. This extensive conception by Kalevi Kull opens some crucial questions.
53First of all, it is necessary to justify the cohabitation of the Umwelten of humans and other animals in the same semiospheres. If the semiosphere is mainly differentiated from the biosphere by its capacity for self-description, this capacity will be difficult to decline in all Umwelten, insofar as it was designed only for human semiospheres. However, if we take into account all the reflexive operations (self-maintenance, self-interpretation, etc.), the role of memory and the operations of recognition and representation (see above), we can conceive an extended and non-anthropomorphic version of self-description, which we can call self-presentation (see above) and with which all Umwelten can be endowed. But the passage from self-description (in Lotman) to self-presentation (in our terms) weakens the conception of the semiosphere, and forces us to question the way in which anthropomorphism could find its place in a topology governed by biomorphism.
54These suggestions give rise to a topological problem, which the purely conceptual approach does not detect. On the one hand, the semiosphere is a centered topology, around an “us” that radiates to the periphery, and which, beyond the border, only encounters “them”. On the other hand, each Umwelt operates on the same principle. But in the set of Umwelten connected within the semiosphere, how could we justify that one or more Umwelten occupy the center of the semiosphere, and that others are in the periphery or, at most, in an intermediate position? In other words, how does the network of interconnected Umwelten participate in the centered topology of the semiosphere? The answer is simple but fraught with consequences: the constellation of interconnected Umwelten must be organized around one of them, a dominant Umwelt, so to speak. And this dominant position is the product of a “self-presentation” of the species or the individual, who present themselves as the center of both their Umwelt and the semiosphere to which it belongs.
55This is a solution that spontaneously tempts humans, for their benefit, with an anthropomorphic Umwelt that would be central. But biosemiotics obviously cannot adopt this solution, because, as Viveiros de Castro (2020) shows, all species are special from their point of view, and all their points of view can legitimately be organizing centers in turn. Each in turn, of course, which implies a dynamic of switching points of view—i.e. a perspectivism, according to Viveiros de Castro (2009). Perspectivism, applied to the problem that concerns us, would imply as many alternative semiospheres as there are points of view of species and specific Umwelten possible and likely to be dominant. The still unresolved conflict between the anthropomorphism of the semiosphere and the biomorphism of the Umwelt requires going through some topological hypotheses, in order to untangle a real conceptual difficulty.
56Let us borrow from Uexküll (2015 [2010]) the well-known case of the tick: the olfactory and thermal signs and signals emitted by a mammal are interconnected with the signs and interpretations of a tick, but the conditions of formation of these signs necessarily imply the properties of the respective Umwelten of the two organisms. The presupposition relationship could be useful here: if no signal is exchanged, the conditions for there to be signals are nevertheless available, in a potential mode; if signals are exchanged, then these conditions are activated, in an actualized mode. We cannot fall back, even in this case, on sharing the same environment (an immediate plant environment with trees), because each of the organisms selects its own specific Umwelt.
57The two Umwelten, that of the tick and that of the mammal, functioning in interconnection, belong to the same semiotic niche, and by extension, to the same semiosphere. But we observe that this connection can be grasped in two different modes of existence: a potential mode, where all conditions are available, and an actual mode, where these conditions are activated, that is to say, actualized in action. In the potential mode, both the species of living beings share the same situation, and the network of Umwelten is acentered; in the actualized mode, it is centered on one of the two protagonists, or each in turn, around a different program of action (the tick seeks blood to reproduce and for the survival of the species; the mammal receives a parasite and must protect itself from it). In the second case, we are precisely faced with two associated but divergent programs, which can only be “told” in two juxtaposed but distinct narratives.
58Transposed to the level of the semiosphere, this situation leads to the same splitting: a potential version of the semiosphere, as a grouping of the prerequisites of communication and signification, and an actualized, even realized, version as a constellation of productions and products of semiotic activity. We would gain clarity and coherence by adopting a distinction whose principle has already made narrative semiotics successful: the distinction between the sphere of the conditions of action and narrative competence (the potential mode) and the sphere of action and performance (the actualized-realized mode).
59The semiosphere, as described by Kalevi Kull, could therefore usefully be split into two modes of existence, two layers of articulation, two embedded spheres. The first layer would be in immediate relation with the biosphere (perhaps it would even be the semiotic part of the biosphere). It would have the form of a network, whose nodes would be Umwelten, all inclusive, with instances, topology, spatial distribution, practices, etc., and whose links would be the interconnections of “communication” between the involved Umwelten. It would be acentric and dedicated solely to the preservation of life, to the persistence of individuals and species, as close as possible to the ecological niche. The second layer, in immediate relation with the previous one, would be the semiosphere conceived as grouping together all semiotic processes and productions, and whose topological form could even be that of concentric zones. It would be dedicated to symbolic interactions between individuals and species, to collective formations such as swarms, herds and packs, to alliances between species, to social regulations, etc., as close as possible to the semiotic niche.
60It is necessary to account for the conversion between the topological form of the first layer (acentric) and that of the second (centered). If the actualized-realized semiosphere (the second layer) is centered and concentric, this means that one or more semiotic Umwelten impose themselves at the center, and that the others are distributed on the periphery or in intermediate positions (see above). In this perspective, the distribution of Umwelten in the semiosphere would be a function of specific points of view (see above). The second layer (the actualized-realized semiosphere) would then be the place of alternatives multiplication of organizing centers, and of competition, conflicts and choices of dominance. Among these specific points of view, the anthropomorphic one is only a possible one.
61Nevertheless, irrespective of its position (at the center or at the periphery), only this anthropomorphic Umwelt would be internally endowed with the capacities of self-description and grouping of the conditions for human communication. Moreover, if we adopt its point of view, in the alternative where it is the organizing center of the semiosphere, all the other Umwelten would be in a situation that is not so different from that of the other cultures according to Lotman: undervalued and considered “savage”, barbaric, and/or chaotic.
62In summary, the two-layer topological form would be composed in the first layer of a semio-bio-ethological network, and, in the second layer, of alternative and complementary centered semiospheres—with “complementary”. Pointing to the fact that they are all necessary for global understanding, but, at the same time, each depending on exclusive points of view.
63This discussion may seem complex, and it may one day be simplified. Given the current state of thinking on these problems, it shows at least that the juxtaposition of conceptual sets, gradually accumulated over the course of research, does not make them spontaneously compatible or strictly complementary. Moreover, it proves that attempts at topological transposition make it possible to visualize the difficulties to be overcome, if not to resolve them definitively. More specifically, we can identify the following visualizations for the two modes of existence of semiosphere.
64A/ Potential mode (the topological form of the semio-bio-ethological network):
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acentric and non-hierarchical;
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able of self-presentation;
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with an interconnection of the Umwelten of each of the living species;
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the guarantee of the conditions of semiosis and communication, in this case, the principle of generalized translation;
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a coherence ensured by translational links between the nodes of the network that are all subject to an spatio-temporal-aspectual internal topological form, centered on the organism.
65This topology in potential mode is due to this modal nature, extensive and globalizing. This is precisely the form of potential first layer:
Figure 3
66B/ Actualized-Realized Mode (alternative and complementary centered semiospheres):
67In the actualized second layer,
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alternative and complementary semiospheres appear,
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each organized around a dominant Umwelt, which imposes its point of view.
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This topology in actualized-realized mode is by nature specifying and multiplying.
68Here, as an example, among all the possible alternatives, is the anthropomorphic version (with the human in the center!):
Figure 4
69In his exploration of the history of ideas and structuring metaphors in the biological sciences, mentioned at the beginning of this paper, Kalevi Kull shows that the most appropriate metaphor for the contemporary period is that of the tela—the hypernetwork, the web. This topological form indeed corresponds, though not without some difficulty, to the conceptual form that Kull is currently developing throughout his work. It should be remembered that the topological structure of the web is at once symbiotic, translatable, and non-hierarchical, bringing together interdependent living entities that it connects to each other. Moreover, it is integrated into larger wholes: the semiosphere and the biosphere.
70The web model is certainly attractive; it even extends the topological form of the rhizome as formulated by Deleuze and Guattari (1980). Nevertheless, it encounters a major difficulty, which paradoxically stems from the very nature of the involved domain: the living. If we have encountered difficulties with the articulation of the threshold, the niche, the Umwelt, the semiosphere and the biosphere, it is not—it seems to us—on the basis of a possible disagreement between Kull, Lotman, Uexküll and other scholars. It is for another reason, that is to say, the tension, which seems insoluble, between two fundamental topological structures of the living: (1) the necessary generalized and expansive interconnection between all living beings, in the form of a reticular topology (the web), and (2) the reflexive affirmation of specificity (of individual, species, genus, etc.), giving rise to a centered topology (the sphere).
71This tension is not a peculiarity of our corpus (i.e. Kull’s work), nor of biosemiotics. It also exists within discursive structural semiotics, between the hierarchical reticular option described by Greimas or Rastier (“objectal” mode) and the centered, even concentric, option (“subjectal” mode, see Coquet 1997 and Fontanille 2021). However, the basis of this alternative is indeed biosemiotic in nature, since this tension is specific to the living world. In other semiotic fields, it manifests itself through controversies between competing methodological paradigms (objectivist / subjectivist), but in the biosemiotic field and beyond, it is, in our opinion, constitutive of the living as a semiotic form and process.
72From a semiotic perspective, the tension is not a problem or a difficulty to be resolved. It is the seed of energy from which meanings will be felt, deployed, and constructed; it is the very source of creativity in translation-transposition; it is what makes semiotics legitimate when it confronts life, seeking the meanings that emerge from the tension between the reticular format and the centered format of life topologies. This working hypothesis has considerable consequences, if we consider that all cultures and natures—and not just RNA, cells, ticks, trees, and landscapes—can be approached through this fundamental tension. The possibility of a global semiotic functioning in concentric topology, in reference to the semiosphere, would therefore be conceivable, but on the condition of being able to switch to the other regime, which is acentric, non-hierarchical and reticular, …, and vice versa. If we imagine a topology organized around a central node, with the links in divergent ramification, up to the periphery, we must already admit that by constitution we would be dealing with a culture (or a nature) grasped from the perspective of a dominant point of view, in its dialogue with other cultures and natures. This is obviously not how Kull conceives the network model, but it is nevertheless what is prefigured in the work he has conducted until now. In the solution of the splitting of the semiosphere into a potential mode and an actualized-realized mode, we know how to switch from one regime to the other, the change in mode of existence having long been explored and explained in all theoretical paradigms of semiotics.
73In other words, tension emerges as fundamental, even foundational. And we can manage it, building on semiotic dynamics that are certainly complex and subtle, but productive. Definitely, this is what we can expect from a critical semiotics: through the confrontation between several modes of existence of a theory and a method, it should identify critical areas likely to interest the entire discipline.