Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

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“6x9” b2861 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

Chapter 6

Biosemiotics

6.1 Concepts, Laws, and Principles

Biocybernetics is a general theory of living systems that has been con-

structed in 1991 [7] on the basis of at least 26 major principles, laws, and

concepts derived from physics, chemistry, and engineering, in addition to

biology (see Table 6.1 reproduced from [19]). Biocybernetics can be

viewed as the study primarily of the energetic aspect of living systems,

whereas the cell language theory published in 1997 [19–23] is the study

mainly of the informational aspect of life on the molecular level. Together

they constitute what I recently called microsemiotics, the study of molecu-

lar signs in living systems [22, 23]:

Microsemiotics = Biocybernetics + Cell Language Theory (6.1)

To avoid the unfamiliar term “semiotics”, microsemiotics may also be

referred to as molecular information theory (MIT) [273]. MIT may be

defined as a physical theory of information processing, including informa-

tion production (e.g., biological evolution), transduction (e.g., enzymic

catalysis, signal transduction cascades, gene expression, morphogenesis),

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