264 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matterb2861 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter “6x9”(3) Elementary particles of physics may be regarded as Peircean signs
with iconic and indexical functions predominating and their symbolic
function suppressed, waiting to be reified or instantiated when a right
set of environmental conditions present themselves.Finally, it should be pointed out that the triadic definition of a sign
given by Peirce and that of a mathematical category are almost identical
(see Section 2.1) and that many mathematicians and theoretical physicists
believe that physics and mathematics can be unified under the framework
of the category theory [37, 371].6.3.2 Peircean Categories: Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness
Peirce maintained that everything or every phenomenon in the Universe
comprises three basic “irreducible” categories or elements called Firstness,
Secondness, and Thirdness. One way to get a feel for these categories is
through some of the examples that Peirce gave of these categories
throughout his career. These are collected in Table 6.2, which was adopted
from [285]. It is evident that the examples are not logically tight (indeed
they are “vague” and even contradictory in some cases), having some
overlaps here and there and missing some examples. Nevertheless, it is
possible to recognize (i) the unmistakable family resemblances among
most of the items listed within each category (i.e., within each column),
and (ii) distinct family characteristics present among the three categories
(i.e., within each row).6.4 Macrosemiotics vs. Microsemiotics
Peirce did not have access to the empirical evidence that came to light
only in the mid-20th century, i.e., semiotic processes are not confined to
the macroscopic human world, but also occur on the molecular level
[19–23, 92, 93, 130, 238, 256, 264, 265, 274, 351, 352, 406, 463]. Despite
the huge difference in size of the sign processors involved (see Table 6.3),
it is amazing to find that there exists a set of principles that is common to
the semiotic processes on both the human linguistic and the molecular
biological levels (see Section 4.4).b2861_Ch-06.indd 264 17-10-2017 12:04:13 PM