Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

270 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

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

(10) There are three types of units — length, mass, and time.

(11) There are three fundamental constants of nature — the Planck con-

stant (h), the speed of light (c), and the gravitational constant (G).

In addition, the number 3 appears in the following contexts as well:

(1) The smallest unit of all networks or mathematical categories com-

prises three elements — the initial and final nodes and the arrow

connecting them [37].

(2) The probability theory of Kolmogorov comprises three and only

three axioms; (1) 0 < p < 1, (2) p + p’ = 1, where p’ is the complement

of p, and (3) p(A + B) = p(A) + p(B).

(3) Most of chemistry and biology can be accounted for in terms of the

interactions among three particles — photons, electrons, and protons.

(4) There are only three major classes of polymers in living systems —

nucleic acids, proteins, and carbohydrates.

(5) The human brain is constructed out of the three main functional struc-

tures — the right and left hemispheres, and the corpus callosum [291].

These examples strongly support the notion that there is something

fundamental about the number 3 in particle physics and semiotics as well

as in other fields, perhaps because all material entities and processes in the

Universe (including the human brain) are derived from gnergy, defined as

the complementary union of information and energy (see Section 2.9) and

the concept of complementarity itself being triadic (see Section 10.20).

The purpose of this section is to “rationalize” the Peirce’s classifica-

tion of signs based on the analogy between Peircean signs and the quark

model in elementary particle physics.

6.6.1 The Nine Types of Signs

Peirce defined 9 types of signs (see Table 6.4) and 10 classes of signs

based on these 9 types [98] (see Table 10.5). For convenience, I will refer

to the former as e-signs (“e” standing for “elementary”) and the latter as

c-signs (“c” standing for “compound” or “composite”). But it is not clear

to me how Peirce derived the 10 classes of what are here called c-signs

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