Cell Language Theory, The: Connecting Mind And Matter

398 The Cell Language Theory: Connecting Mind and Matter

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

non-scientistic approach to scientific inquiry. It is a conception devel-

oped by Merleau-Ponty, especially in his later ontology of nature and

one that is shared by American pragmatist philosopher of science, C.

S. Peirce (1839–1914). For both philosophers, meaning must be under-

stood in terms of an ontology, which is relational rather than atomistic,

and dynamic or processual rather than static and substance-based. For

Merleau-Ponty this is an experientially derived ontology; for Peirce it

is a more conceptually-based one. ... I explore Merleau-Ponty’s expe-

rientially based “ontology of flesh” and Peirce’s distinctive form of

naturalism to show affinities at this ontological level. These affinities

consist in commitments to reality that includes possibility, meaning,

temporality, and final causation — that is, an ontology which is far

more inclusive than that of conventional positivistic science. Peirce’s

broader scientific metaphysics enables us to extend Merleau-Ponty’s

phenomenological naturalism beyond the biological to the physical

sciences. While Merleau-Ponty’s ontology of nature provides the expe-

riential basis necessary for a critique of scientism, Peirce established

the relevance of that ontology for a re-conceived empirical science.

10.2 Complementarism and Semiotics

The formulation in the early 1990s of the philosophical framework

known as complementarism [24, 50] was motivated by the possibility that

the principle of energy-information complementarity found to account for

the mechanisms of molecular machines and the living state may be

extended to understanding the origin of the non-living state [7]. The

physicometaphysical entity of which energy and information are comple-

mentary aspects in the Bohrian sense (see Section 2.9) was referred to as

“gnergy” (see Section 2.9). Discrete units of gnergy were named gner-

gons, which are thought to consist of information “particles” (gnons) and

energy “particles” (ergons). The first concrete example of gnergons was

provided by conformons resident in DNA (see Sections 3.4.1 and 3.4.2).

In the mid- to the late-1800s, Peirce constructed a general theory

applicable to both life and nonlife that was based on his triadic metaphysi-

cal doctrine of Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness (see Section 6.3.2),

and the associated semiotics, a theory of signs [94–99].

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