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Even as we contemplate the possibility that the Hubble Distant Field has identified the earliest star-forming galaxies, enabling us to peer back to the beginnings of time, expert astronomers tell us, that's not far enough! Similarly, if you were thinking that perhaps as a species we have tapped the outer limits of disciplines designed to increase our knowledge and ability to manipulate nature, think again—up pops a whole new area of
research and scholarship: a point of view? a discipline? a gathering of academics posing similar questions? A cutting edge interdisciplinary field, about to become a science!
Biosemiotics: What is it? Where did it come from? and where does it hope to go? If you are curious about any of these questions, the book to turn to is Donald Favareau's lively, exhaustive anthology, Essential Readings in Biosemiotics. This is a definitive text (and source-guide) on the origins and development, the founders and facets, early and current writings, of the colorful cast of characters that formed and now convey this new multinational, interdisciplinary enterprise called biosemiotics. Along with Marcello Barbieri's collection Introduction to Biosemiotics (2008b), Favareau's lovingly compiled compendium provides the basic foundational knowledge that anyone interested in this new field needs to start out. And there is a lot to learn about the “bio” of semiosis, a way of looking at scientific metaphors of yore and uncovering their operative communicative processes. Biosemiotics belongs in an information paradigm oriented toward examining the “in between” of live interactions taking place all the time, at all systemic levels, within the general unity of life.
Given that the psychoanalytic method is based on semiotic and dialogic processes that not only index unconscious meanings but also uncover nonconscious forms of experience and thought, there may be good reason to dip into this biosemiotic discussion and consider its scientific/conceptual dimension. For