This paper offers a diagrammatic exploration of the semiotic dimensions of identity. Drawing on the irreducible triadic sign relation developed by Charles Sanders Peirce, it argues that the interpretant function, via the mechanism of Self, introduces the temporal dimension presupposed in habitual, teleological action. Identity, on the other hand, is conceptualized as the positioned objectification of alterity, i.e. the perceived difference in space, equally presupposed for action. The self, following Norbert Wiley, is situated at the intersection of past, present, and future. Together, identity and self constitute an ever-present point of orientation — a semiotic zero-point (0,0,0) at time zero — from which agents act as relative beings within relative space, anticipating future possibilities, and reflecting upon past experiences.
How can we measure diversity in emerging, small disciplines? One avenue to study such diversity is conference participation across longer periods, examining whether institutional diversity develops organically or requires deliberate intervention. This is particularly important for disciplines with a transdisciplinary program at its core, such as biosemiotics, given the value diversity brings to such contexts. Conferences are a relevant focal point in this development as sites of disciplinary coordination within such scientific communities. In order to study this interaction between regional diversity and the development of biosemiotics as a discipline, we take a longitudinal look at the Gatherings in Biosemiotics (GiBs), the flagship conference of the discipline. We try to assess how regional interaction develops and whether diversity of institutions and regions comes hand in hand with the idea of a pluralistic scientific endeavor. We operationalize this by looking at the range of institutional diversity across the GiBs via tracing participant location of origin declarations across 25 years of GiBs. We index institutional diversity as the variety of countries represented by participants, tracking how geographical variety has changed since GiBs’ inception in 2001. Our findings show that in recent years GiBs have seen increased representation of countries within different economic classifications (increases in lower-income countries and middle-income countries), though the main loci of biosemiotic associates are still concentrated in a limited number of specific centers in Europe and the USA, with fluctuations over time. These results show that geographic inclusion in a small interdiscipline may be opportunistic, driven by conference location, travel costs, and organizational networks, rather than direct policy. We see a slight increase in diversity post-Covid that can be explained by the adoption of hybrid presentations as well as the offering of scholarships to award younger researchers with ways to offset costs. This suggests that an increase in diversity can be attained by implementing policies aimed at fostering the inclusion of researchers beyond the core of the established geographical areas. Given the relevance of conferences in the construction of both academic careers at the individual level and interdisciplinary work at the level of connection between researchers, looking at regional diversity in conferences can be a relevant way to index diversity and foster its growth.
Lichens challenge biological individuality because an organised thallus can unite partners with distinct genomes, life histories, and degrees of autonomy. Their taxonomic heterogeneity and within-thallus photobiont plurality also challenge any uniform attribution of consortium-level agency. I propose semiotic individuality as a complementary dimension of individuality: the degree to which a specified consortium maintains mediated, context-sensitive relations organised with respect to its continued functioning. The framework distinguishes the semiotic self as a locus of system-relative significance, the semiotic agent as an organisation acting through such relations, and semiotic individuality as a question about the scale, boundaries, and persistence of that organisation. Peircean sign–object–interpretant relations guide the identification of mediation, while Barbieri’s work clarifies both the compatibility of molecular mechanism with semiotic explanation and the distinct evidential demands of organic coding. Four operational dimensions are retained: context sensitivity, norm-guided correction, relational persistence, and remapping. Five empirical domains connect these dimensions to lichen research without treating interaction, chemical inhibition, photobiont coexistence, or community turnover as sufficient evidence of semiosis. Comparisons include mechanistic models with memory and feedback, alongside deliberately restricted baselines. Existing studies provide empirical footholds; they do not yet validate the complete profile in any lichen. The contribution is a conditional programme for locating and testing semiotic organisation across symbiotic partners and scales, with explicit conditions for weakening or withholding higher-order agency.
This article examines xenobots as a test case for biosemiotic and pragmatist theory. Recent developments in synthetic biology have destabilized established distinctions between organism and machine, while also reopening the question of whether designed living constructs can be regarded as agents in their own right. The article asks what conceptual vocabulary is adequate to describe systems that are simultaneously designed and self-organizing, engineered and materially alive. The methodology combines a biosemiotic framework, drawing on Peirce’s concept of habit as a stabilized disposition to act, with the operational distinction between protosemiosis and eusemiosis elaborated by Sharov and Vehkavaara (2015). This framework is applied to the empirical analysis of xenobot behavior in order to characterize their semiotic status with precision and without anthropomorphic overextension. The article argues that xenobots instantiate a form of scaffolded protosemiosis: a graded semiotic agency in which habit is not encoded in neural circuits but embodied in the morphological scaffold produced through evolutionary algorithms. This concept is further anchored in Michael Levin and Christopher Martyniuk’s (2018) bioelectric code framework, which provides empirical grounding for the claim that semiotic interpretation operates below the threshold of neural organization. The article concludes that the pragmatist and biosemiotic approach offers a methodologically rigorous and empirically tractable framework for evaluating agency in hybrid living systems, with broader implications for the life sciences.
This paper provides an intellectual map of the journal Biosemiotics to understand how the publication and its associated field of research has structured itself. Using aggregate metrics alongside network analysis methods (specifically semantic document clustering and citation scientometrics) the study visualizes the authors, concepts, and thematic interrelations that make up the journal’s publication cumulative footprint. The findings reveal a complex topography where authors, concepts, and papers collectively act as bridges and anchors, organizing the discipline into a dense metatheoretical core, specialized research mountains (such as mimicry and code biology), outward-facing frontiers (for instance, ecoacoustics), and isolated islands. Ultimately, mapping these networks exposes a defining paradox within the discipline: the persistent tension between a highly stable, canonical core that secures the field’s identity, and the unstable, dynamic frontiers where structural frictions, including geographic and linguistic barriers, as well as general science disputes, emerge. This paper is accompanied by an open-source, interactive dashboard that offers both a quantitative overview of the journal’s map and a practical navigational tool for researchers to explore its literature.
