The 'Surplus of Meaning'. Biosemiotic aspects in Francisco J. Varela's philosophy of cognition

The late Chile born biologist Francisco J. Varela has been influential in theoretical biology throughout the last three decades of the 20. century. His thinking shows a marked development from a biologically founded constructivism (developed together with his fellow citizen, Humberto Maturana, with the main key word being “autopoiesis theory”) to a more phenomenological oriented standpoint, which Varela called himself the philosophy of embodiment, or “enactivism”. In this paper, I want to show that major arguments in this latter position can be fruitful for a biosemiotic approach to organism. Varela himself already applies concepts as e.g. “signification”, “relevance”, “meaning” which are de facto biosemiotic. He derives these concepts from a compact theory of organism, which he understands as the process of self-realization of a materially embodied subject. This presumption stems, though somewhat modified, from Autopoiesis theory and so attempts a quasiempirical description of the living in terms of self-organisation. Varela’s thinking might count as an exemplary model for a biosemiotic approach in a theory of organism. In particular, Varela’s link to down-to-earth biological research offers means to associate biosemiotics with the ongoing debate about the status of a biological system within genetics and proteomics research. Institute for Cultural Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Sophienstraße 22a, D–10178 Berlin, Germany, e-mail: andreas.weber@rz.hu-berlin.de. Private Address, which should be used for correspondence: D-21720 Guderhandviertel 90. Andreas Weber Biosemiotic aspects in Varela 2 „I want to start declaring that I think that understanding of organisms and the living is possible, that defining these terms in a satisfactory manner is not a utopian dream, and that we even have a good deal of the road already charted. However, this is under a fundamental condition: that the autonomy of the living is highlighted instead of forgotten, as it has been.“