72 found
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  1. The Biosemiotic Fundamentals of Aesthetics: Beauty is the Perfect Semiotic Fitting.Kalevi Kull - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (1):1-22.
    We propose a model which argues that aesthetics is based on biosemiotic processes and introduces the non-anthropomorphic aesthetics. In parallel with habit-taking, which is responsible for generating semiotic regularities, there is another process, the semiotic fitting, which is responsible for generating aesthetic relations. Habit by itself is not good or bad, it is good or bad because of semiotic fitting. Defining the beautiful as the perfect semiotic fitting corresponds to the common conceptualisation of the aesthetic as well as extends it (...)
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  2. Theses on Biosemiotics: Prolegomena to a Theoretical Biology.Kalevi Kull, Terrence Deacon, Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer & Frederik Stjernfelt - 2009 - Biological Theory 4 (2):167-173.
    Theses on the semiotic study of life as presented here provide a collectively formulated set of statements on what biology needs to be focused on in order to describe life as a process based on semiosis, or sign action. An aim of the biosemiotic approach is to explain how life evolves through all varieties of forms of communication and signification (including cellular adaptive behavior, animal communication, and human intellect) and to provide tools for grounding sign theories. We introduce the concept (...)
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  3.  21
    Choosing and learning.Kalevi Kull - 2018 - Sign Systems Studies 46 (4):452-466.
    We examine the possibility of shifting the concept of choice to the centre of the semiotic theory of learning. Thus, we define sign process (meaning-making) through the concept of choice: semiosis is the process of making choices between simultaneously provided options. We define semiotic learning as leaving traces by choices, while these traces influence further choices. We term such traces of choices memory. Further modification of these traces (constraints) will be called habituation. Organic needs are homeostatic mechanisms coupled with choice-making. (...)
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  4.  38
    There is Umwelt Before Consciousness, and Learning Transverses Both.Kalevi Kull & Donald Favareau - 2022 - Biosemiotics 15 (3):491-495.
    We comment here on a target article by Eva Jablonka and Simona Ginsburg, which adds an interesting and important contribution to semiotic biology by their discussion of cognition and learning. In agreement with the aims and outlook of the authors, we offer a few observations about how the seminal biosemiotic concept of umwelt may be a critical tool to aid in this investigation of biological learning, knowing, being, and acting in the world. In particular, we would like to advance the (...)
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  5.  98
    Jakob von Uexküll: An introduction.Kalevi Kull - 2001 - Semiotica 2001 (134):1-59.
    The article gives an account of life and work of Jakob von Uexk?ll, together with a description of his impact to theoretical biology, behavioural studies, and semiotics. It includes the complete bibliography of Uexk?ll's published works, as well as an extensive list of publications about him.
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  6.  49
    Evolution, Choice, and Scaffolding: Semiosis is Changing Its Own Building.Kalevi Kull - 2015 - Biosemiotics 8 (2):223-234.
    We develop here a semiotic model of evolution. We point out the role of confusion and choice as a condition for semiosis, which is a precondition for semiotic learning and semiotic adaptation. Semiosis itself as interpretation and decision-making between options requires phenomenal present. The body structure of the organism is largely a product of former semiosis. The organism’s body together with the structure of the ecosystem serves also as a scaffolding for the sign processes that carry on the ontogenetic cycle (...)
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  7.  52
    Biosemiotics in the twentieth century: A view from biology.Kalevi Kull - 1999 - Semiotica 127 (1-4):385-414.
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  8.  40
    Semiotic Fitting and the Nativeness of Community.Kalevi Kull - 2020 - Biosemiotics 13 (1):9-19.
    The concept of ‘semiotic fitting’ is what we provide as a model for the description and analysis of the diversity dynamics and nativeness in semiotic systems. One of its sources is the concept of ‘ecological fitting’ which was introduced by Daniel Janzen as the mechanism for the explanation of diversity in tropical ecosystems and which has been shown to work widely over the communities of various types. As different from the neo-Darwinian concept of fitness that describes reproductive success, ‘fitting’ describes (...)
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  9. On semiosis, Umwelt, and semiosphere.Kalevi Kull - 1998 - Semiotica 120 (3-4):299-310.
     
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  10. Semiotic ecology: different natures in the semiosphere.Kalevi Kull - 1998 - Sign Systems Studies 26 (1):344-371.
  11.  59
    Biosemiotic Questions.Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche & Donald Favareau - 2008 - Biosemiotics 1 (1):41-55.
    This paper examines the biosemiotic approach to the study of life processes by fashioning a series of questions that any worthwhile semiotic study of life should ask. These questions can be understood simultaneously as: (1) questions that distinguish a semiotic biology from a non-semiotic (i.e., reductionist–physicalist) one; (2) questions that any student in biosemiotics should ask when doing a case study; and (3) still currently unanswered questions of biosemiotics. In addition, some examples of previously undertaken biosemiotic case studies are examined (...)
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  12.  48
    The Biosemiotic Glossary Project: The Semiotic Threshold.Claudio Julio Rodríguez Higuera & Kalevi Kull - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (1):109-126.
    The present article is framed within the biosemiotic glossary project as a way to address common terminology within biosemiotic research. The glossary integrates the view of the members of the biosemiotic community through a standard survey and a literature review. The concept of ‘semiotic threshold’ was first introduced by Umberto Eco, defining it as a boundary between semiotic and non-semiotic areas. We review here the concept of ‘semiotic threshold’, first describing its denotation within semiotics via an examination on the history (...)
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  13. (1 other version)Jakob von Uexküll. Special issue of.Kalevi Kull - forthcoming - Semiotica.
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  14.  53
    The Biosemiotic Concept of the Species.Kalevi Kull - 2016 - Biosemiotics 9 (1):61-71.
    Any biological species of biparental organisms necessarily includes, and is fundamentally dependent on, sign processes between individuals. In this case, the natural category of the species is based on family resemblances, which is why a species is not a natural kind. We describe the mechanism that generates the family resemblance. An individual recognition window and biparental reproduction almost suffice as conditions to produce species naturally. This is due to assortativity of mating which is not based on certain individual traits, but (...)
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  15. How Can the Study of the Humanities Inform the Study of Biosemiotics?Donald Favareau, Kalevi Kull, Gerald Ostdiek, Timo Maran, Louise Westling, Paul Cobley, Frederik Stjernfelt, Myrdene Anderson, Morten Tønnessen & Wendy Wheeler - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (1):9-31.
    This essay – a collection of contributions from 10 scholars working in the field of biosemiotics and the humanities – considers nature in culture. It frames this by asking the question ‘Why does biosemiotics need the humanities?’. Each author writes from the background of their own disciplinary perspective in order to throw light upon their interdisciplinary engagement with biosemiotics. We start with Donald Favareau, whose originary disciplinary home is ethnomethodology and linguistics, and then move on to Paul Cobley’s contribution on (...)
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  16.  30
    Zoosemiotics is the study of animal forms of knowing.Kalevi Kull - 2014 - Semiotica 2014 (198):47-60.
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  17. Biosemiotic Research Questions.Kalevi Kull, Claus Emmeche & Donald Favareau - 2011 - In Claus Emmeche (ed.), Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs. Imperial College Press. pp. 67--90.
     
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  18. A biosemiotic conversation.Howard H. Pattee & Kalevi Kull - 2009 - Sign Systems Studies 37 (1-2):311-330.
    In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions of biosemiotics.
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  19.  30
    Semiosphere and a dual ecology.Kalevi Kull - 2005 - Sign Systems Studies 33 (1):175-188.
    This article compares the methodologies of two types of sciences (according to J. Locke) — semiotics, and physics — and attempts thereby to characterise the semiotic and non-semiotic approaches to the description of ecosystems. The principal difference between the physical and semiotic sciences is that there exists just a single physical reality that is studied by physics via repetitiveness, whereas there are many semiotic realities that are studied as unique individuals. Seventeen complementary definitions of the semiosphere are listed, among them, (...)
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  20.  58
    Natural Selection and Self-Organization Do Not Make Meaning, while the Agent’s Choice Does.Kalevi Kull - 2021 - Biosemiotics 14 (1):49-53.
    Demonstration of illusiveness of basic beliefs of the Modern Synthesis implies the existence of evolutionary mechanisms that do not require natural selection for the origin of adaptations. This requires adaptive changes that occur independently from replication, but can occasionally become heritable. Plastic self-organizational changes regulated by genome are largely incorporable into the old theory. A fundamentally different source of adaptability is semiosis which includes the agent’s free choice. Adding semiosis into the theory of Extended Evolutionary Synthesis completes the distancing from (...)
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  21. The Biosemiotic Approach in Biology : Theoretical Bases and Applied Models.Joao Queiroz, Claus Emmeche, Kalevi Kull & Charbel El-Hani - 2011 - In George Terzis & Robert Arp (eds.), Information and Living Systems: Philosophical and Scientific Perspectives. Bradford. pp. 91-130.
    Biosemiotics is a growing fi eld that investigates semiotic processes in the living realm in an attempt to combine the fi ndings of the biological sciences and semiotics. Semiotic processes are more or less what biologists have typically referred to as “ signals, ” “ codes, ”and “ information processing ”in biosystems, but these processes are here understood under the more general notion of semiosis, that is, the production, action, and interpretation of signs. Thus, biosemiotics can be seen as biology (...)
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  22. Semiosphere is the relational biosphere.Kaie Kotov & Kalevi Kull - 2011 - In Claus Emmeche (ed.), Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the Action of Signs. Imperial College Press. pp. 179--194.
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  23.  25
    Baldwin and biosemiotics: What intelligence is for.Jesper Hoffmeyer & Kalevi Kull - 2003 - In Bruce H. Weber & David J. Depew (eds.), Evolution and Learning: The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered. MIT Press. pp. 253--272.
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  24.  44
    Towards biosemiotics with Yuri Lotman.Kalevi Kull - 1999 - Semiotica 127 (1-4):115-132.
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  25.  43
    A sign is not alive — a text is.Kalevi Kull - 2002 - Sign Systems Studies 30 (1):327-335.
    The article deals with the relationships between the concepts of life process and sign process, arguing against the simplified equation of these concepts. Assuming that organism (and its particular case — cell) is the carrier of what is called ‘life’, we attempt to find a correspondent notion in semiotics that can be equalled to the feature of being alive. A candidate for this is the textual process as a multiple sign action. Considering that biological texts are generally non-linguistic, the concept (...)
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  26.  29
    Introduction.Winfried Nöth & Kalevi Kull - 2001 - Sign Systems Studies 29 (1):9-11.
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  27.  34
    Toward a reterritorialization of cultural theory.Marek Tamm & Kalevi Kull - 2016 - History of the Human Sciences 29 (1):75-98.
    This article argues that from a territorial perspective a certain coherence and continuity can be identified in the Estonian cultural-theoretical tradition – a discursive body based on common sources of influence and similar fundamental attitudes. We understand Estonian theory as a local episteme – a territorialized web of epistemological associations and rules for making sense of the world, which favours some premises while discouraging others. The article focuses on the older layers of Estonian theory, discussing the work of Karl Ernst (...)
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  28.  38
    Ladder, tree, web.Kalevi Kull - 2003 - Sign Systems Studies 31 (2):589-602.
    Fundamental turns in biological understanding can be interpreted as replacements of deep models that organise the biological knowledge. Three deep models distinguished here are a holistic ladder model that sees all levels of nature being complete (from Aristotle to the 18th century), a modernist tree model that emphasises progress and evolution (from Enlightenment to the recent times), and a web model that evaluates diversity (since the 20th century). The turn from the tree model to the web model in biology includes (...)
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  29.  39
    The place of art among other modelling systems.Kalevi Kull - 2011 - Sign Systems Studies 39 (2-4):249-269.
    This article by Juri Lotman from the third volume of Trudy po znakovym sistemam (Sign Systems Studies) in 1967, deals with the problem of artistic modelling. The general working questions are whether art displays any characteristic traits that are common for all modelling systems and which could be the specific traits that can distinguish art from other modelling systems. Art is seen as a secondary modelling system, more precisely, as a play-type model, which is characterised simultaneously by practical and conventional (...)
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  30.  48
    Biosemiotics and the problem of intrinsic value of nature.Kalevi Kull - 2001 - Sign Systems Studies 29 (1):353-364.
    This article poses the hypothesis that the problem of the intrinsic value of nature that stems from the work of G. E. Moore and is widely discussed in environmental philosophy, bas a parallel in a contemporary discussion in semiotics on the existence of semiosis in nature. From a semiotic point of view. value can be defined as an intentional dimension of sign. This is concordant with a biological interpretation of value that relates to biological needs. Thus. a semiotic approach in (...)
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  31. Evolution and semiotics.Kalevi Kull - 1992 - In Thomas A. Sebeok & Jean Umiker-Sebeok (eds.), Biosemiotics: The Semiotic Web 1991. pp. 221–233.
  32.  31
    On the history of joining bio with semio: FS Rothschild and the biosemiotic rules.Kalevi Kull - 1999 - Sign Systems Studies 27:128-138.
  33.  78
    Journals of semiotics in the world.Kalevi Kull & Timo Maran - 2013 - Sign Systems Studies 41 (1):140-145.
    Hereby we provide a list of all semiotic journals currently published in the world, which includes 53 titles. From among these, 42 are printed on paper (among them six international journals on general semiotics, 16 journals specializing in some branch of semiotics, and 20 regional semiotics journals), while 11 appearonly as electronic publications. All in all, these journals publish articles in 16 languages.
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  34.  29
    Биосемиотическая беседа.Howard H. Pattee & Kalevi Kull - 2009 - Sign Systems Studies 37 (1/2):331-331.
    In this dialogue, we discuss the contrast between inexorable physical laws and the semiotic freedom of life. We agree that material and symbolic structures require complementary descriptions, as do the many hierarchical levels of their organizations. We try to clarify our concepts of laws, constraints, rules, symbols, memory, interpreters, and semiotic control. We briefly describe our different personal backgrounds that led us to a biosemiotic approach, and we speculate on the future directions of biosemiotics.
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  35.  32
    Semiotics Is a Theory of Life.Kalevi Kull - 2003 - Semiotics:15-31.
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  36.  22
    Uexküll and the post-modern evolutionism.Kalevi Kull - 2004 - Sign Systems Studies 32 (1-2):99-114.
    Jakob von Uexküll’s evolutionary views are described and analysed in the context of changes in semiotic and biological thinking at the end of Modern age. As different from the late Modernist biology, a general feature of Post-Modern interpretation of living systems is that an evolutionary explanation has rather secondary importance, it is not obligatory for an understanding of adaptation. Adaptation as correspondence to environment is a communicative, hence a semiotic phenomenon.
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  37.  45
    Semiotic study of landscapes.Kati Lindström, Kalevi Kull & Hannes Palang - 2011 - Sign Systems Studies 39 (2-4):12-36.
    The article provides an overview of different approaches to the semiotic study of landscapes both in the field of semiotics proper and in landscape studiesin general. The article describes different approaches to the semiotic processes in landscapes from the semiological tradition where landscape has been seen as analogous to a text with its language, to more naturalized and phenomenological approaches, as well as ecosemiotic view of landscapes that goes beyond anthropocentric definitions. Special attention is paid to the potential of cultural (...)
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  38.  44
    Biosemiotics in a Gallery.Kalevi Kull & Ekaterina Velmezova - 2012 - Biosemiotics 5 (3):313-317.
    In this article we review the biosemiotic art exhibition «Signs of life» (Livstegn), that was organized by the Danish installation artist Morten Skriver and the biosemiotician Jesper Hoffmeyer in 2011 at the Esbjerg Art Museum (Denmark). The exhibition presented five central (bio)semiotic concepts using artistic tools: the semiosphere, the sign, semiotic scaffolding, semiotic freedom, and surfaces.
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  39. Semiosphere versus biosphere.Kaie Kotov & Kalevi Kull - 2005 - In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier. pp. 11--194.
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  40.  40
    Thure von Uexküll 1908–2004.Kalevi Kull & Jesper Hoffmeyer - 2005 - Sign Systems Studies 33 (2):487-494.
  41.  33
    Interview with Gerd B. Müller on Theoretical Biology.Kalevi Kull - 2023 - Biosemiotics 16 (3):381-394.
    The topics discussed in the interview cover the development and activities of the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research as one of the most important theoretical biology centers in the world, the reasons for its inspiring atmosphere, as well as the development of the interests and research work of its longtime president Gerd B. Müller. An important part of this is the work on a revised theoretical framework of evolution, the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis. We also talk about the (...)
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  42.  50
    John Deely, from the Point of View of Biosemiotics.Paul Cobley, Donald Favareau & Kalevi Kull - 2017 - Biosemiotics 10 (1):1-4.
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  43.  22
    Discovering ecoserniotics.Winfried Nöth & Kalevi Küll - 2000 - Sign Systems Studies 28:421-424.
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  44.  22
    Editors' comment.Claus Emmeche, Jesper Hoffmeyer & Kalevi Kull - 2002 - Sign Systems Studies 30 (1):11-13.
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  45.  35
    Jesper Hoffmeyer 1942–2019.Claus Emmeche, Donald Favareau & Kalevi Kull - 2019 - Biosemiotics 12 (3):365-372.
    This obituary about Jesper Hoffmeyer, thinker, scholar, science communicator, biochemist, biosemiotician, and saxophonist, gives a sketch of his intellectual biography, and provides a bibliography of the books he authored or edited.
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  46. Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics.Kaie Kotov & Kalevi Kull - 2006
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  47.  19
    Лестница, дерево, сеть.Kalevi Kull - 2003 - Sign Systems Studies 31 (2):603-603.
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  48.  8
    Alexandr Levich (1945–2016) and the Tartu–Moscow Biosemiotic Nexus.Kalevi Kull - 2016 - Sign Systems Studies 44 (1-2):255-266.
    Alexandr Levich and the Tartu–Moscow Biosemiotic Nexus.
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  49.  32
    A note on biorhetorics.Kalevi Kull - 2001 - Sign Systems Studies 29 (2):693-703.
    This article analyses the possibility to look at living systems as biorhetorical systems. Rhetorics of biology, which studies the rhetoric of biological discourse, is distinguishable from biorhetorics, which attempts to analyse the expressive behaviour of organisms in terms of primordial (unconscious) rhetoric. The appearance of such a view is a logical consequence from recent developments in new (or general) rhetorics on the one hand (e.g., G. A. Kennedy's claim that rhetoric exists among social animals), and from the biosemiotic approach to (...)
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  50.  10
    Biosemiootika ja looduse sisemise väärtuse probleem. Kokkuvõte.Kalevi Kull - 2001 - Sign Systems Studies 29 (1):364-365.
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