Signs of Meaning in the Universe

by Jesper Hoffmeyer

Overview

From reviews for the bestselling Danish edition:

" . . . dashing and idiomatic language that is a pleasure to read." —Berlingske Tidende

" . . . an appetizer and eye opener . . . Hoffmeyer is a modernistic pioneer in the wide open spaces of the natural sciences . . . " —Politiken

" . . . extremely well written and interesting manifesto for a bioanthropology . . . " —Inf.

"It should be read by anyone who likes to be wiser and at the same time to be challenged in his habitual conception of the relations between culture and nature." —Weekend Avisen

On this tour of the universe of signs, Jesper Hoffmeyer travels back to the Big Bang, visits the tiniest places deep within cells, and ends his journey with us—complex organisms capable of speech and reason. What propels this journey is Hoffmeyer's attempt to discover how nature could come to mean something to someone—by telling the story of how cells, tissue, organs, plants, animals, even entire ecosystems communicate by signs and signals.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253332332
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	02/22/1997
Series:	Advances in Semiotics
Pages:	176
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

JESPER HOFFMEYER is Professor in the Biosemiotics Group at the Institute of Molecular Biology at the University of Copenhagen. He has published six books in Danish on social and philosophical aspects of biology and is a regular contributor to leading Danish newspapers. He has been the editor of two major Danish magazines on science, technxnd society, and is presently a member of the board for The Centre for Ethics and Law, University of Copenhagen.

Table of Contents

Foreword

1. Signifying
On lumps in nothingness, on "not"
2. Forgetting
On history and codes: the dialectic of oblivion
3. Repeating
On Nature's tendency to acquire habits
4. Inventing
On life and self-reference, on subjectivity
5. Opening Up
On the sensory universe of creatures: the liberation of the semiosphere
6. Defining
The mobile brain: the language of cells
7. Connecting
On the triadic ascendance of dualism
8. Sharing
On language: existential bioanthropology
9. Uniting
Consciousness: the bodily governor within the brain
10. Healing
On ethics: reuniting two stories in one body-mind

Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

A translation (by Barbara J. Haveland) from the Danish work (1993, Rosinante, Kobenhavn). Hoffmeyer (biosemiotics, Institute of Molecular Biology, U. of Copenhagen) has published six books in Danish on social and philosophical aspects of biology. He begins by introducing the concept of "semiosphere"<-->(from the preface): "...a sphere...incorporating all forms of communication: sounds, smells, movements, colors, shapes, electrical fields, thermal radiation....In short, signs of life"; then explicates the concept in the ten chapters that follow. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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