Semiotics of Mimicry as Puzzle-Solving in Biosemiotics

摘要

No one in the bioscmiotic community doubts that bioscmiotics has raised a scientific revolution for biology. As a mature science, or a scientific paradigm established after the initial revolution, the most important task of biosemiotics is to solve puzzles within its own agenda (Kuhn, 1962, pp. 36-37). After it has established new ontological commitments on life, it proceeds to new semiotic methodologies for biology. Timo Maran's new book Mimicry and Meaning: Structure and Semiotics of Biological Mimicry provides an exemplar for puzzle-solving in biosemiotics. The book is a summary of Maran's more than 20 years study on mimicry. It arranges Maran's essays and ideas previously published over the past 20 years, in a way composing a systematic study on the semiotics of mimicry, emerging as an alternative, creative and innovative monograph on this bizarre phenomenon alongside "mainstream" studies in Darwinian evolution tradition.