Predation as predication: Toward an ecology of semiosis and syntax

Abstract

OverviewsThe controversial sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson (1984: 60) writes, As the cerebral cortex grew from apish dimensions through hundreds of thousands of years of evolution, it was forced to rely on tricks to enlarge memory and speed computation. The mind therefore specializes on analogy and metaphor, on a sweeping together of chaotic sensory experience into workable categories labeled by words and tacked into hierarchies for quick recovery.In theory, then, one ought to have two distinct nervous systems [in any one animal]: one of them predatory, charged with attracting and capturing prey; the other prey, charged with evading or repelling would-be predators ..

The semiosis of stone: A “rocky” rereading of Samuel Taylor Coleridge through Charles Sanders Peirce

“…Earlier (Coletta 1996(Coletta , 1999, we have argued that the skeleton of our language, syntax, is analogous to, or literally derives in part from, the visual syntax (or layering and embeddedness of figures of sight) of biological mimicry in the context of predator-prey relationships. In some cases of biological mimicry, animals -which, like verbal phrases, have phrasal heads and directionality and embedded signs that are detachable and substitutable -are themselves the embodiment of complex visual puzzles the meaning of which is a ''matter'' of interpretation.…”

“…Predators of these fish, whose ecological mandate is to detach those ironic icons and indices from their objects and thus render their prey identifiable and edible, are like readers who either get or don't get the syntax and irony of the textual phrases they encounter. Even the skeletal, linguistic algebra and geometry of Noam Chomsky's x-bar theory and universal phrase structure seem to have their analogue in these complex predator-prey codings and decodings (Coletta 1996).…”

“…Paul Bouissac (1993) writes compellingly of the necessity of even the biological origin of the arbitrary sign. And the natural world is itself a semiotic sphere both of representation and of misrepresentation, irony, and earnestness (Coletta 1993(Coletta , 1996(Coletta , 1997(Coletta , 1999.…”