Emergence and evolution of meaning

Abstract

The category of meaning is first traced forwards starting from the origin of the Universe itself and its grounding in pre-geometry; then it is traced backwards from the sense-interactions within the world to the interpretation of the corresponding reality. Different from many former approaches in the theories of information and also in biosemiotics in our progressive perspective, we show: on the one hand, that the forms of meaning emerge alongside with information and energy; on the other, that information can be visualised as being always meaningful - in a sense to be clarified, which extends Floridi's General Definition of Information - rather than meaning showing up as a later specification of information within social systems only. In the regressive perspective the category of meaning is explored starting from the manifestation of reality in its own level of interaction. Based upon the physical constraints of the manifestation through electromagnetic waves generated by an object of observation, which constitutes the basis of animal vision, we analyse the limits of the meaning-offer of such manifestation. This allows us: (1) to compare the efficiency of natural evolution in the reception of such meaning-offer; (2) to analyse the conditions for developing a hermeneutical agency able to acknowledge the reality underlying its manifestation. Hence, what we actually do - through this dual perspective - is to follow the strict line of the Unified Theory of Information in the sense of Hofkirchner, visualising information and energy as two different categorical aspects of one and the same underlying primordial structure.