Towards understanding biotic, psychic and semiotically-mediated mechanisms of anticipation

Abstract

Anticipation is an inevitable characteristic of life. Instead of asking whether this or that organism reveals some form of anticipation as it is often done in biology and psychology today, it is more fruitful to ask in which ways different organisms anticipate future. In this chapter Anokhin’s Functional Systems Theory is taken as a starting point to proceed with the analysis of how psychic and cultural mechanisms of anticipation have evolved over the history of mind. Grounded also on Vygotsky’s and Lotman’s theories, it is concluded that there are nine different developmentally ordered mechanisms of thought and correspondingly nine different forms of anticipation. Knowing the basic mechanisms of thinking, it becomes possible to evaluate research in anticipation from a new perspective. Limitations of less developed forms of anticipation can be recognized and replaced with more efficient hierarchically higher-order forms of anticipatory thinking.