Biosemiotics is a new disciplinary enterprise that appears scientific, but not the same way as physics and chemistry. Biology is different. Biological processes depend on normal contexts and potentials. We can label a primal normal context as "life" and its corresponding potential as "staying alive". A living thing is not the same as a physical and chemical thing.
The causalities of physics and chemistry can be mathematically and mechanically modeled. The causalities of biology are similar, yet different in a crucial fashion. Sign relations are critical for biology, but not for physics and chemistry. So, how does one account for sign-relations?
One must reconsider the reality of the noumenon, the thing itself.
In order to accomplish this, one must reflect on the history of science and its complement, phenomenology.
This work develops the Sharov and Tonnessen noumenal overlay for semiotic agency as a reification of the specifying sign-relation.
This commentary collects blogs for January of 2025 and covers Part 1 and 3 of the book, "Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism", published in 2021, by Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen.