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.
The Sharov and Tonnessen noumenal overlay, integrating the specifying and exemplar sign-relations as semiotic agency, is now coupled to the interventional sign relation. The result is semiotic agency and the interventional sign-relation together constitute the biosemiotic noumenal overlay.
This commentary collects blogs for March and April of 2025 and concerns chapters from the books, "Semiotic Agency: Science beyond Mechanism", published in 2021, authored by Alexei Sharov and Morten Tonnessen, and "Pathways to the Origin and Evolution of Meanings in the Universe", published in 2024, edited by Alexei Sharov and George Mikhailovsky.