Tradition and Discovery: The Polanyi Society Periodical

Using the writing of Eliseo Fernandez and Jesper Hoffmeyer, this essay introduces important ideas in the emerging interdisciplinary field known as “biosemiotics.” Later discussion summarizes Michael Polanyi’s criticisms of the Modern Synthesis and his alternative constructive philosophical account of life, evolution and biological study, suggesting areas of overlap with contemporary biosemiotics.

The essay discusses congruency issues in the biosemiotic approach of the Danish biochemist, Jesper Hoffmeyer. The authors understand Hoffmeyer’s anti-reductionistic approach to be similar to Michael Polanyi’s multi-layered ontology, but suggest that the Polanyian approach has fewer handicaps as a model-building enterprise. We offer a historical review of Hoffmeyer’s polarized narrative of 20th century biology and investigate his central thesis that life and semiosis are coextensive. We argue that Hoffmeyer conflates temporal and spatial features of semiotic systems, his account of emergentism is unclear and the relationship between semiotic evolution and punctuated equilibrium is vague, possibly entailing incongruent metaphysical views.

In their co-authored work, Retrieving Realism, Hubert Dreyfus and Charles Taylor argue that an unfortunate epistemological picture holds us captive. Thinkers enmeshed in this picture focus on what mediates our knowledge when an inner self is distinguished from the outer world. This stance, they say, encourages doubt about whether we really know what we perceive. In this essay I argue that mediation, properly understood, and the inner/outer distinction are crucial for understanding how we know. The stratified ontology of Michael Polanyi and the emphasis on interpretation in biosemiotics provide an approach, set in an evolutionary framework, for illuminating the richness of reality. This richer view examines how and what we can know, the unfolding nature of consciousness, and the embodied depth of existential meaning.