BOOK REVIEW

Paul Bains (2006). The primacy of semiosis: An ontology of relations. (Toronto

Studies in Semiotics and Communication) Toronto, Buﬀalo, London: University

of Toronto Press. 186 pp.; ISBN 10: 0-8020-9003-6, ISBN 13:978-0-8020-9003-4.

The conditions on the surface of a planet without living organisms are determined

entirely by the sunÕs energy and the laws of physics and chemistry, as James

Lovelock showed convincingly (Marg ulis, 1999). A planet with living organisms

deviates considerably from this scheme. The gas composi tion and temperature

will vary in a manner that cannot be predicted exclusively by the laws of physics

and chemistry alone. Such a planet contains incompatible gas mixtures and

temperatures whose relatively stable balance is actively co ntrolled by organisms.

The interaction between organisms and matter is one in which organisms

interpret and structure their abiotic environment according to biological princi-

ples. Parallel to this, the relationship to other organisms is a communicative one:

their mutual behavior underlies changeable semio tic rules of sign use with which

the biological individuals interact, i.e. coordinate and organize. The diﬀerence is

that organisms cannot develop such a ‘‘to follow or not follow’’-relationship with

natural laws, but underlie them in the strict sense.

From a biosemiotic perspective, there is an unbridgeable gap between on the

one hand chemical reactions (for example water molecules crystallizing to ice

when exposed to a certain temperature below zero) and on the other hand cell s of

a living organism receiving chemical molecules as signs sent from another part of

the organism to transport a vital message. Normally, message receiving, inter-

pretation and appropriate response generation involve species-speciﬁc interac-

tional rules. In contrast to the example of non-living matter (water  ice), the

organismal semiotic processes may fail when (1) the message is generated

incompletely, (2) the message is somehow damaged or deformed during transport,

(3) the receiving entity is not appropriate, or (4) the interpretation by the receiver

is incorrect. All of these may lead to a response behavior incoherent with the

intent of the message.

In the last two decades the vocabulary in biology to describe all major and

minor arrangements and rearrangements of genetic and genomic content has

clearly turned to the use of linguistic and semiotic terms, e.g. ‘‘molecular prag-

matism’’ (Witzany, 1995), or ‘‘protein linguistics’’ (Gimona, 2006). In addition,

the description of interactions between cells and organis ms has turned to the use

of terms of communication theory, e.g. cellcell-communication, bacteria

communication, plant communication (Baluska et al., 2006).

Biological disciplines that work exclusively with a terminology of physics,

chemistry, mechanics, stochastics and formalizable mathematical sign systems

have diﬃculties making their languages compatible with linguistic, semiotic and

communicative vocabularies. Genetic and genomic contents, especially their

changing processes during evolutionary events, involve the complementary role of

combinatorial (syntactic), context-sensitive (pragmatic) and content-speciﬁc

(semantic) rules. Such rules apply not only to the genetic storage medium of DNA

but  as our increasing knowledge of epigenetics has shown  equally to the

Acta Biotheoretica (2006) 54:305311  Springer 2007

DOI: 10.1007/s10441-007-9004-y

concrete interactional context of the DNA-bearing organism. Parallel to this, the

descent, evolution and precision of signal-mediated coordination and cooperation

in single-cell populations such as populations of bacteria or protoctists and in

multicellular organisms like fungi, animals and plants, clearly demonstrate that

communication functions only if the signaling exchange and inter pretation is

coherent to species-speciﬁc shared rules. Therefore, biological disciplines be gin to

look to non-biological disciplines like linguistics (Searls, 2002), semantics

(Barbieri, 2001), biosemiotics (Kull, 2005), biohermeneutics (Markos, 2002), and

action-theoretical communication theory (Witzany, 2000).

Not only in the case of biosemiotics this leads to an increasing interest in the

foundations of sciences which focus on sign-use, language and communication.

The interest in a general theory of signs, i.e. semiotics, goes hand in hand with the

lack of a unique theory or methodology that can provide the foun dations of

semiotics. Realism, idealism, ontology, mathematical language theory, systems

and information theory, naturalism, semioticism, pragmaticism, structuralism

and constructivism are some of the many argumentative lines of (philosophical)

foundations, which compete in several semiotic subdisciplines such as in socio-,

cultural- or bio-semiotics.

Paul Bains undertakes an ambitious approach to work out an ontological

foundation not only of semiotics but of philosophy in general. This means

acknowledging sign processes (semioses) as real relations prior to any knowledge.

On this view, semioses and the relations constructed by them are at the very

foundations of Being and are prior to cognition and philosophy. Recurring to the

philosophies of Gilles Deleuze, John Deely, John Poin set and Humberto

Maturana, Bains looks at relations as being ‘externalÕ to their terms. Bains his-

torically reconstructs this line of thought, starting with the ontology of Aristotle,

the essentialism of scholastics and then proceeding further to Duns Scotus, John

Poinset, Charles San ders Peirce, Gilles Deleuze, Felix Guattari, Gottfried

Wilhelm Leibniz, Immanuel Kant, Humberto Maturana, Martin Heidegger,

Jakob von Uexku

ll, John Deely, Alfred North Whitehead, Bruno Latour and

Isabelle Stengers. Bains suggests that understanding the ontology of relations

would allow us to develop a convincing representation of the action of signs. The

central assumption is that relations as relations are univocal in their ‘‘ad-esse’’.

This univocity is prior to thinking and Being, prior to the division of ens rationis

and ens reale. BainsÕs aim is to achieve a solution for the medieval nominalist

thesis, that it is possible in the example of the univocity of relations as relations to

show their objective Being.

Because external relations are the essence of Being, prior to thinking and

categorizing, they are also the precondition to our understanding and commu-

nication. We primarily recognize Being in the world as relations and, secondarily,

we can understand ourselves by understanding relations: ‘‘Univocal Being inheres

in language and ha ppens to things; it measures the internal relation of language

with the external relation of Being’’ (p. 7). The externality of relations to their

terms is essential also for Deleuze. The relations which we experience through

language and communication are prior to any language and communication 

external Beings whi ch are focused by language. As ontological fundamentals,

relations are prior to language-derived constructions like idealism and realism.

Book Review306

This, so Bains, has its foundations in John Poinset and his reference to the

ontology of Duns Scotus and St. Thomas Aquinas. The relations exist objectively

(‘‘esse ad’’) and are intellectually (re)constructed. In contrast to objective Being,

Poinset constructs a not immanentl y given but ‘‘suprasubjective’’ level of being.

Not the theory is recognized as sign; rather, objective Being is recognized as a

pattern of univocal relations, which are physical relations in parallel. Bains ﬁnds

this univocal relationship realized in Jakob von Uexku

llÕs Umweltlehre and his

pure relationships of species-speciﬁc ‘‘Umwelten’’. These relationships do not

describe the transition from a monadic subjective world to the outside world, but

are prior to this ‘‘suprasubjective’’. Bains compares this with the radical con-

structivism of Maturana and Varela and their concept of autopoiesis, which could

also generate univocal relations. But in the radical constructivism they propose,

the subject of knowledge would hide itself in a (closed) world of cognition.

Bains ﬁnds the processuality of relations in AristotleÕs substance-accidence

metaphysics and in the further developed processuality of Whitehead and

Maturana and Varela. But AristotleÕ s relations become independent of their terms

in OccamÕs nominalism (are the things in their terms or independent of them?).

Bains strives for a ‘‘realistic realism’’, as is the goal of Bruno Latour. Semiotically,

Bains seeks to reach the truth of relations in which we can speak abo ut the reality

of Being, which we recognize based on its stability  in contrast to the experience

of an ongoing transformational world. As Bruno Latour (1990, 296) put it: ‘‘we

speak truthfully because the world itself is articulated.’’ Therefore, Bains is not

convinced  coherent with Deely  of KantÕs approach to mediate idealism and

realism, noumenon and phaenomenon.

Objective Being is (as Duns Scotus stated) a Being independent of cognition

and a subject of knowledge. One of the central questions is how to reﬂect upon the

relation between subject and object, inside world and outside world. Bains is

convinced that the semiotic reality is the real experience and cannot be reduced to

a thinking mind, whi ch generates a construction a posteriori, because it is pre-

categorical and univocal. The depiction of the material reality is univocal because

the semiosis represents a relation as it is in objective reality. The real relations are

signs by themselves and can be used to describe relations. This is a kind of self-

referentiality. Only with relations and therefore with semioses can someone

produce a univocity between signs and objective Being.

In a modern turn, the question arises as to how neurobiological processes c an

be combined with cognition and language. Biological organisms are self-referential

systems and con structed like ‘‘abstract machines’’. Cognition is therefore neither

an acquisition of knowledge nor an epiphenomenon of neuronal activity of the

brain, but rather an organisational activity of living systems: ‘‘Organization

implies a particular set of relations. For example, in an autopoietic system,

organization refers to the network of processes and relations that realize the sys-

tem. The ‘structureÕ of a living system is in constant transformation (whereas its

organization or abstract machine remains invariant). In a non-living system (such

as a toilet) the ‘organizationÕ consists in the assemblage of relations between an

apparatus capable of detecting the water level and another apparatus capable of

stopping the inﬂow of water.’’(p. 88) Maturana and Varela are more interested in

the process of relation than in the process of representation of signs. This brings

them close to speech act theory, because they place language in a social ﬁeld of

Book Review 307

coordinating and consensual interactions. But they do not make the step from their

objectivistic perspective to participating inter actions: they adopt an observer

perspective because they think this is the appropriate perspective to take for

external observers of speech acts when trying to understand information. Because

of this Bains had an opportunity to turn his perspect ive into that of a participating

intersubjective one. Instead, he reduces social inter acting into the social-political

view of Nietzsche, Foucault and Deleuze: ‘‘languageing’’ and therefore

sign-mediated interactions are in any case a priori power relations, deformed and

non-reciprocal.

At this point it seems that we reach the most interesting part of the book. It

would be a crucia l step to transcend ontology towards a language-critical

reﬂection on the conditions for making valid ity claims with respect to scientiﬁc,

philosophical, etc. utterances. In the chapter ‘‘Autopoiesis and Languageing’’, for

example, the connection of the concepts of Maturana and Varela and Deleuze and

Guattari is brought in touch with formal conditions of speech act theory: to form

sentences and to initiate communication (i.e. rule-governed sign-mediated inter-

actions) are types of apriori and intersubjective social interactions. Deleuze and

Guattari integrate speech act theory radically: language and communication are

types of social interactions and not possible for solus ipse individuals. The

non-discursive immanent relations between utterances and actions as found in

illocutionary acts have three crucial consequences:

• It is impossible to imagine language as a code, because a code is the

precondition of any explanation.

• It is impossible to deﬁne syntax, semantics and even phonetics independently

of pragmatics.

• It is impossible to maintain the distinction between language and speech.

But Bains doesnÕt reﬂect on a (pragmatic) relation of this approach to his own

utterances and their immanen t validity claims. The relation of sentences to their

validity conditions is not made, although this would have helped him to exit his

solus ipse subject of knowledge. Instead, he puts these positions of speech act

theory in perspect ive by reducing them to a social-political dimension of power

relations.

Bains acknowledges that the social dimension of language, as put forward by

Maturana and Varela and Deleuze and Guattari, is a non-reductive hypothesis.

At the same time he identiﬁes this social dimension as a (onto-logical) biological

precondition. He re-naturalizes this social dimension of language into the

(objectivistic) observer-perspective of relations in interactions and the interacting

bodies (125). He even recognizes in Deleuze and Guattari the liberation of

solipsistic foundations. ‘‘The ‘subjectÕ becomes a symbiotic node within social

interactions’’ (127). This generates ‘‘se lf’’ as (a priori) part of socially interacting

entities, but at the same time reduces this liberating aspect to the non-critically

investigated post-structuralistic ‘‘exercise-of-power’’-metaphor. Bains cannot

imagine a reciprocal communication which gains its power by free agreements on

validity claims of utterances.

Bains wants to escape the monadology of the solipsistic subject of knowledge

of his ontologi cal approach by focusing on the relation as PoinsetÕs ad-esse

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(‘‘being toward’’). He also subsumes the interacting subjects in this ‘‘being-

toward’’. As do Deleuze and Guattari, he identiﬁes subjectivity interwoven in a

network of mental skills, situative ‘‘Umwelten’’ and social interconnectedness.

Based on his ontological point of view, however, he is unable to appropriately

respond to these typical questions on the relation between inside and outside,

thinking and world, terms (nouomenon) and reality (phenomenon). For him,

relations are primarily ‘‘external to their terms’’. This yields a semiotics of reality,

because the relations expressed in language are the relations of reality. Therefore,

Bains is convinced of the Primacy of Semiosis.

It is possible to think ontologically, to overlook the theory of science discourse

between 1920 and 1980 and its consequences (the linguistic turn and the pragmatic

turn), and to rebound the arguments to classical pre-Kantian metaphysics. But

this yields a hopeless entanglement in classical metaphysical problems of inside/

outside world, subject-object dichotomy, realism-objectivis m-idealism, language

and its ‘‘depiction’’ of ‘‘objective Being’’. The description of DeleuzeÕs speech act

reﬂections provided Bains with the only opportunity to escape the methodological

solipsist position that language and communication  even the validity claims he

holds with his theoretical utterances  are, as social interactions, intersubjective.

Then, he would have been able  like the Wittgensteinian ‘‘Fly’’  to ﬁnd his way

out of the glass of philosophy of consciousness and its unsolvable metaphysical

problem: how to make the move from a state of ‘‘private’’ consciousness to a state

of mutual agreement and cooperation.

In contrast to the results of recent speech act theory or to a modern

action-theory of sociology, Bains is unable to explain the commonly shared

understanding of utterances by at least two interacting subjects as being the

precondition of coordination and coop eration. But, if we want to understand

semioses (sign processes), we have to explain exactly this communal shared

understanding. BainsÕ approach therefore leads to an abstractive fallacy within

which the complementary roles of (a) the sign-using individual, (b) the signiﬁca-

tion and (c) the signiﬁed something is reduced to the relation ‘‘being-towards’’, the

signalling process without the signal-generating subject.

Moreover, the thesis that relations by themselves are univocal creates

problems. It would imply a strict relation between sentences, which express

relations to the reality. This attempt to construct a pure representational langu age

is doomed to failure because even a constructed formal artiﬁcial language does

not exclusively contain terms that are univocal. Scientiﬁc statements are not

attributable to immediate sensory experience, i.e., the language game used to

describe observations does not mirror the brain activity during the perception of

reality.

In the terms of BainsÕ language of ontology, problems also arise with under-

standing speech acts. ItÕs not the identiﬁcation of the relation, which is established by

these acts, but the understanding of the rules which govern the activity. This means I

can also understand an act that runs counter to the rules. Speech acts I can under-

stand if I share rule-governed sign-mediated interactions with at least one other

subject. This has bee n shown by WittgensteinÕs private-language-argument in that

‘‘It is not possible that there should have been only one occasion on which someone

obeyed a rule.’’ (Wittgenstein, 1968: 80). The competence to follow (semiotic) rules

derived a priori from the experience of being part of social interactions. It is correct

Book Review 309

that interactions depend on real (or secondarily imagined) communal interactions,

i.e. relations, but relations are the result of interacting subjects.

Semiotics, linguistics as well as communication theory and action theory

share a present understanding of the primacy of pragmatics, as described by

Bains using the ‘‘languageing’’-concept of Deleuze. This would have been the

opportunity for Bains to leave behind the ontology approach and his (solus

ipse) observer perspective and to realize that his utterances  combined

with his validity claims for the sentences he produces  are part of a language

 a priori; he is unable to transcend this a priori through an ontological

perspective. Every ontology in principle has to form sentences with validity

claims. But he relativizes this language-a priori through a (post-structuralist)

verdict that language per se is not ‘‘objective’’, but rather a tool of ‘‘power-

play’’ between communicative interactors.

The ontology of relations as an external-to-their-terms description of reality of

relation-being is not helpful in understanding what generates relations between

speech act subject s. Such an understanding must be coherent in both a scientiﬁc

description as well as in an everyday langua ge description to gain acceptance for

validity claims by those who interact. This includes (Witzany, 2006):

1) The simultaneous understanding of identical meanings in two interacting

partners, as expressed in successful coordination of actions;

2) The diﬀerent iation be tween deep and superﬁcial grammar of utterances along

with diﬀerentiation between locutionary, illocutionary and performative

speech acts;

3) The diﬀerentiation between communicative (reciprocal) interactions and

strategic (manipulative) interactions of communicating subjects;

4) The diﬀerences of the validity claims which are held with every utterance.

Such an understanding of language-use by humans has to become clear before

any meta physical or ontological utterance (neces sarily undertaken in a language).

Only such an understand ing enables critical reﬂection on the conditions which

must be fulﬁlled if a common agreement on validity claims is to be reached

between interactional partners. Or how could I mention an ontological thesis

without it having been expressed in an utterance by somebody?

REFERENCES

Margulis, L. (1999). Die andere Evolution. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag.

Witzany, G. (1995). From the ‘Logic of Molecular SyntaxÕ to Molecular Pragmatism. Evolution and

Cognition 1(2): 148168.

Gimona, M. (2006). Protein linguistics  a grammar for modular protein assembly?. Nature Reviews

7: 6873.

Baluska, F., S. Mancuso and D. Volkmann (2006). Communication in plants: Neuronal aspects

of plant life. Heidelberg/New York: Springer.

Searls, D.B. (2002). The language of genes. Nature 420: 211217.

Barbieri, M. (2001). The organic codes. The birth of semantic biology. Ancona: PeQuod.

Kull, K. (2005). A brief history of biosemiotics. Journal of Biosemiotics 1: 134.

Markos, A. (2002). Readers of the book of life. Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press.

Witzany, G. (2000). Life: The communicative structure. Norderstedt: Libri Books on Demand.

Book Review310

Wittgenstein, L. (1968). Philosophical investigations. Oxford: Basil & Blackwell.

Witzany, G. (2006). The Logos of the Bios 1. Contributions to the foundation of a three-leveled

biosemiotics. Helsinki: Umweb.

Guenther Witzany

telos  Philosophische Praxis, Vogelsangstr 18c, A-5111, Buermoos/Salzburg,

Austria.

E-mail: [email protected]

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