Hi Folks,
Going on college travel for the weekend, I wished to pull together Alfred's writing on semiotic ecology and affinities, for printing, to take with me. I hoped that in remaking it, I could make more sense of semiotic ecology for myself. Thus, the process of ventriloquation has transformed it a little, and perhaps Alfred can comment where necessary.
bb
Semiotic ecology is to be understood as a field. Its starting point is to propose a conceptual system for understanding evolutions of all kinds. Only when you have a general conception of evolution can you deal with the specifics of any particular evolving domain, such as the biotic, the individual, or the cultural. And only when you understand the commonalities and the differences between such domains can you avoid the terrible simplification that is now almost commonly agreed upon, namely that human social and cultural life follows the rules that reign over bio-evolution.
Semiotic ecology is a conceptual system that is designed to operate on the level of concrete entities and their interactions and transactions. Classes of things do not interact, only the concrete things themselves. Science on the level of class concepts is most suspect to me. Similarly there is no interaction or transaction of abstractions except perhaps in the head of those who think make the abstractions. And it is most irrelevant, and also suspect, when the thinker mixes up the things and his concepts thereof. When symbols referring to the abstractions, rather than to concrete things, are manipulated, whether in the head, on paper or in computers, it may be difficult to get back to reality from the results of the manipulation.
Foundations can be defined neither by convention, nor by power, and tradition may go astray. I have come to be sure that those terms available such as truth, knowledge, substance, subject, mind, matter, cause etc., are misleading. I may use words such as foundation, basis etc. some times, but I don't mean something fixed except for some very basic constituents. Comparatively, if bio-evolution could not build on reliable chemistry and physics of the atoms, it would quickly break down and so would all what's built upon it. The secret of evolution is the "evolution of evolutions" (John Dewey's phrase).
Semiotic ecology, as a constructive methodology may avoid replacing foundations by other foundations because its basics are so sparse, so stint. Lewin invented such a strategy in the 1920's. I hope the advantage of constructing transgression and transaction from the same building blocks has caught your curiosity. I still believe, and do so until somebody shows me wrong, that semiotic ecology is built on one single assumption: structures emerging can combine or change each other to build new and affine structures. All the rest follows in the evolutive process. No other foundation is required.
Although borrowed from general language and taking up its general meaning, "affinity" is a term used in semiotic ecology in a quite specific way, namely as the potential of any one structure to selectively interact. Affinity may occur both in various qualities and in varying degrees and may be based on complementarity, rather than similarity.
(American-)English dictionaries (Webster) quite adequately to my purpose describe the meaning of "affinity" and "affinities" generally as "any natural drawing or inclination; close relation or agreement". More comprehensively, Webster adds specific meanings that can readily be subordinated to the above:
(1) biological: a structural or physiologic likeness in different organisms indicative of a common origin;
(2) structural likeness indicating a common origin, as in languages;
(3) chemical: the force of attraction by which differing chemical element unite to form compounds;
(4) connection through certain relations formed, as by church or state, especially, relationship; through marriage (as opposed to blood relationship);
(5) a Platonic or spiritual attraction held to exist between certain persons, especially between those of opposite sexes.
The Latin original appears to imply two meanings: adjacency (as at a border) and relationship by structural similarity or complementarity (as in mating capability and Seelenverwandtschaft (Shared beliefs and values etc., Literal: Soul relationship)). The interesting thing here is that the affinity of two structures must have its basis in a structural or content relationship. In actuality affinity will only play when the two structures encounter in some way and that implies contingency in space and time.
As to "affine", this is simply the adjective thereof. Webster strangely restricts the adjective to meaning (5) above: a relative by marriage or a kinsman.
Semiotic ecology uses the term in the whole spread of meanings, giving preference to an abstract way of conceiving affinity within the conception of semiosic structure formation: affinity is the potential of a structure to interact with another structure in specific ways. Usually this is a result of the two structures being relatively near to each other in terms of the place in the genetic tree of an evolution. Exceptions to this are possible in two ways: relatively far removed structures in the tree can be affine, and relatively near structures may fail to be affine. In principle, any presentation of something in a certain respect (which is what semiosis does) implies affinity between the referent and the presentant. And presentants of presentants of presentants ... will probably retain some of that affinity which eventually fades with increasing distance from the referent origin.
By way of illustration rather than definition, I tend to say that affine structures incorporate or have available some "knowledge" of each other, taking "knowledge" in the very broadest possible sense. It implies one structure's recognition of the other as well as treating the other in fitting and effective ways, which is what happens in evolutions both in their innovative and in the evaluative phases.
By way of example, consider the chemical valencies and special receptive or bonding substructures in large molecules, including the capabilities of membranes and carriers to be permeable to or to transport a selected set of (affine) molecules. In organisms there are substructures, such as roots or leaves or neurons etc., that find (grow to, connect with) particular regions or other structures leading to optimal function. Similarly hormones and pheromones may present certain states of some subsystem, relative to another subsystem, whether within or between organisms, and so regulate social systems. Whenever organisms recognize something, this is based on affinity; as is the subsequent procedures of interaction, whether by instinct or program, plan etc. On the level of highest complexity you may think of humans looking for, and eventually finding, a related soul; partners must be affine, naturally in many respects, with some disaffinities tolerable; parents and their offspring are affine, both on organismic and on individual experience / cultural tradition levels. The same is valid for friends, for cooperating people, etc. Adding to this are the affinities between individuals and the many parts of their environments with which they have relations.
In an overall perspective, one may say that the sum total of affinities in the world or in a subset thereof is an expression of the degree of unity of that world and at the same time of the limits of its unity. Everything is affine to many things, but not to everything. Peirce's idea of "synechism" or the connectedness within a universe is expressed in terms of affinity rather than only by the abstract idea. This allows for realistic accounts of what can or cannot happen.
An especially interesting perspective opens when you compare kinds and degrees of affinities among the units in some world with those among the presentants of those units existing in some psychic or cultural subsystem, say: things, notions thereof by this or that individual (e.g. as part of their brain-mind), linguistic or other symbolic forms such as written or spoken words, bytes, phrases etc. (such as in texts etc.). Consider two ecosystems (persons with their respective environments) in a shared cultural world. In the persons' minds, they will probably use or have connections between their notions of things that might be impossible or improbable for the things themselves; also they may miss some possible relationships due to their limited knowledge about some things. Using verbal mediators and often not well enough differentiating between the things and their notions thereof, the two people will find out that they do not completely share the same notions of some things or events that they can point at.
An interesting generalization of such relations may be that presentants in mind-brains tend to increase their affinities towards the things presented per se. In contrast, symbolic terms induce restrictions on both things and internal notions; e.g. they may neglect what are called connotations, which are often so important in the notions. These may change in context with notions and in dealing with things, while linguistic fixations must forbid this to the same extent or otherwise lose their utility. Affinity is an important concept in semiotic ecology, and, depending on the degree of semiosic secondarizations, it may vary a great deal and bring much flexibility, particularly in the cultural worlds.
The affinity perspective may throw light on the problem of "units of analysis". My "non-solution" or dissolution of this problem would be not to rely upon units that decided and retained under all circumstances if one wishes not to loose connections to the real world. The world does not consist of units; rather it operates on the basis of relations. Relations constitute what we can discern as things or units. The consequence is to follow possible relations. The sum total of possible relations of something focussed by an observer is the set of its affinities.
I see it wise to distinguish affinity as the potential to interact or transact from its realization under concrete circumstances, whether habitual or not. I understand habit patterns as sequels of the operation of affinity rather than as the affinities themselves. Maybe an orienting response begins on the level of affinities; there are data showing that it takes time, however brief, when encountering an unfamiliar situation to differentiate it into either a defensive or an approach pattern.
Elective affinities may be understood as kind of elaboration of existing affinities. The history of extending, enlarging, amending, differentiating, etc. affinities by a variety of processes, mainly by their use, is infinite during the life cycle of any ecosystem. If you want to understand "elective" in a more specific sense as planned, on purpose, it might come out differently than intended because the existing affinities are co-players in the game. So "elective" may be indirect, but can play a big role if it refers to the preferential selection of some place, setting, people, activities etc. My contention is that it makes no difference how the affinities have come about in their actual shape. We cannot know them exactly except when they play. Testing them in artificial situations may be as misleading as any psychological testing.
On the other hand, speaking of humans and their particular affinity condition, human individuals often have available quite a range of possibilities to influence, in the long run, their own affinities and those of their companions. Many of those influences are prepared and elected by fellow humans such as parents, friends, neighbors, media etc. It might be interesting to consider education as way of influencing the specter of affinities both of the individuals educated and of the larger group of people in need of related education, who interact for a partially shared life. Being adult or mature could mean taking more responsibility for one's own set of affinities.
Understandably, a well-cultivated set of affinities, whether by one's own, or by other's, arrangement is the best preparation for all kinds of crucial and consequential decisions or comportment in critical situations in general. I even suggest that a reasonable ethics of an individual or a group is best grounded in a well prepared affinity endowment. And I may suggest this kind of perspective to replace the rational manner of moral philosophers and related specialists to test comportment options against general principles. The advantage of affinity cultivation lies in the rich relationship with the realities of ordinary life.
It may interest philosophically minded readers that Kant used the term "affinity" in the understanding of it being "the ground of the possibility of association of the manifold [phenomena] in so far as it lies in the object". He differentiates "empirical" (as above) from "transcendental" affinity of which the former is a sequel, while the latter has its foundation in the "unity of self-consciousness". (KrV A113f.) So this word use has a tradition which appears quite general. All the while I clearly refute Kant's metaphysical apparatus and the idea that transcendental affinity should follow necessary and enduring law. Affinity can only, in anthropocentric and self-aggrandizing fiction, be "a necessary effect of a synthesis in the Einbildungskraft which is grounded a priori in rules" (A123).
In contradistinction, all affinities emerge evolutively from the sum total of the transactions of a structure (including, in case, those of its predecessors in its line of origin) with encountering structures; and if at all something like association may be the least suitable way they are formed. Affinities are relational; they never lie in one structure alone. Rather affinity means a kind of fitness of a structure in its normal environment. I asked myself whether evolutionary biologists would not do well to avoid their overall functionalism and better conceive of fitness of organisms and of environmental settings or parts thereof in terms of affinity.
Bill Barowy, Associate Professor
Lesley College
29 Everett Street, Cambridge, MA 02138-2790
Phone: 617-349-8168 / Fax: 617-349-8169
http://www.lesley.edu/faculty/wbarowy/Barowy.html
_______________________
"One of life's quiet excitements is to stand somewhat apart from yourself
and watch yourself softly become the author of something beautiful."
[Norman Maclean in "A river runs through it."]
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