The Science of Signs

When it comes to health, I look at the signs. Do I get enough exercise and sleep? How’s my weight and blood pressure? A sign is simply one thing that represents another thing to a third thing. That number on the bathroom scale represents to me whether I’ve been eating too much. When it comes to the health of the planet we also look to the signs. Are harmful contaminants entering our food supply? Are animal species maintaining healthy populations? For example, if there’s elevated levels of lead in my tap water, it’s a sign that unless I move or replace the plumbing I could develop serious health problems.

Interestingly, there’s no way I’d know about the lead in my tap water without the tools of modern science. You cannot see, taste, or smell lead in drinking water. The same is true for common greenhouse gases like CO2. But like lead, we know that increasing the global concentration of these gases is a sign that unless we stop emitting them at such high rates we will increase the global temperature. And that’s bad for a lot of reasons, droughts, storms, and sea levels to name just a few.

I can ignore my body’s signs of health or illness for a while, for as long as I want actually. But if the extra calories get turned into extra pounds and I become obese, eventually I’m likely to develop cardiovascular disease. It all catches up with me one way or another. In the same way I can ignore signs of trouble for the planet as long as I want, but “the chickens come home to roost” eventually. The lesson here is that we must heed the signs, or ignore them at our own peril.

The good news (and it really is good news) is that we are more than capable of understanding the signs when we put our minds to it. There’s even a word to describe the general ability to recognize and use signs, it’s called “semiosis.” Science and technology have expanded our perceptual world to the point where we have access to more information today than humans have ever had in our past. That gives us incredible power, but it has not given us the ability to be responsible in the use of that power. We have to interpret that information and understand the global systems that are now under our collective ability to preserve or destroy. That's the challenge we face. 

One might say science is a “semiotic” process of interpreting and producing signs. As early as the 17th century lead was recognized to be a cause of health problems, and in the 19th century gases like CO2 were recognized to cause the greenhouse effect. As a result of learning these signs, we know what to look for, and what needs to happen to prevent harm where they are concerned. Science can also help us to determine which alternative materials for water distribution and energy production won’t threaten our health in the same way. And this knowledge is something we rightfully value highly.

Today signs of both health and disease are everywhere. It has been said that we live in a “semiosphere,” and this continues to grow as we acquire new signs and learn more about our relationship to the world and each other. It can be overwhelming at times, but it also has the power to influence our future in new and exciting ways.

Recall the definition of a sign provided earlier: “one thing that represents another thing to a third thing.” Signs describe relationships between things, and they spread out like a web across the entire planet connecting us to each other. How do we interpret those relationships? Signs of health indicate a beneficial relationship, whether between our dietary choices and cardiovascular functioning, or anything else. Some of the first people who studied signs were traditional medicine people who cared for others. Looking for and interpreting signs has long been associated with the care for life.

The relationship between signs and values is called “semioethics” and can be applied at many levels. Social semiotics studies how people design and interpret meanings, how these are shaped by culture, and how they are communicated, assessed, persist or change over time, and in what ways they could be said to help or hinder. But human agency is not unique in the natural world, and "biosemiotics" studies these processes throughout life. On the global level, semioethics implies that our ability to anticipate and change planetary conditions comes with a responsibility to support healthy relationships between humans, nature, and the entire global semiosophere. Going back to the weight loss example above, I can learn about how my body responds to the food choices available to me, and how some foods might trigger feelings of satiety while others prolong hunger. These aren’t new ideas by any means.

Ethical considerations follow from semiotics, the study of signs, in a very natural way. It’s built into the definition. You can begin by asking what something represents to you. If the sight of dark clouds represent rain, and your fields are thirsty for water, then you probably would say the approach of rain is a good thing. If we know the general form of the results we are looking for (crop irrigation), then the greater knowledge we have of the signs available to us, the higher the chances we have to obtain those results by targeting our interventions accordingly. Not only do dark clouds on the horizon improve the chance for irrigation, but so does a full aquifer under the ground, or irrigation canals dug into the earth. The better we can read the signs, the greater the chances of successfully achieving our goals.

If our ethics suggest that irrigation is good, and that knowledge of the relevant signs to achieve irrigation is good, then it also follows that access to those signs and understanding how to interpret them correctly is also good. This has been called having the “semiotic freedom,” to be able to intelligently adapt to the demands of survival. We all need to be able to see the future state of having a full belly, so to speak. And isn’t that why we need a successful harvest at the end of the growing season? We can't do without an environment that both meets our requirements and is rich in terms of signs. That allows us to anticipate events, even those in future centuries.

For another excellent short introduction, I recommend Jeremy Sherman's blog article Semiotics: What it means, and what it means for you (2011).

Terms introduced: semiosis, semiotics, semiosphere, semioethics, biosemiotics, semiotic freedom