生命符號學是否已進入成熟期？

Has Biosemiotics Come of Age?

《符號學》期刊於二○○一年出版專號，頌揚魏克斯庫爾（Jakob von Uexküll）為生命符號學的創建者。本專號有兩大重點，一為生命符號學的生成過程，另一為重建魏克斯庫爾的科學思想。學者們的文章看來條理清晰且具說服力，當然使本專號成為暢銷的好作品，亦樹立跨學科研究的最佳典範，來自歷史學、哲學、語言學、生物學、藝術學、文學以及電腦科學的論文自在地結合為一整體。然而，本文作者極度不滿本專號傳達的第三個主題，也就是，學者們認為生命符號學於今日的斐然成果應歸功於歌德（Johann Wolfgang von Goethe）、馮拜爾（Karl Ernst, Ritter von Baer）、得理希（Hans Driesch），以及魏克斯庫爾等人建立的傳統，同時，他們也毫不避諱地偏袒新生機論以及反達爾文主義。本文作者樂見「意義」這個課題被引進生物學，但他指出新生機論並非最佳門徑。他認為，學者應以科學中的古典方法，也就是，機械論的建構模式，處理自然界中有機符碼、有機意義等課題。因此，作者判定， 生命符號學於二○○一年尚未進入成熟期。然而，於二○○五年寫就的後記評論中，作者則承認整體局勢已於數年內快速改變，生命符號學已成為多元並茂的研究領域，不再排斥機械論方法。身為今日朝氣蓬勃的新興學科，生命符號學討論生命意義的方法已褪去各式先決條件的束縛。

The 2001 special issue of Semiotica has been dedicated to celebrating Jakob von Uexküll as a founding father of biosemiotics. The two main points of the volume—the making of biosemiotics and the recovery of Jakob von Uexküll from oblivion—come out with clarity and force, and are definitely a success. The volume is also an excellent example of interdisciplinarity, with contributions from history, philosophy, linguistics, biology, art, literature and computer science that integrate each other with admirable ease. There is however a third message of the special issue that is less agreeable. It is the message that biosemiotics has been the crowning achievement of the tradition that goes back to Goethe, von Baer, Driesch and von Uexküll, and many contributors did not hide their preferences for neo-vitalism and anti-darwinism. The author of the review welcomes the project of introducing meaning in biology but he points out that neo-vitalism is not the best approach. The existence of organic codes and organic meaning in nature are scientific problems that can and should be investigated with the classical method of science, i.e. with the mechanistic approach of model building. This led the reviewer to conclude that biosemiotics had not yet come of age in 2001. In the Postscript of 2005, however, the same reviewer acknowledges that in a few years the situation has rapidly changed. Biosemiotics has become a pluralistic field of research that no longer excludes the mechanistic method, and today it is a vibrant young science where all approaches to the problem of biological meaning are investigated without preconditions.