Biosemiotics and general semiotics in Giorgio Prodi’s works

Abstract

Giorgio Prodi was one of the pioneers of biosemiotics in Italy; he focused his research interests on the «prehistory of sign», i.e. the natural origins of semiotics. We must not consider human semiosis as separate from natural semiosis or even think that behind it there is emptiness. Only the complication in the human sense of natural signification produces the difference. At the base there is not “the” sign but the “meaning”: each sign is particular and adapted to its meaning, to what makes it exist or survive, in a mutual interlocking between reader and environment, just like a key fits into a specific lock and this reads it as meaningful in itself. Semantics is therefore a condition, not a part, of semiotics. Here Prodi's reflection crosses the one promoted by Emilio Garroni. The condition of continuity between the “prehistoric” and the present phase of signification is a fundamental condition of “immanent opposition”, of a participatory type between an extensive biosemiotic pole (A) and an intensive anthroposemiotic pole (non A), which does not deny A though nullification but rather represents a different way of being A. The “non” indicates a contact with what one says no to. The part and the whole are found co-present but on different categorical levels. Immanence slips from the ontological to the epistemic level.