Sebeok's Semiosic Universe and Global Semiotics

On the belief that the universe is a semiosic web Sebeok placed no limits on semiotic inquiry as he chose to conduct it. In terms of fields of semiosis and objects of analysis Sebeok’s interests ranged from his studies in biology to his reflections relatively to lingusitics, cybernetics, and artificial intelligence, his musements relatively to narrative esthetic signs, his interest in ecology and the signs of deception, sometimes inventing new disciplines to focus on specific aspects in the life of signs, such as “zoosemiotics” and “biosemiotics”. Even more significant is his method of inquiry and its ontological foundations. Sebeok was a convinced critic of code semiotics and the restriction of its focus to the human social world, privileging the instruments of interpretation semiotics which best account for his axiom that life is the criterial attribute of semiosis. Working in such a direction he created the conditions for his “global semiotics”, an approach capable of conceiving the totality of semiosis, the great semiobiosphere, in a detotalizing perspective, that is, in its interrelated plurality and diversification. The play of musement is a specifically human capacity theorized by Sebeok with his biosemiotic interpretation of the concept of language as a syntactic modeling device, to which he lives up to with his life as a researcher and critical interpreter of signs beyond prejudicial boundaries, even perhaps beyond the signs of life.