The ‘ surplus of meaning ’ .

The late Chile born biologist Francisco J. Varela has been influential in theoretical biology throughout the last three decades of the 20. century. His thinking shows a marked development from a biologically founded constructivism (developed together with his fellow citizen, Humberto Maturana, with the main key word being “autopoiesis theory”) to a more phenomenological oriented standpoint, which Varela called himself the philosophy of embodiment, or “enactivism”. In this paper, I want to show that major arguments in this latter position can be fruitful for a biosemiotic approach to organism. Varela himself already applies concepts as e.g. “signification”, “relevance”, “meaning” which are de facto biosemiotic. He derives these concepts from a compact theory of organism, which he understands as the process of self-realization of a materially embodied subject. This presumption stems, though somewhat modified, from Autopoiesis theory and so attempts a quasiempirical description of the living in terms of self-organisation. Varela’s thinking might count as an exemplary model for a biosemiotic approach in a theory of organism. In particular, Varela’s link to down-to-earth biological research offers means to associate biosemiotics with the ongoing debate about the status of a biological system within genetics and proteomics research. Institute for Cultural Studies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Sophienstraße 22a, D–10178 Berlin, Germany, e-mail: [email protected]. Private Address, which should be used for correspondence: D-21720 Guderhandviertel 90. Andreas Weber Biosemiotic aspects in Varela 2 „I want to start declaring that I think that understanding of organisms and the living is possible, that defining these terms in a satisfactory manner is not a utopian dream, and that we even have a good deal of the road already charted. However, this is under a fundamental condition: that the autonomy of the living is highlighted instead of forgotten, as it has been.“