Medical practice in/with the semiosphere

Farzad Goli

pp. 217-239

in: Farzad Goli (ed), Biosemiotic medicine, Berlin, Springer, 2016

Abstract

After a brief contemplation on the biosemiotic approach to medicine, it seems that we live "in" a world of signs. And medicine, like one of the guides of Alice in Wonderland, helps us to interpret the signs of body and environment, not just assisting in finding a way "out" of deviational pathways of pains and illness. However, it should be noted that we as open, multilevel, self-organizing, and self-narrating sign systems live "in/with" the semiosphere. The semiosphere is the totality of semiotic processes occurring in our planet (Hoffmeyer 1998, p. 470). From this viewpoint, illnesses and conflicts do not only appear inside our life scenario as intruders and threatening characters, but can also be developmental forces and essential signs for evolution. Medicine in this perspective is an intentional, intersubjective system, which extends our natural adaptation to the levels of personal and social consciousness. Medical discourse is a sign system which differentiates signs to healthy, unhealthy, pathogenic, and salutogenic.