
Jesper Hoffmeyer (21 February 1942 – 25 September 2019) was a professor at the
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
Institute of Biology, and a leading figure in the emerging field of
biosemiotics
Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, pr ...
. He was the President of the
International Society for Biosemiotic Studies (ISBS) from 2005 to 2015, co-editor of the journal
''Biosemiotics'' and th
Springer Book series in Biosemiotics He authored the books ''Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs'' and ''Signs of Meaning in the Universe'' and edited ''A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics''.
Biography
Jesper Hoffmeyer was born in
Slangerup
Slangerup is a town in Frederikssund Municipality, about 30 km north-west of central Copenhagen, in the Capital Region of Denmark.
The town of Slangerup
The town was established by the Viking Slangir at the time of Harald Bluetooth. King Eric ...
, Denmark in 1942. He received his
Cand. Scient. in
biochemistry
Biochemistry or biological chemistry is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology ...
from the
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
in 1967, and from 1967-1968 he was Science Fellow at the Institut de Biochemie Génerale et Comparée of the
Collège de France
The Collège de France (), formerly known as the ''Collège Royal'' or as the ''Collège impérial'' founded in 1530 by François I, is a higher education and research establishment ('' grand établissement'') in France. It is located in Paris ...
, Paris.
He began his teaching career in 1968 as an assistant professor at the University of Copenhagen's
Institute for Biological Chemistry, where he became an associate professor in 1972, and served as the Head of the Institute from 1978-1980. Hoffmeyer was the recipient of the Poul Henningsen Award in 1985,
[Biography in danish](_blank)
/ref> the 1991 Mouton d’Or Award, and named a Thomas Sebeok Fellow by the Semiotic Society of America on the occasion of its 25th annual meeting in 2000.
Hoffmeyer was awarded a doctorate in philosophy (Dr. Phil.) at Aarhus University
Aarhus University ( da, Aarhus Universitet, abbreviated AU) is a public research university with its main campus located in Aarhus, Denmark. It is the second largest and second oldest university in Denmark. The university is part of the Coimbra G ...
in 2005, and since 2007 has served as President of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies.
Since 2009, Hoffmeyer was a professor emeritus at the University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in ...
.
Life and work
Jesper Hoffmeyer's research interests changed considerably through the years. An early engagement in the social and political consequences of his own discipline, biochemistry, led him in the 1970s to take up studies of the technological, ecological and historical dimensions of science. The results of these investigations can be found in his 1982 book ''Samfundets naturhistorie'' (The Natural History of Society).
At the same time, Hoffmeyer also embarked upon a parallel track of inquiry, based on a growing awareness that the reductionist tendencies of modern biology and science systematically legitimized and guided the technological horizon towards developments that were inherently damaging to natural systems, including that of human health. This inquiry led him towards questions of theoretical biology and philosophy. Eventually these two research tracks ran together, when, in a collaboration with Claus Emmeche
Claus Emmeche (born 1956) is a Danish theoretical biologist and philosopher, one of founders of contemporary biosemiotics. He is associate professor at the University of Copenhagen, and is head of the Center for the Philosophy of Nature and Scie ...
, he initiated an analysis of the concepts of information in both its bio-ontological dimension, as well as in its applied contexts dealing with biological (e.g. genetic) and cultural information, and the then-upcoming 'smart' information and biotechnologies
Hoffmeyer traced much of the development of his thinking during this period to the semiotic traditions of the late 1980s, as well as to such scientific systems theorists as Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to a ...
, Michael Polanyi, Anthony Wilden, Howard H. Pattee
Howard Hunt Pattee (born October 5, 1926) is an American biologist, Professor Emeritus at Binghamton University and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He graduated at Stanford University in 1948 and completed a Ph. ...
and Peder Voetmann Christiansen. Eventually making the acquaintance of Thomas Sebeok in the United States, Thure von Uexküll in Germany and Kalevi Kull
Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1975. His earlier work dealt with ethology and field ecology. He has studied the mechanisms o ...
in Estonia
Estonia, formally the Republic of Estonia, is a country by the Baltic Sea in Northern Europe. It is bordered to the north by the Gulf of Finland across from Finland, to the west by the sea across from Sweden, to the south by Latvia, and t ...
, by the beginning of the 1990s, Hoffmeyer had formulated a new programme for a scientific biology that would define life as a signbased phenomenon. Hoffmeyer's first comprehensive essay outlining this of biosemiotics
Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, pr ...
and its implication for a non-dualist understanding of the embodied self was his
Signs of Meaning in the Universe
' (in Danish, ''En snegl på vejen'', 1993).
Beginning in 2001, when the yearly annual international ‘Gatherings in Biosemiotics’ conferences began, Hoffmeyer became a central figure in establishing biosemiotics
Biosemiotics (from the Greek βίος ''bios'', "life" and σημειωτικός ''sēmeiōtikos'', "observant of signs") is a field of semiotics and biology that studies the prelinguistic meaning-making, biological interpretation processes, pr ...
as a scientific cross-disciplinary field, assembling scientists and humanities scholars to jointly investigate how a semiotic analysis can inform current biological thinking, and how the findings of biology provide general semiotics with a firmer ground for the naturalization of 'meaning'.
In 2005, Hoffmeyer was conferred with a Danish doctoral degree for his treatise
Biosemiotics: An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs
'. Translated into an English-language edition in 2008, this work examines the semiotics of living nature, from the origin of life with its self-organizing code-duality in evolution and development, to the complex endosemiosis of living bodies, to the ‘semiotic niches’ in ecosystems, and the species-specific peculiarities of human semiosis, such as language.
Important concepts
Semiotic freedom. The increase in 'depth' of meaning that can be communicated or interpreted.
Semiome. In biosemiotics: the entirety of semiotic tool sets available to the species.
Semiotic scaffolding operates by assuring higher level performance through semiotic interactions inside a living system or between living systems and cue elements in their environment.["Semiotic Scaffolding of living systems", in M. Barbieri (ed.): ''Introduction to Biosemiotics. The New Biological Synthesis'', Dordrecht: Springer 2007, 149-166.]
Selected publications
*''Signs of Meaning in the Universe''. Indiana University Press
Indiana University Press, also known as IU Press, is an academic publisher founded in 1950 at Indiana University that specializes in the humanities and social sciences. Its headquarters are located in Bloomington, Indiana. IU Press publishes ...
, USA, 1996.
*A Special Issue of '' Semiotica'' vol. 120 (no.3-4), 1998 devoted to the release of ''Signs of Meaning'', includes 13 reviews of the book and a rejoinder by the author.
*''Biosemiotics. An Examination into the Signs of Life and the Life of Signs'', University of Scranton Press, Scranton PA, USA, 2008.
*''A Legacy for Living Systems. Gregory Bateson as Precursor to Biosemiotics''. Dordrecht, Springer 2008.
*''Semiotic Freedom: an Emerging Force'' in Davis, Paul and Gregersen, Niels Henrik (eds.): ''Information and the Nature of Reality. From Physics to Metaphysics'', Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 185-204, 2010
*''Baldwin and Biosemiotics: What Intelligence Is For''. In: Bruce H. Weber and David J. Depew (eds.): Evolution and Learning - The Baldwin Effect Reconsidered'. The MIT Press, Cambridge, USA, 2003. (co-authored by Kalevi Kull)
Festschrifts
* Emmeche, Claus; Kull, Kalevi
Kalevi Kull (born 12 August 1952, Tartu) is a biosemiotics professor at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He graduated from the University of Tartu in 1975. His earlier work dealt with ethology and field ecology. He has studied the mechanisms ...
; Stjernfelt, Frederik 2002.
Reading Hoffmeyer, Rethinking Biology
'' (Tartu Semiotics Library 3.) Tartu: Tartu University Press.
*Favareau, Donald; Cobley, Paul; Kull, Kalevi (eds.) 2012.
A More Developed Sign: Interpreting the Work of Jesper Hoffmeyer
'' (Tartu Semiotics Library 10.) Tartu: Tartu University Press.
References
External links
*Introduction and Commentary: Jesper Hoffmeyer.
Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary
'. Donald Favareau, ed. (2010) pp. 583–586.
*The IASS Roundtable on Biosemiotics: A Seminar Discussion with Some of the Founders of the Field. Emmeche, Hoffmeyer, Kull, Markos and Stjernfelt. '' The American Journal of Semiotics'' 24.1-3, (2008) pp 15–42.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hoffmeyer, Jesper
1942 births
2019 deaths
Danish semioticians
Danish biologists
People from Frederikssund Municipality