Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Articles

Vol. 2 No. 2 (2022): Borders, liminalities and edges of the experience. Advances in understanding human dynamic development

On the role of semiotic bordering in the hierarchical structures of biological systems

DOI
https://doi.org/10.32111/SAS.2022.2.2.9
Submitted
October 31, 2022
Published
2022-12-30

Abstract

In this paper, I examine the variety of hierarchical structures that biological systems have been able to construe by changing the extension of their borders. By acting as a space/time structure separating the inside from the outside, a border allows one to be distinguished from otherness and to perceive as meaningful any difference from the external environment. Based on these premises, I then discuss the role these borders have played in the course of evolution for allowing both eukaryotic cells to become functionally differentiated and multi-cellular organisms be equipped with a bodily basis for cognition.