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Cybernetics is the study of systems of control and information processing. As well as more obvious aopplications to industry and computer systems it was applied (q.v. Francisco Varela, Humberto Maturana, Margaret Meade, Gregory Bateson) in late 20th century attempts to create artificial life [3]. It is [conceptually] closely linked to Semiotics - the study of communication, originally developed by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) [4]. These two fields of study naturally overlap, and have merged somewhat and enriched each other over the past couple of decades. Meanwhile Semiotics - originally about human communication, now largely sees human communication as a subset of communication between all living organisms, and has evolved into the disciplines of Biosemiotics and Ecosemiotics [1] [2].
As my ideas about embodiment have evolved I have gradually come to think of the relationship between waking - and other forms of - consciousness and the physical body as being largely an issue of communication, eventually discovered Biosemiotics, and it has since been a continuing source of fruitful ideas about how the body-mind operates. Unlike many other disciplines, the new science of Semiotics is largely open, and many important works - published papers and even in some cases whole books - are freely available online as PDF files.
Given that there are fundamental ways in which information transfers within living systems - how this is limited, how it takes effect, how energy and attention expenditure are optimised, etc, it is possible to see these basic "rules" working out at all levels of the human organism, at all levels and manifestations of human society, and at all ecological and biological scales. These underpinning principles (which I have re-framed slightly in the Theory section to remove jargon and make them more accessible and immediately relevant) reveal much about how the nervous system, the sensory system and all interactions with the inside world (body) and outside worlds (society and ecosystems) take place.
In this context, the brain and nervous system are seen as means to an end - tools that our entire biological-conscious being makes best possible use of during its gorwth and further adventures in the journey of Life. As such, whilst it is true that there are individual critical structures that cannot be circumvented or replaced (because their development and connection and functions are so resource-heavy that there cannot be any adequate parallel backups) - the most important features of living beings such as ourselves are the processes (what take splace) - rather than the things (anatony) within which that occurs.
Although the entire Living world runs on the transfer of information, most signalling in the natural world is a secondary process. This is also true in the human world, though perhaps not obviously. According to (Albert) Mehrabian's rule, about 55% of information transfer in a typical conversation communicates via body language - nuances of body position, facial expressions, posture, the minutiae of muscle engagement, gait, breath rate, change in skin color and eye pupil dilation (tha latter two mediated by the sympathetic nervous system) - etc.nguage, including facial expressions and posture. Tone of Voice accounts for about another 38% - voice tone (frequencies dominant and missing), inflection, rhythm, flow, where the voice arises in the body, etc. These two constitute a total of 93%, and convey feelimgs, attitudes, and a host of signals about the relationship between the speaker and listener. The remaining 7% is the words themselves. The voice and body-usage patterns are secondary to internal shifts in emotion and preparations for responsive movements, and it is very difficult to acquire the skill to manipulate them. So actors employ a range of devices, one of which is method acting - the delibrate living in the skin oif the character they are playing - resulting in congruent vocal patterns and body language. Which is not necessarily so good for actors who play violent characters. None of the 93% of information is deliberately created - but is instead a byproduct of Amicity - the interest all living organisms have in the other life-forms in (and other aspects of) their immediate environment.
... and so is rare in the Living world except where there might be a significant return on energy investment. It's more efficient to grow a body that signals - such as bright tail feathers, or a camouflaged leopards spots (that signal a false meaning of no-leopard) or the bright sun-like belly of a mackerel or the bright yellow of a poison dart frog - than to have to employ deliberate signalling at every moment. And it's more efficient to employ secondary characteristics as signals than to have the signal be deliberate. So a female chimp signals fertility through changes in vulval colour and engorgement and phemerones that arise as a direct result of ovulation. And signalling often has multiple uses - so the noise made by the dawn chorus may be a means to deliniate each bird's territory, but the song also sings to the chick growing in the egg, draws predators away from the more silent partner who is sitting on the egg, and (!) opens plant stomata - allowing plants to take in the moisture of morning dew through their leaves. This multiple use of the process of secondary implicit communication is just one of the many ways in which living systems have multiple uses for most anatomical features. Cells use a cytoskeleton of microtubules and actin filaments to move and coordinate internal processes (such as cell division) - but those activities create mechanical movements which then propogate through the cell membrane into surrounding fluids and become a signal imbued with meaning that can be listened to by neighbouring cells. Thus energy usage may be minimised if symbiotic and neighbouring Life is specifically interested in this secondary activity. Consequently secondary implicit information has come to be the primary means of information transfer in living systems - and all of Life is interested in it. This constant interest in the usually subtle signs that are consequential to the activity of Life was termed Amicity by Gordon Pask - indicating that very often information elicits a response, so implicit communication creates feedback loops of sensing → meaning-making → response-activity.
TO BE COMPLETED... XXX
References & Notes