Cybersemiotics: A reconceptualization of the foundation for information science

In the attempt to construct foundations for information science (FIS) both pan-informational and pan-semiotic paradigms have been developed. In my work I have argued that neither paradigm makes sense in isolation from the other. The reductionistic and totalitarian paradigms in cybernetics, information science and semiotics are then abandoned. Instead, paradigms of second order cybernetics and autopoiesis, on the one hand, and Peirce's semiotics on the other (understood as biosemiotics) are investigated. These are non-dualistic and have pragmatic, evolutionary, self-organizing views on systems, including their closure and cognition. Since these views are found to be second order, the necessary work is done to unite them into the non-reductionistic framework of cybersemiotics. This is suggested as a new FIS. Copy-right (C) 2001 International Society for the Systems Sciences.