Abstract
If signs (rather than molecules) are taken as fundamental units for the study of life, biology becomes a semiotic discipline. Animal bodies in this view are swarming entities regulated through the distributed problem-solving capacity of billions of communicating agents such as cells and tissues. Based on this understanding, the idea of the body as bio-cyberspace is introduced: The cyberspace to which people all over the world are now increasingly investing their wits and efforts might be compared to the growing bodily intelligence of our remote mammalian ancestors living a hundred million years ago: In both cases a kind of strange attractor draw(s) the communicative resources of the swarming entities (cells or minds) into a collective 'reality', a virtual reality from the point of view of the individual entity. Intelligence from this view is a virtual reality constructed by an animal body.
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