Biosemiotics DOI 10.

1007/s12304-010-9110-0 O R I G I N A L PA P E R

Framework of Space and Time from the Proto-Semiotic Perspective

Koichiro Matsuno

Received: 13 May 2010 / Accepted: 21 July 2010 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract The material underpinning of the action of signs is rooted in the priority of interactions. The evolutionary priority of interactions as envisioned from the protosemiotic perspective renders both space and time as derivable from interactions, as demonstrating a sharp contrast to the classical, physical and theoretical notion of interactions as occurring in a prior transcendental presupposed space and time that are given prior to interactions. The proto-semiotic framework obtains space as resulting from shared resources among the material participants, whereas time is derived from the act of allocating the mutually shared resource. Consequential upon the priority of interactions is a suspension of the principle of contradiction as keeping the on-going action of signification, since time, while presiding over and embodying the allocation, is constantly progressing. The results of the action of signs as registered in the finished record necessarily meet the principle of contradiction. Nonetheless, the fulfilment of the principle right in the process of the on-going action of signification is constantly out of reach because of the inevitable spill-over of those material disturbances perturbing the likelihood of attaining the principle from within. Interacting atoms and molecules, when viewed from the perspective of time as being derived from the interactions, can be seen as agential in precipitating the principle of contradiction in the finished record out of the on-going evanescent dangers of disturbing that principle from within. Naturalization of the action of signs is sought within the natural capacity of time being capable of changing its own tense. Keywords Contradiction . Interaction . Proto-semiotic . Sign . Space . Tense . Time

Introduction An endeavour for accommodating biosemiotics with contemporary practice of doing physics and chemistry meets with difficulties even though focusing upon the same
K. Matsuno (*) Nagaoka University of Technology, Nagaoka 940-2188, Japan e-mail: CXQ02365@nifty.com

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biochemical objects. One source of these difficulties is in the biosemiotic conjecture of a capacity for interpretation on the part of biomolecules, since such capacity would be marginalized in standard experimental practices in physics and chemistry. Yet, experimental practice has been shown to be extremely powerful in generating a wide variety of experimental protocols in charge of specifying indexically how the experimental setup can be constructed in a bottom up manner as putting its parts together piece by piece until the intended experiments will actually be started. A great advantage in conceiving a promising experimental protocol focused upon a particular set of biochemical reactions would be to translate the evolutionarily historical background lying behind the emergence of any biochemical reactions of interest into an ahistorical protocol that would be conceptually accessible to practicing experimentalists. In addition, if reproducibility of the experimental results is required, as it should be, there should remain no room for the possibility of the participating molecules to exercise a capacity for interpretation on their own. Experimentalists themselves monopolize the agential capacity of interpreting the relationship between the imposed protocol and the material experimental setup. Of course, there is generally nothing wrong with current experimental practice insofar as it sticks to the accepted methodological stipulation no matter how stifling it may look from another viewpoint. Nonetheless, experimental practice suffers from a form of linguistic stipulations at both ends. One regards the prescription of the experimental protocol. It certainly observes the principle of excluded middle in fixing any constituent piece of the protocol to guarantee unambiguously its performative competency. Experimental protocols must be specific enough to leave no room for ambiguous interpretation in order to guarantee experimental reproducibility for workers who independently intend to reproduce the original results. This is essentially to be faithful to the principle of excluded middle for performative utterances (Austin 1962) in interpreting experimental protocols. Performative utterances, when stated in an explicit manner, are understood to be in first person descriptions in the present progressive tense as carrying indexical implications reflecting the immediate context. An example of performative utterances goes like this; I am putting these pieces together. One more stipulation comes from the principle of excluded middle as applied to propositions that can be generated from the experimental results. Propositions qualifying the experimental results should be specific enough to distinguish clearly between different possible interpretations by excluding any ambiguous middle. Then, a serious problem arises once we pay attention to distinguishing between the two different principles of excluded middle, in which one is for performative utterances and the other is for propositional statements. The principle of the excluded middle applied to performative utterances framed in a first person description does not cover that principle when applied to propositional statements in a third person description. We are thus faced with a tricky situation in that the principle of the excluded middle applied to propositional statements is neither informative about nor inclusive with how to handle that principle when applied to performative utterances, though the latter as an integral part of practicing experimental sciences must certainly receive the attention it deserves. At issue is how to appreciate the role of the principle of the excluded middle as applied to performative utterances in the practice of the experimental sciences, even

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before addressing the significance of biosemiotics for this question. In particular, the agenda of the principle of excluded middle can be intensively focused upon once one raises the question of how to understand the notion of space, more than anything else.

Space as a Resource to Be Shared If one accepts the notion of space as an a priori transcendental form for sensuous intuition for the likelihood of apperception in the combined form of both transcendental and empirical type, as Kant suggested in his first Critique, this would be coherent with making propositional statements in connection with the results obtained from the experimental sciences. Recalling apperception as the capacity of integrating and organizing completed sense-perceptions that have been experienced by a transcendental ego, which can be likened to the experimentalist, we can regard material objects consisting of various component elements discriminated under legitimate apperception to be a simultaneous constellation of those elements. The necessary precondition for making this constellation possible is the existence of space as an a priori notion, while the material means for taking advantage of this space and for actualizing the simultaneous coexistence of those elements would be interactions operating between them. Interactions as they appear in propositional statements as a condition for guaranteeing the simultaneous coexistence of the participating material bodies are what in effect turn space into a transcendental notion that affords the very interactions. Although it may look a bit obsolete, the Kantian heritage of conceiving of space of an infinite horizon would still survive in framing propositional statements in third person descriptions in the present tense. However, the Kantian a priori notion of space does not extend to informing us what the performative utterances underlying the implementation of an experimental protocol look like. These utterances necessarily assume the form of performed interactions processing the interplay between the uttering agent and the object being addressed. Although it can certainly address the occurrence of interactions appearing in propositional statements framed in third person descriptions in the present tense, the Kantian scheme unwittingly remains reticent on the role of interactions appearing during performative utterances approachable in first person descriptions in the present progressive tense. This situation encourages us to rethink the notion of space carrying an infinite horizon as an a priori transcendental basis of sense perception. Let us imagine the performative interplay between a person and a mosquito looking for an opportunity of sucking blood. She will be very irritated and nervous in beating the mosquito just about to penetrate her soft skin, but her chance of killing the mosquito is less than successful at every attempt. She could describe, spatially following the Kantian scheme, how skillfully the mosquito escapes her slapping hand every time. From her perspective, the mosquito seems to take a great advantage of available space when flying off safely. Nonetheless, space as a Kantian notion remains foreign to the flying mosquito. Performative interactions between the two agents here can proceed without imputing transcendence to space, though which is taken as a necessary condition for the likelihood of the transcendental apperception. This caricature reminds us of the priority of interactions, that is to say, interactions being prior to conceiving of space as a fundamental prerequisite for the likelihood of apperception, the latter of

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which could be approachable exclusively to a transcendental ego with use of its sense perception. The space available to both the human beings and attacking mosquitoes is a resource shared mutually by the two for the likelihood of interactions between them that are performative rather than propositional. The space as a mutually shared local resource, that is to say, a piece of patchwork space to be shared, is the precondition for making the local meeting of an arbitrary pair of material bodies possible for the occurrence of performative interactions between the two as being subject to the stipulation that the perceivable horizon remains finite to each participating body. The space for the occurrence of performative interactions is local and need not be global, while the space for the Kantian simultaneous interactions is global. Local space as the resource to be shared by any pair of interacting bodies is in fact a sine qua non for the occurrence of pre-Kantian interactions. Interactions can proceed even in the absence of space as a transcendental notion. The present observation then raises a question of how to allocate this available resource between the participants. That will involve the issue of time.

Time from Allocating the Resource Linguistic access to the practice of experimentation begs the question of whether there could be any possibility that performative utterances specifying an experimental protocol might further qualify the resulting propositional statements in the light of the necessity of the principle of excluded middle. In fact, any act of putting each piece of the experimental parts into an appropriate connection to others is an instance of utilizing and allocating the resources required for implementing the right connections. There is no need to refer to space as an a priori transcendental notion in order to implement these allocations since the resource to be allocated falls within the finite and local perceptual horizon of the practicing experimentalist no matter how extended or limited it may be. Moreover, since allocation of the resources required for implementing the intended interactions proceeds in a piecewise manner and not all at once, the act of resource allocation is local in the making and cumulative in the effect. The locally cumulative characteristic latent in the act of resource allocation is none other than an attribute of what we call time. Local time specific to implementing the experimental protocol is certainly different from global time relevant to guaranteeing the legitimacy of propositional statements framed in third person descriptions in the present tense. Thus, one may conceive of a disturbance interfering between local time as originating in performative interactions and global time as an a priori transcendental notion. The likelihood of such negative interference must, however, be avoided by all means in order to save both local and global time, each of which is legitimate in its own context. One well-tested fail-safe system preventing this disturbing interference from occurring is to keep faith with the Kantian regulative principle as developed in his third Critique. According to the regulative principle, any system of interacting material bodies moves as if following the mechanistic doctrine of space and time given as a priori notions, while the organization representing it is what the transcendental ego reads into it. Although the Kantian scheme may seem a bit awkward at first, this read-into organization regulated by the transcendental ego in essence underlies the

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experimental protocol which the experimentalist tries to implement when preparing the setup. This scheme has been proven to be productive and successful in the standard practice of doing experimental sciences, though it is not free from its own shortcomings. The supposed separation between local and global time, that is to say, between the mechanistic movement on one hand and the read-into organization on the other, is merely methodological, not factual. The advantage of taking the readinto organization to represent the developing mechanistic movement would be lost once the methodological stipulation separating local processual time from global integrable time is disturbed. We would then be forced to come back to the starting point again. Calling attention to performative interactions that have been taken as a necessary ingredient for the implementation of experimental protocols has the merit of focusing upon whatever interactions are proceeding in a local context. Performative interactions markedly differ from Kantian simultaneous interactions as a condition for guaranteeing the global coexistence of material bodies commonly supposed in the mechanistic scheme operating in horizon-free space. They may generate contingency because of their generative nature with no guarantee for the global consistency on the spot. In contrast, simultaneous interactions are not performative but serve as a condition guaranteeing the coexistence of different material bodies globally in a simultaneous manner in a space with an infinite horizon. What is more, performative interactions are not limited to performative utterances on the part of the experimentalist implementing experimental protocols, but also are extremely versatile and pervasive to any interactions operating in a local context. Placing interactive influences originating beyond the perceptual horizon of a focal material body within that horizon is not an attribute of interaction within a fixed local context, but a consequence of the performative action by some agent. Performative interactions are literally agential in trespassing across the perceptual horizon for a focal material body in both ways, from inside-out and from outside-in, as if regulating the horizon from within. The present appraisal of agential performative interactions invites a new challenge of how to make descriptive access to them, since there would be no use for them unless we could describe the process of regulating the perceptual horizon from within. One vehicle for this objective would be to refer to a principle of identity that would remain immune to internal regulation of perceptual horizons. Physics is certainly competent to provide such physical carriers. One candidate for the purpose is material flow continuity, with the implication that there would be no chance of precipitating materials out of nothing. Material flow continuity is in fact a local expression of the conservation of matter in the global context in the sense that what is conserved keeps its identity. However, if one conceives of it while keeping space and time as a priori, given notions as in the Navier-Stokes equation in hydrodynamics, material flow continuity as a local expression would be lost because of the global character of a priori space and time. Appraisal of material flow continuity as a local expression would become feasible only when we focus upon a local material unit processing the material flow from within. Of course, material flow continuity in the global context would legitimately survive in the finished record, since the record is by definition a derived artefact

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admitting the intervention of global time as a marker distinguishing between that which is concurrent from that which is successive in the context of upholding the record as global in extent. Space and time surviving in the record are, however, more restricted compared to those specific to the original Kantian scheme. Although the perceptual horizon of space may be infinite as the Kantian counterpart is, the similar horizon of time available to the record, though global, remains only half-infinite in the sense of marking the occurrence of the present perfect tense to inevitably be one definite end of the horizon. Henceforth, the action for material flow continuity in the making cannot be marked within a finished record. Action in progress is deprived of its agential capacity in the global time presiding over the record carrying only a halfinfinite temporal horizon, and the action in the record is then reduced to the mechanistic movement that Kant recognized. Third person descriptions in the present tense deprive the addressed movement of the agential capacity since both the active and the passive voice assume the same temporality of the present tense there. No propositional statement of an agential implication including a teleological one is acceptable in third person descriptions in the present tense. A rescue plan to save the agential capacity latent in material flow continuity, if it were possible, would likely come from our revisiting the principle of contradiction. In fact, it is the principle of contradiction which can be used to bring local time into performative utterances. The principle says that it is impossible that the same attribute both belongs and does not belong to the same thing at the same time and in the same respect. Contradictory statements cannot be true at the same time insofar as the time referred to is global. However, the other side of the coin can also say that contradictory utterances may survive to some extent if the time referred to is not the global version. The principle of contradiction can maintain a certain capacity of forming and tolerating contradictory utterances during the course of action in progress, while leaving none of these contradictions behind in the record. This dynamic aspect does not vitiate the principle of contradiction as framed in the global time. The principle of contradiction cannot merely be about logic in the global context in global time, but can also be dynamic in its implication if the time referred to is local or limited only to a local context no matter how extended or delimited it may be. Once the implicit dynamic nature latent in the principle of contradiction is focused upon in the context of ongoing local time, there might be a possibility that the global time that would survive in a derived record may be precipitated from the local action of signification in such a way as to leave behind none of the contradictions in that record. A key dynamic feature about the local action is to generate contradictions and to pass them constantly forward so that none get frozen in the finished record. As a matter of fact, there is certainly a concrete scheme that can physically implement the dynamic nature latent in the principle of contradiction when it is practiced actively in the context of local time. A case in point is a material unit processing material flow continuity. A material unit processing material flow is situated between two flows; one is incoming and the other out-going. Insofar as the material unit survives for some time in the record, the incoming flow would have to be continuous with the outgoing flow. If material flow continuity between the two flows is jeopardized for whatever reasons, the survival of the material unit would become unlikely. The robustness of the material unit is thus sought within the built-in activity of equilibrating one of the two flows to the other through adjusting performative interactions with the surroundings

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in the immediate neighborhood. However, there is no likelihood of attaining the equilibration between the incoming and outgoing material flows all at once simultaneously everywhere, since no physical means for the purpose is known to be available. Changes in the interactions for regulating the incoming flow to meet the required resource allocation are not synchronized with similar changes for regulating the outgoing flow because changes in performative interactions reflecting only the local contexts cannot be completely synchronized. Material flow equilibration or regulation at the incoming interface of the active material unit would generate flow disequilibrium or dissynchrony at the outgoing interface that subsequently links to overall material flow equilibration following downstream (Matsuno 1984, 1989). Of course, saying that local flow equilibration causes overall flow disequilibrium in the context of time as an a priori global notion certainly offends the principle of contradiction. However, once global time is suspended, the scheme of local equilibration causing disequilibrium can become legitimate. Above all, the sequence from the perception of flow disequilibrium to the action of flow equilibration occurs only in a local time, the role of which is limited to specifying the flow locally. Material flow equilibration comes to reveal the activity latent in time itself as processing locally the transformation of the tense of time from the progressive to the perfect and again back to the progressive tense in a successively propagating manner. Local time derives from the activity of a material unit keeping its own identity while dealing with contradictions and also excluding the likelihood of a mere mix of contradictions, which might be expected to occur somewhere in the middle, to be precipitated down to the finished record. Preventing contradictions from precipitating into the finished record even though that may seem anticipatory and interpretive (Hoffmeyer 2008), is an attribute of performative interactions unique to material units processing material flows, thereby leaving room for accommodating semiotic activities associated with physical performative interactions. As well, a material unit processing material flows may look like an instance of manufacturing as embodied in the form of the copymaker or codemaker in the scheme of code semiotics (Barbieri 2008). But such a manufacturer may owe its emergence and development to performative interactions of physical origin. Specific to a material unit processing material flows is its manufacturing capability to be exercised during the local act of keeping its identity. The material unit now comes to implement the manufacturing protocol just as the experimentalist implements the experimental protocol. A common denominator associating biosemiotics, whether interpretive or codeoriented, with the practice of the physical sciences is performative interactions that can be made visible and tractable only when time is conceived of exclusively from the local perspective. It goes without saying that the physical sciences so far have been interpreted almost in all cases in the framework of global time, thus ignoring and implicitly dismissing the occurrence of performative interactions operating exclusively in local time during experimentation. However, this dismissal of performative interactions from the physical sciences is merely methodological. The physical sciences can assume no prerogative of expelling the occurrence of local time from their actual material exercises. Indeed, the empirical fact that no signal propagates faster than light testifies to the inescapable fact that there is no empirical means for attaining synchronization globally, and accordingly for global time to be claimed as a framework for such simultaneity.

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Performative interactions will exercise their own capacity even without our contemplating a contribution from semiotics or biosemiotics. Consider, for instance, the formation and development of a cyclone in the tropical zone on Earth. The identity of the material unit called a cyclone can be associated with the streamline of the fluid convective flow it maintains, though such an identity could easily be lost if the supporting energy gradient is diminished. Recalling Bernoullis theorem applied to fluid flow along a streamline in simplified form, one is reminded that the sum of the static pressure and the dynamic pressure is conserved along the streamline. The dynamic pressure is equated to the kinetic energy of the flowing fluid. Bernoullis theorem reveals that the greater the speed of the flowing fluid, the lesser the pressure along the streamline. Consequently, when the nascent cyclone is supplied with a heated atmospheric current near at the base of the column, the supplied heat energy can be transformed into kinetic energy so as to enhance the speed of the ascending air current further. Once the speed of the ascending current increases along the streamline, the pressure would then be forced down thanks to Bernoullis theorem. Accordingly, the lowered pressure at the bottom of the column can induce further suction of a heated atmospheric current from the immediate neighborhood. The nascent cyclone can thus develop and grow by continuing the cycle of sucking in heated atmospheric current, increasing the speed of the ascending current, and then lowering the pressure at the bottom. This exposition of the growth of a fluid vortex requires no more than a matter of simple exercise in elementary physics. Nonetheless, it gives us a good example of performative interactions operating in elementary physics (Salthe 1989, 1993). What is relevant here is the act of suction. Suction is the activity of reaching out to the outside from the inside. It can have the capacity of trespassing across a boundary of whatever origin whether empirical, experimental or even theoretical, unless it is arranged to remain invincible methodologically as is often the case with theoretical exercises. Essential for the occurrence of performative interactions here would be a certain slowness of the signal propagation in hydrodynamic interactions that make the implementation of simultaneous interactions unfeasible unless some methodological qualification stipulates otherwise. The act of trespassing across a boundary is like groping in the dark. And an actor or material unit that could successfully complete the trespassing while keeping its identity, may be said to be skilful in interpreting the boundary for the task of searching out an accessible route only in the hindsight, and by no means by foresight. This interpretive capacity revealed in hindsight or in the finished record as registered in global time suggests the possibility that performative interactions may serve as decisive evidence for the presence of the prototype of semiosis, or protosemiosis (Deely 2009), though in the latter the interpretive capacity available to foresight when framed in local time would not yet be full-blown.

The Internalist Stance Revisited Interpretation in hindsight is exclusively a human endeavor in the sense that it is a human who reads and finds an appropriateness of the interpretation concept applied

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to events registered in a finished record, whether the recorded object may involve animals, plants, protozoa or even a mere aggregate of molecules, or whatever else, for that matter. Even if it be charged as an instance of anthropocentrism, an interpretive process of material origin observed in hindsight can be legitimate insofar as both ends intermediated by the interpretation are made explicit in a way that demonstrates the event as being independent of the act of interpretation. There is no obstacle against using our language as an indexical means for referring to material objects in a finished record. It would be legitimate to say that the adaptor molecule tRNA, for instance, is an interpretant in Peircean parlance, as it relates a triplet codon to a specific amino acid molecule (Barbieri 2008). Once tRNAs are extracted and identified in the laboratory as using available experimental protocols, the underlying sign process can properly be naturalized from the biosemiotic perspective unless the transcendental space and time of infinite horizons are forcibly presupposed throughout. While interpretation in hindsight is exclusively a human artefact, interpretation in foresight can be naturalized into the manufacturing protocol. Interpretation in foresight that can get rid of the anthropocentric takeover of the act of interpretation is a natural vehicle for appreciating the interpretive capacity latent in whatever material bodies, if any. This naturalization of semiosis, however, implies more than was originally intended. That will be the issue of naturalizing performative utterances and local interactions in a broader perspective. Take, for instance, the classical Boyle-Charles law in thermodynamics. It says that the product of the volume and the pressure of a gas is linearly proportional to its temperature in which the proportionality constant is called a gas constant. The law is a summary expression of the experimental results that both Robert Boyle and Jacques Charles conducted independently. The law itself is embodied in a propositional statement, but is under-complete in the sense that it is not competent by itself to specify each local value of the volume, pressure and temperature of the gas. This under-completeness is by no means a deficiency of thermodynamics. Quite the contrary, the gas law as actually guiding practice empirically allows the capacity of transforming the numerical values of the three variables within the law itself. Of course, the original agents exercising the transforming capacity were Boyle and Charles who controlled the experimental protocols. However, once there emerges a material unit processing these three quantities locally while keeping its own identity as we saw in the case of the growth of a tornado, a naturalization of the transformative capacity can be envisioned without referring directly to the interpretant in the Peircean parlance. Underlying the naturalization of transformative capacity is a material unit exercising its performative interactions with the outside while keeping its own identity. The internalist stance takes up the material unit processing performative interactions in local time in a direct manner (Matsuno 1996), in which the internalist applies to any material unit that keeps its own identity to some extent, and is not limited necessarily to intentional agents like us. To be sure, a tornado is a material unit keeping its identity, but the extent of keeping its identity is quite limited compared to cases of material units or organized structures in the biosphere. There must be some factors making both biological molecules and organizations uniquely robust. This is exemplified in the prebiotic synthesis of oligomers whose robust sustenance is attained by the constant exchange of the constituent monomers (Imai et al 1999).

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A natural candidate for making these material units robust enough can be found in some particular material dynamics operating in the empirical domain. This can be found within the practice called quantum mechanics. Specific to quantum mechanics is the empirical certitude of the robust material unit called a quantum, and its entangled extension. A quantum is an energy carrier enclosing simultaneous interactions operating within it. It is not intended here to note merely that biological molecules and organizations are made up of atoms and molecules that are also ubiquitous in the non-living material world. The living world takes advantage of quantum mechanics at ambient temperatures in a manner that it is hardly conceivable in the non-living world at the same temperatures (Wilde et al 2010). A case in point is the light-harvesting antenna for photosynthesis implemented in the Fenna-Matthews-Olson (FMO) protein complex (Fenna and Matthews 1975). The FMO complex is in charge of trapping solar photons and transferring the trapped energy in the form of an exciton, or electron-hole pair, down to the reaction center for synthesizing ATP molecules. That is light process in the photosynthetic reaction. Significant in this energy transduction is its extreme rapidity of order of 100 femto seconds or less for its execution with high efficiency (Engel et al. 2007; Lee et al. 2007; Collini et al 2010). If each of the photon antenna, the intermediating exciton, and the reaction center is characterized by its own quantum state independently, expecting such rapidity and high efficiency would be most unlikely. The only alternative is to rely on the scheme that the FMO complex as a whole constitutes a single quantum or equivalently that the three of the antenna, the exciton and the reaction center are coherently entangled quantum-mechanically even at ambient temperatures. Use of quantum entanglement here is based on its appeal to the occurrence of simultaneous interactions at an extended scale, in which the entangled encapsulation of simultaneous interactions then yields a material unit processing performative interactions that can be imputed to it from the internalist stance. Quantum mechanics thus provides the material world with at least two different hierarchical levels; a lower level for the robust material units as coordinating simultaneous interactions operative only among themselves, and a higher one for performative interactions that take place among the material units appearing from the lower. Quantum mechanics can provide a material unit that processes material flows with the property of keeping its identity regardless of the performative interactions that it exhibits with similar units in its neighbourhood. At the same time, the operation of the lower level simultaneous interactions that are required in order to preserve the identity of the material units processing the material flows is not totally independent of the higher level performative interactions. The robustness of their identity is neither absolute nor isolated. One means by which the performative interactions on the higher level may influence the occurrence of simultaneous interactions would be by a selective process operating on the material units in the lower level. Resource exploitation, as in photon capturing in photosynthesis, occurs under the stipulation in irreversible thermodynamics that the faster action takes all, or that first come, first served. The thermodynamic stipulation of first come, first served reveals itself only when the progressive movement perceivable from the local perspective is transferred into the finished

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record perceivable from the global perspective. A slower process has no chance of actualization when competing with a faster one since there would be nothing left over for the latecomers (Matsuno and Swenson 1999). Quantum mechanics provides robust material units processing material flows which would feed upon available resources as fast as possible. Moreover, if one further pays attention to the successive fate of ATP molecules synthesized in light process of the photosynthetic reaction, dark process synthesizing carbohydrates from water and carbon dioxide molecules with the help of the energy released from ATP is seen to follow. That is, the energy transformation from the phosphate bonds of ATP being hydrolyzed to the covalent bonds of the carbohydrates being synthesized. This energy transformation follows another stipulation that will be registered in the finished record, showing that the most efficient overall reactions will survive over an indefinite period of time, since the less efficient ones become less dominant in succeeding generations in terms of the amount of carbohydrates or the biomass accumulating in the biosphere. More of the same is the principal attribute of the reactions with higher efficiency. The stipulation of more of the same also reveals itself only when the progressive movement comes to be frozen into the finished record to be registered in the present perfect tense. At this point, one may recall that the energy transformation from phosphate bonds to the covalent bonds in the carbohydrates operates seemingly at normal ambient temperature. However, if one considers energy transformation in the framework of thermodynamics, it can be conceived only in the presence of temperature differences. The efficiency of a heat engine processing an energy transformation is measured as the ratio of the temperature difference between the heat source and the sink to the higher temperature. Achieving a higher efficiency is sought by lowering the temperature of the reservoir absorbing the disposed energy. The higher temperature would represent the ambient temperature for the ATP molecules storing the energy to be released. One likely means for finding a low-temperature reservoir here would be the energy dissipated in the form of decoherent microwave photons. If their frequency focused at the reaction were far less than the dominant frequency characterizing the cosmic microwave background of around 150 GHz, which is equivalent to black body radiation at temperature 2.725 K, the temperature of outer space may look far less than 2.725 K. The temperature of the reservoir with which the reaction could eventually contact could reach as low as 1 milli Kelvin given that the focused frequency was around 100 MHz. This scene provides another instance that the internalist stance may generate some newer insight. If the thermometer measuring ambient temperature is an ordinary gas thermometer, the very thin atmosphere around our Earth seems to steadily maintain its average ambient temperature. However, the situation is drastically changed once a radiation thermometer is set in place. A radiation thermometer can read the temperature of outer space without facing destructive interferences from the gas temperature of the thin atmosphere around the Earth because of the internalist stance this thermometer embodies. Radiations do not suffer from incoherent and destructive interferences among themselves because of the absence of the material means for such interferences. In fact, the enzymatic reaction underlying the hydrolysis of ATP molecules can radiate microwave photons of frequencies around

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100 MHz in a decoherent manner by means of accelerating and decelerating the movements of the participating protein molecules functioning as electric dipoles, thus enabling them to reach the extremely cold temperatures characteristic of outer space (Matsuno 2009). Quantum mechanics and thermodynamics can provide some of the material means for the likelihood of performative interactions taking advantage of the internalist stance, but only indirectly. This remark goes hand in hand with another observation that, while both quantum mechanics and thermodynamics are legitimate and indispensable as we know them today, they are still not competent to address the issue of the origin of life head on. The present diagnosis echoes a similar observation that the essence of the action of signs may turn out to be no less than what would be required for the definition and the origin of life (Sebeok 1985). The action of signs is descriptively inaccessible in foresight while performatively inevitable like the invisible hand summoned by Adam Smith for regulating the economy (Matsuno 2001). Attention to performative interactions perceived from the internalist stance remains at its best only a step towards a descriptive access to the full-blown action of signs, since performative interactions alone may not be the whole story about the action of signs.

Concluding Remarks If it is taken only as a method of framing propositional statements, semiotic discourse would suffer from a similar shortcoming as those propositional statements made in the standard practice of the experimental sciences. That is an acceptance of third person descriptions in the present tense, as being subject to the necessary stipulation of being in accord with the ubiquity of global time as a marker of global synchronization. This situation is quite similar to the acceptance of Newtonian absolute time in classical mechanics. Newton originally referred to the astronomical equation of time which Ptolemy made explicit in the treatise called the Almagest in the 2nd century AD. That is sidereal time, which is actually a measure abstracted from the correlated motion that a limited set of stars display over the sky. Ptolemys sidereal time remains unchallenged until the present day (Barbour 2009). Once this abstracted measure called time appears in propositional statements without mentioning its qualification as an abstract concept, it would turn out to be absolute in the sense demonstrated in Newtons Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. While time to Ptolemy was indexical, Newton made it symbolic in the present tense. The symbolic irreducibility of time in the present tense remains unchanged even when it is extended to special and general relativity. The symbolic irreducibility applied to time, however, deprives time of its generative competency that could descriptively be revealed in the crossing over from the progressive to the perfect tense as demonstrated in thermodynamics. Time still maintains room for being further qualified. When time changes its tense, emergent property of time becomes descriptively accessible. In particular, changes in the tense of time would become inevitable to the descriptive subject who takes the existence of the record carrying only a half-infinite temporal horizon for granted. The record is in fact a human

Framework of Space and Time from the Proto-Semiotic Perspective

artefact for identifying the further qualification of time especially in the attribute of distinguishing between the progressive and the perfect tense. When the predicate called time appears in any propositional statement in the present tense accompanied by no further qualifications, it will conform to the temporality that the present tense used descriptively takes for granted. That is, global synchronicity in the descriptive domain imposes a similar synchronicity extending over all descriptive objects. There is no use to referring to differences distinguishing between foresight and hindsight in the present tense unless some room is allowed for vagueness. Only simultaneous interactions are accessible in this tense, with no room left for accommodating performative interactions. Nonetheless, both semiotics and the experimental sciences have their own means for circumventing the unwarrantable domination of simultaneous interactions, and for appreciating performative interactions, but they accomplish this differently. The experimental sciences appreciate the role of performative interactions when stating experimental protocols. In any scientific paper reporting a new experimental discovery, there is a section called Materials and Methods or the like. The descriptive style applied to this section devoted to explicating the experimental protocol is indexical and quite different from the declarative style employed in the Conclusions section, thus making the paper a coherent integration of both performative or indexical utterances, and propositional or declarative statements. There would be no surprise even if an experimentalist reported the results employing a semiotic usage somewhere when using terms like messengers, receptors, recognition, signals and translation. Practicing experimental sciences is quite semiotic even if the practitioners do not intend it to be so explicitly. In short, semiotic usage of language enables us to refer to the temporal integration proceeding piece by piece in the progressive tense specific to the actualization of the implemented experimental protocols, at the present moment of the present tense as applied to reporting the experimental results. In contrast, if a semiotic discourse is taken as a theoretical enterprise concentrating only on framing propositional statements while keeping them neither indexical nor imperative, without being bothered by explicating experimental protocols, it would unwittingly be subjugated by the present tense required for third person descriptions. The present tense upholding propositional statements does not distinguish between foresight in the making and hindsight in the product. Such a discourse in its outlook would seem self-defeating in the context of semiotics in its own effort to distinguish foresight from hindsight, thus saving room for the action of signs. Distinguishing foresight from hindsight within the descriptive object itself requires the descriptive author to be the internalist admitting the limitedness of perceptual horizons. Unless everything is referred to in hindsight, something remaining in foresight would have to be vague and indefinite in its implication. Focusing upon interpretation in foresight in the theoretical semiotic enterprise does suggest the switching over from third person to first person descriptions because of the local nature of perceivable spatial and temporal horizons in the latter. The appraisal of local time rests upon the observation claiming that time is a derivative from local activities which distinguish foresight from hindsight on the part of material units exercising performative interactions from within along with others of a similar nature. At issue for the semiotic endeavour, and especially for the protosemiotic one, would be naturalization of the evolutionary emergence of what are

K. Matsuno

called codes, habits or lawful behaviours without recruiting sign activities already full-blown. What is underlying here is naturalization of the Kantian regulative principle. It requires first person descriptions. Once the first person description is assumed, however, both space and time become derivates from the local actions of material units keeping their identities throughout in sharp contrast to the case of third person description taking both space and time as a necessary precondition. Regulative organizations that appear in the material world emerge from the activities of such material units maneuvering their performative interactions along with others of a similar nature. This causal nexus can be perceived only from the local or internalist perspective. Any natural material organization constructs itself by placing every component appropriately, piece by piece, not all at once. From the transcendental or the externalist perspective emphasizing apperception over sense perception, organization and order come from the mind of a transcendental ego, that is, from outside the framework of global simultaneous space and time. From the internalist perspective emphasizing the priority of sense perception over apperception, on the other hand, both space and time emerge from the material activity of putting everything in place consecutively. The difference between the two perspectives depends upon whether one appreciates the role of first person descriptions in the face of the overwhelming third person descriptions in scientific and philosophical texts. Once we decide to take the internalist standpoint, first person descriptions become the natural way to express the course of events. Of course, appreciation of first person descriptions does not imply total dismissal of third person descriptions. Quite the contrary, naming a material unit that keeps its identity even in the context of third person descriptions is undoubtedly a way of implicitly appreciating first person descriptions, as in the example of Hurricane Katrina that hit New Orleans in 2005, which survived for a week from August 23 30, 2005. Survival for only one week may look very short for such a large entity. But this depends upon the viewpoint we take. On the surface of Jupiter, we find a giant tornado called the Great Red Spot. It has survived at least over the last 345 years since Jean-Dominique Cassini first saw it in 1665. This naming, while done for record keeping purposes, implicitly points to actual material agents of whatever size having first person experiences. As a matter of fact, difficulties in addressing the issue of the emergence of evolutionary novelties, including the origins of life, by appealing to propositional statements alone come from the linguistic stipulation of the present tense. Third person descriptions in the present tense lack the means of approaching the difference between the foresight and the hindsight which would be taken for granted by the evolutionary players on the scene. Of course, the absence of the means of approaching this difference does not imply the absence of the difference. The suggestion from the internalist stance for the task of a proto-semiotics that intends to understand the evolutionary approach to the semiotic usage of language while starting from its precursors, is to take advantage of our linguistic capacities while carefully controlling the influence from the stipulation of temporality by language itself. Focused upon at this point would be a linguistic exercise for enlisting the three classical principles of logic on identity, contradiction and the excluded middle, in our attempts to refer to performative interactions operating in the material world.

Framework of Space and Time from the Proto-Semiotic Perspective

Proto-semiotics as a practice of empirical sciences addresses the natural material units involved in the indexical activity of keeping their own identities, while the experimental sciences concentrate on precipitating propositional statements as maneuvering the indexical protocols for regulating the experiments. Full-blown sign activities could emerge only after the actor processing the indexical activities for keeping its own identity can be symbolized by whatever natural means. Biosemiosis owes its evolutionary likelihood to the emergence of those material units keeping their identities while constantly exchanging the constituent elements through the interface with their outside. The significance of referring to the material units keeping their identities is within their implicit interpretive capacity latent in the sense of being for their own sake, addressable only in first person descriptions. If it is taken to be descriptive rather than to be experimental, the action of signs can be made approachable through first person descriptions. The action of signs as embodied in a naturalized form of interpretation is to locally process the transformation of the tense of time from the progressive to the perfect and again to the progressive tense constantly in a reverberating manner, while the experimental sciences limit the role of transforming the tense of time only to the experimentalists. Interpretation as a natural process is unique in addressing the variability of the tense of time itself. The naturalized meaning of the present progressive tense can be revealed in reference to the completed present perfect tense, in contrast to the anthropocentric interpretation such that both the descriptions of a phenomenon to be explained and of its actual explanation proceed in the same present tense in third person descriptions. Naturalized transference from foresight to hindsight is materialized in the change of the tense of time from the progressive to the perfect tense. In addition, although the descriptive author of third person descriptions may be able to justify its own descriptive stance as appealing to, for instance, the Kantian transcendental scheme, the descriptive subject of first person descriptions is constantly put under the burden of justifying itself only with use of available material resources. What is at stake is not to objectify first person descriptions themselves, but to figure out those material units involved in the first person experiencing in a manner to be objectified.
Acknowledgments Thanks are due to the reviewers for suggestions.

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