To be quite honest, there were many portions of the biosemiotics lecture that I did not understand, however, from what I could take away, it seemed to be an interesting, yet controversial field.  Biosemiotics in general is the study of signs and communicating factors that interplay between life forms. Interactions between both animals and plants have been described as the result of some form of this communication. The evolution and development of the cell is thought to have occurred in a biosemiotic fashion. Personally, the formation of a single cell can and will be forever debated as it is a topic in which variability and uncertainty reign as dominating factors. Another point that was made was the signs and communication between plants and trees of a forest and how that influences growth of the forest as a whole. Biosemiotics claims that similar amounts of carbon is stored in trees of the same forest. This is due to the fact that some form of communication, via signs or other intangible signals, between the trees allows the to remain is similar biotic stages. This is an interesting idea, however, one might argue that trees of the same area have similar life stages because they have been growing under the same environmental conditions and similar time frames. Here is a link on biosemiotics if you’re interested.

http://home.comcast.net/~sharov/biosem/geninfo.html

I find creation myths or stories relating to the creation of mankind to be interesting. The origin of man and even more so, man’s purpose on earth, is the single most desired question to be answered. Due to my interest in creation, as well as having a background in evolution, I tend to read books such as Darwin’s Origin of Species, and other biologically based stories with a certain attention to creation themes.

Darwin’s encounters on the HMS Beagle helped lay the foundation for biology, particularly ideas about evolution and the diversification of species. Through reading Darwin’s work, I find two themes that contradict the stories of Genesis as well as most religions in general. Darwin’s ideas on evolution via natural selection gives a strong case for the plethora of species present in our world today. Darwin’s logic is that humans are the descent of a long evolutionary line that is continuous and infinite. Keeping along with this idea, humans are just another evolved animal, just as a whale is thought to be an evolved form of a wolf. This claims that humans are equal to animals, as they share similar ancestors and lineage. Genesis claims that humans were made in the image and likeness of God and as a result, gained dominion over the animals. These two views on mankind, both Genesis and Darwin, seem to contradict each other in there description of the hierarchy of man.

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