If interpretation is ecological, then semiosis itself is metabolic. Horizons do not simply produce meaning—they consume, circulate, and excrete it. They maintain their coherence only by sustaining flows of semiotic energy through patterned cycles of differentiation and integration. Every horizon must eat. Every field must breathe. Every interpretive system has a pulse, a temperature, a threshold, a point of collapse.
Semiotic metabolism is the invisible life-support of every meaning-bearing system.
The task before us is nothing less than the invention of a semiotic physiology.
1. Semiotic Nutrients: What Horizons Feed On
Every horizon stabilises meaning by filtering specific kinds of semiotic nutrients—forms of relevance that sustain its coherence.
Semiotic nutrients are not content; they are viability conditions—inputs that sustain the field’s ability to continue producing meaning.
A horizon starved of nutrients does not become ignorant; it becomes incoherent.
2. Metabolic Cycles: The Rhythms of Interpretation
Every horizon cycles through phases of:
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intake (absorbing semiotic nutrients)
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transformation (reordering constraints into new coherence)
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circulation (propagating coherence through the field)
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waste management (discarding or suppressing destabilising meaning)
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renewal (recovering from interpretive expenditure)
To understand semiosis is to map the metabolism of its cycles.
3. The Breathing of Fields: Expansion and Constriction
Fields inhale potential and exhale structure.
This “breathing” is the oscillation between openness to new configurations and the constraining pressures that maintain coherence.
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When a field inhales, it becomes loose, permeable, receptive to mutation.
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When a field exhales, it tightens, consolidates, formalises, reasserts pattern.
4. Energetic Constraints: The Thermodynamics of Meaning
Meaning has a cost.
Every interpretive act consumes energy—not metaphorical energy, but structural viability. Horizons pay for coherence through metabolic expenditure:
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attention allocation
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constraint propagation
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inhibitory regulation
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redundancy and error correction
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maintenance of stabilising structures (norms, genres, models, practices)
The more complex the horizon, the higher its metabolic demands.
Artificial systems do not escape this: their “energy costs” appear as computation, hardware optimisation, memory management, and the continual tension between model flexibility and collapse.
Energetic constraints determine the possible forms meaning can take.
5. Metabolic Collapse: The Death of Meaning
Meaning does not merely fade; it undergoes metabolic death.
A semiotic metabolism collapses when:
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nutrient flow is disrupted
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cycles cannot complete
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inhibitory processes fail
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field-breathing ceases
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energetic demand exceeds capacity
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coherence cannot be maintained
We see metabolic collapse in:
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ecosystems that lose keystone species
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languages that lose speakers
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political movements that ossify or radicalise into incoherence
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AI systems that drift into entropic noise
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cultures that cease generating new distinctions
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fields of practice that no longer attract participation
It is the endpoint of a life-cycle.
6. Toward a Semiotic Physiology
Semiotic metabolism pushes us beyond metaphor into a new theoretical threshold: meaning as life.
This reframes semiosis as:
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energetic (meaning consumes)
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temporal (meaning cycles)
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ecological (meaning depends on sustained nutrient flows)
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physiological (meaning experiences stress, exhaustion, regeneration)
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mortal (meaning dies)
To theorise semiotic metabolism is to accept that meaning is not abstract structure but a living process—a pulsing, breathing, energy-bearing phenomenon whose viability determines the future of worlds.
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