The Whole Creature

Drawing on the new field of complex adaptive systems and biosemiotics, this ground-breaking synthesis of evolutionary and cultural theory argues that—far from being opposed to nature—culture is the way that nature has evolved in human beings. Arguing that these evolutionary processes reveal the fundamental sociality of human creatures, a theory is offered that the complex structures of biosemiotic evolution have always involved a creativity which is born from the difficult but productive phenomenological encounter between the Self and its Others; and this creativity is fundamental to human progress. This major contribution to both cultural studies and ecocriticism shows how complexity and biosemiotics forge the link between nature and culture, and provide a new and better understanding of how the whole human creature operates as both social and biological being.