Abstract

A central aim of Michael Polanyi’s philosophy is to demonstrate the many ways in which human existence is meaningful to counter the nihilistic and positivistic accounts that contributed to the world wars and totalitarian governments in the twentieth century. Yet Polanyi’s references to various sorts of meaning is suggestive rather than systematic and coherent. The objective of this essay is to show the relationship between the different aspects of meaning by viewing their emergence in cosmological perspective beginning with simple forms of life and culminating in the ways signals, perception, and language support human experiences of significance. Emergence, embodiment, and “from-via-to” interpretation are key ingredients in this Polanyian version of biosemiotics.