Abstract
Life defined as a biosemiotic category presupposes that living entities (cells) are closed to the external world and interpret all incoming impulses based on the memories and experiences of their lineages and societies. The innermost layer of life thus creates its own representation of the world characteristic of its own lineage, population, species, or society.
This chapter is an attempt to describe this innermost layer from the perspective of Zdeněk Neubauer's eidetic biology and current epigenetic research. Moreover, it is argued that human language and culture are in fact a species-specific extension of generally present properties of all life.