Emergence Without Language

The emergence of material forms and organizations does not depend on any linguistic or symbolic mediation. Before any system capable of naming, describing, or representing exists, matter already reconfigures itself, producing patterns and functions without author or code. This realization breaks with the persistent tendency to suppose that order or complexity implies, from the origin, some type of inscription or message.

In the context that interests us, “emergence” means local functional reorganization: a set of interactions whose configuration gives rise to properties or behaviors not reducible to the isolated elements that compose them. These properties do not need to be foreseen or registered to constitute themselves — they emerge in the very interplay of material forces and compatibilities.

The Ontology of Emergent Complexity rejects both the reduction of emergence to the symbolic and the symmetrical inversion that dissolves the specificity of the symbolic by extending it to any physical relationship. Between language and matter there is a clear ontological interval: the former is an operative exception; the latter, a constant and uninterrupted basis for new formations.

To understand emergence without language, it is necessary to precisely distinguish three frequently confused notions: material patterns, communication, and language.

Material patterns are configurations resulting from the physical, chemical, or biological interaction of elements, producing structures, rhythms, or functional regularities. These patterns mean nothing outside of their own operation: the cubic crystallization of salt, the colored fringes of an oil film on water, or the formation of dunes under the wind are effects of the material interplay of forces, not coded messages.

Communication, in the material sense, refers to the transfer of energy or physical signals between systems — a flow that can alter states or trigger responses, but which does not imply a symbolic code. The release of chemical substances by bacteria to coordinate behavior or the propagation of an electrical signal in nervous tissue are examples of material communication without language.

Language, in the strict sense adopted by the OCE, is a recursive symbolic regime: a system that not only represents material relationships but can operate on the signs themselves, reorganizing them and assigning them new functions. Language requires inscription and legibility for a system capable of manipulating that inscription — a condition absent in all processes analyzed here.

This distinction is decisive: calling any pattern or exchange of signals “language” dissolves the specificity of the symbolic and prevents us from thinking about what is singular in it. It is this terminological clarity that keeps material emergence and symbolic emergence separate.

Long before any naming, matter organizes itself into forms and functions that do not depend on inscription. The formation of stars from the gravitational collapse of gas clouds, the spontaneous crystallization of mineral salts, or the self-organization of chemical patterns in the Belousov–Zhabotinsky reaction are processes where order emerges directly from local interactions — without design, representation, or message.

On the biological level, colonies of bacteria coordinate complex collective behaviors — such as the formation of biofilms — through chemical and physical interactions that modify the local environment. These responses do not involve any system of signs; they are functional adjustments resulting from the compatibility between cellular processes and environmental conditions.

In the history of philosophy, some thinkers recognized that order could arise without external intervention or prior code. Heraclitus, in thinking of the cosmos as a flow in tension, perceived that regularities did not depend on an external artisan. Spinoza, with his conception of *natura naturans*, saw order as an immanent effect of the power of matter. However, even in these conceptions, the inclination persisted to see meaning or message embedded in the structure of the world — whether in the form of universal logos, pre-established harmony, or implicit teleology.

The OCE takes up the immanentist core of these intuitions but removes the interpretive layer that reads a hidden language in material patterns. The pattern does not speak; it merely is, as a provisional effect of material interactions. The reading of a prior code is a subsequent symbolic gesture — and it is precisely this distance that is preserved here.

One of the most persistent confusions in contemporary approaches to complexity is the tendency to extend the notion of language or sign to encompass any pattern or interaction. Totalizing biosemiotics, for example, by expanding semiosis to all vital processes, dissolves the distinction between functional structure and symbolic regime. Hoffmeyer, Sebeok, and others seek to show that all life is, in a way, the interpretation of signs. The problem is not in recognizing that life operates through interactions and responses, but in equating these interactions with a language, as if material communication were already symbolic inscription.

This universalization echoes certain post-structuralist readings that, inspired by Saussure and Peirce, amplify semiosis until the real becomes inseparable from the network of significations. Derrida, with his “generalized writing,” and Deleuze, in the rhizomatic reading of connections, point towards a materiality of the sign, but frequently leave open whether anything in the real escapes this regime.

The OCE considers this universalization problematic. First, because it converts the specific capacity of the symbolic — operating recursively on signs — into an indistinct property of matter. Second, because it weakens the analysis of inscription processes by treating them as inevitable or omnipresent. When everything is a sign, nothing is a sign in the rigorous sense: the possibility of distinguishing between what merely functions and what is also symbolized is lost.

By refusing this universal projection of semiotics, the OCE preserves the ontological interval between material emergence and symbolic inscription. This preservation does not imply hierarchy or absolute separation, but recognizes that language is not a diffuse attribute of nature: it is an operative rarity, not the invisible grammar of the cosmos.

For the OCE, the emergence of material forms and organizations is an ontologically autonomous phenomenon. Matter reorganizes itself without the need for language, and the functional properties that result do not require interpretive mediation to exist. The symbolic is a rare exception, arising only when there is the capacity for recursive inscription of differences. Up to that point, material organization can be extremely complex, but it operates outside the regime of language.

This position distances itself both from naive realism, which ignores the role of inscription in intelligibility, and from semiotizing idealism, which sees all reality as already inscribed. Recognizing that there is complexity without symbolization protects the specificity of language without making its absence a deficiency. Non-language is not a lesser state; it is a distinct regime, where there is function but no meaning.

Inscription is always possible, but not necessary. Its occurrence does not alter the material nature of what preceded it; it merely adds a new operative layer.

Two errors must be avoided. The first is confusing the absence of language with the absence of material communication: many systems — such as fungi that release spores or bees that adjust temperature through vibration — exchange effective signals without operating with signs. The second is projecting human language as a universal measure of complexity, erasing both the diversity of material communications and the possibility of non-human inscriptions.

The OCE rejects both. It recognizes the diversity of material communications and preserves the qualitative distinction of the symbolic regime, without ontological hierarchy, but without conceptual dissolution.

Understanding emergence without language is recognizing that matter does not await being spoken to operate. The patterns, forms, and functions that arise in it are immanent responses to local tensions and compatibilities. Preserving this pre-symbolic field avoids both the illusion of an already written cosmos and the poverty of a reality that is essentially mute.

What happens when one of these patterns enters a regime capable of inscribing it? The answer is neither inevitable nor linear; it requires another level of analysis — the one in which the symbolic becomes possible without erasing what precedes it.

"Matter invents forms
before anyone can name them."

—— David Cota — Founder of the Ontology of Emergent Complexity ——