Habit

This chapter takes up the theory of habit developed by Félix Ravaisson (1813–1900) to consider how culture proceeds in non-human species. It argues that the biological body is the fundamental medium of meaning-making. Ravaisson takes Aristotle’s notion of habit as a second nature and extends it beyond the human polis to include the whole biological order. Habit takes the intentional ideas of organisms and embodies them in their real bodies; it is a universal power of ‘second-naturing’ that integrates matter with mind. Ravaisson’s account of habit can combine with Poinsot’s account of semiotic custom, so that the whole of organic life—its meanings and its materiality—can be understood as the locus of second-naturing. The biosemiotic Ravaissonism that emerges here makes a bold proposal: nature is not only the producer of cultures; nature is itself cultural, because its form is shaped over evolutionary time by the semiotically executed habits of organisms.