Toward a semiotics of syntropy: grammaticality, evolution, and successional dynamics in agroecosystems

Abstract: Under the scope of Systems Theory — drawing on thinkers such as Edgar Morin, Ilya Prigogine,  and  Jorge  de  Albuquerque  Vieira — and in conjunction with Charles S. Peirce’s Semiotics, this article examines the dynamics underlying Ernst Götsch’s Syntropic Agriculture, focusing  on  its  successional  cycles,  evolutionary  parameters,   and   regime  of  meaning  or grammaticality. Developed empirically and pragmatically over decades, the syntropic agroforestry model stems from Götsch’s attempt to understand how nature organizes itself to sustain and intensify life. His cultivation methodology is grounded in thermodynamic principles, transforming the management of entropy into the harvesting of syntropy, that is, life-promoting organization. We propose that this methodology operates as a stochastic and non-linear process that favours the emergence and singularity of living, stochastic systems in continuous creative evolution — genesis — enabling both the included species and the environments they inhabit to grow in resilience and complexity.   Its   triple   rootedness — thermodynamic,   eco-biological,   and   agro-cultural — constitutes  the  grammaticality  of  syntropic  agriculture,  or  its  regime  of  meaning.  Within  this framework, the physico-chemical dynamics of out-of-equilibrium systems drive species variability in  successional  cycles,  fostering  healthier,  self-productive,  and  self-organizing  ecosystems.  The article  concludes  that  Syntropic  Agriculture  positions Homo sapiens as  an  operator  of  semantic transformations within agroecosystems.

Keywords: Syntropic Agriculture, Ernst Göstch, Agro-ecosystem, Semiotics, Complexity.

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