The Role of Hermeneutics in Biology

This report attempts to sum up the many years of work (since 1972) of the Seminar on Theoretical Biology (now the Seminar on Biohermeneutics of the St. Petersburg League of Scientists). The Seminar deals not only with the subject of this report, but with that of the conference at hand as a whole. In addition, in Tver’ in February 1996 there was a workshop on theoretical biology and theoretical economics held by the Seminar and the V.A. Naishul Private Institute for a National Model of the Economy (proceedings in preparation), where the centre of interest was the problem of semiosis and interpretation as key processes in the functioning of living beings and economics.