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Explications of examples of semiotic alternation in the biological hierarchy
It is perhaps important to note here that we have tended to see the re-organization of topological informational variety into typological meaning as the paradigm case of such emergence, but this is because we have neglected to give parity to topological semiosis. We realize that the appearance of new semiotic types is associated with the emergence of new levels of organization (e.g. new units of analysis), but new meanings can also arise in topological forms.
It is an essential part of the cycle in which additional levels of complexity are built up in development or evolution (as conserved dynamical emergence), that typological variety is re-analyzed at a new scale as a kind of topological variation, which may then be re-organized anew into a novel form of typological meaning for the total system, when analyzed at a higher scale. [For further discussion see my Ghent 99 talk: "Opening Up Closings".]