1 Introduction

Post-normal times are a liminality period, a phase of transition between old and new normalcies (Sardar 2010). Liminality often seems perpetual given its enduring state of ‘meta-crisis’ (Hedlund et al. 2016). In our current post-normal times, multiple crises are interrelated to the extent that no single root cause can be defined (Fergnani and Cooper 2023, but see Milbank and Pabst 2015). One of the main contradictions of these times lies in “the incompatibility between the individual drive for material comfort, convenience and safety, and the ecological consequences of this being achieved even for a significant minority of humanity” (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1994). Hence, a sustainability imperative arises, encompassing values, ethics, policy, and science (Scarano 2019). However, prevailing ideologies often treat sustainability as the endpoint of development, contrary to alternative post-development perspectives (Scarano 2024). While the United Nations promote 17 Sustainable Development Goals to be achieved by 2030, there are obvious geographic differences within and between countries in their achievements (Sachs et al. 2023). In parallel, digital literacy is unequivocally a pre-requisite for people’s aspirations globally, such as those related to sustainability. However, while internet, social media, and artificial intelligence have demonstrated democratic and emancipatory potential (Kidd and McIntosh 2016; Mundt et al. 2018), digital literacy and accessibility remain an issue (Sharma et al. 2016). Moreover, their nature has been described as ‘consciousness-colonising’ (Fry 2019), as seen by practices of spreading post-truth, fake news, economy of attention, and even extremist violence (Marchant et al. 2017; Franck 2019; Jaques et al. 2019; Chandrashekeran and Sadowski 2022). Digital and sustainability imperatives have multiple points of convergence. Digital tools, media and communication can, for instance, reduce demands for transportation and increase efficiency in information access, both of which are potentially positive for reduction in greenhouse gas emissions and democracy respectively (George et al. 2021; Guandalini 2022; Pauliuk et al. 2022). Meanwhile, there are also obvious trade-offs between them, including carbon dioxide emissions due to the high energy consumption of data generation and processing, intense mineral extraction to produce technological components, and electronic waste (Samuel et al. 2022). The balance of these interactions will at least partly determine the outcomes of the current post-normal times (Fergnani 2023).

The very existence of such disputes and contradictions are evidence that the two imperatives sustainability and digital technology—create new environments with which human language interacts. This ‘language ecology’—the interactions between any given language and its environment (Haugen 1972)—often gives birth to analogies, metaphors, and occasionally new models and concepts emerge. Metaphor in Greek means transfer and Hannah Arendt (1968, p. 166) says, in reference to metaphors, that “linguistic ‘transference’ enables us to give material form to the invisible (…) and thus to render it capable of being experienced.” Analogy, also in Greek, means similarity or accordance. Both analogy and metaphors are figures of speech that consist of special kinds of models and, for some, they are both related with general structures underlying reality (Emmeche and Hoffmeyer 1991; Bajohr 2015). The difference between analogy and metaphor perhaps lies on the notion that analogies formulate a similarity that already exists, while metaphors make a hidden similarity come to light (Humar 2021). Thus, metaphors in particular can expand reality. Paul Ricoeur argued that the images and feelings they provoke have both informative value and constitutive function, which then consist more in an act of predication than of denomination: a “new predicative meaning which emerges from the collapse of literal meaning” (Ricoeur 1978, p. 146). Curiously, Durand (1992, 1994) even uses a metaphor to explain the power of metaphors. His ‘semantic basin’ uses the river basin as a metaphor for the fluidity of language, whereby thoughts and understanding flow from a dominant narrative towards a new one, as the water in a river basin seeks new paths.

Theory building in biology often relies on metaphors and analogies, which are very much like models. Models and metaphors are essential for both understanding and discovery (Humar 2021). Simultaneously, the use of biological analogies and metaphors, and especially botanical ones, applied to other languages is not novel. Roots, fruits, trees, branches—among many others—are all words extensively used with multiple meanings in various languages across times (Rieppel 2010; Pamies et al. 2015; Wampole 2016). Even rhizomes became a powerful, enduring metaphor (Shaw 2015) in the works of Gregory Bateson (1904–1980), Gilles Deleuze (1925–1995), and Felix Guattari (1930–1992). Thus, it would appear that as much as metaphors expand the meanings of concepts, concepts often emerge out of metaphors. According to Hans Blumenberg’s (1920–1996) theory of non-conceptuality, our “relation to reality is indirect, circumstantial, delayed, selective, and above all ‘metaphorical’” (Blumenberg 1971, p. 187). Concepts, he claims, are work in progress, transitional stages, rather than the fulfilment of the intentions of reason. They cannot ‘touch’ reality, and lack the power to completely represent an object (Blumenberg 1975). Finally, Blumenberg (1975, p. 257) continues, “concepts must possess enough indeterminacy in order to still grasp approaching experiences”.

This paper examines the pervasive use of biological vocabulary—specifically related to botany and plant physiology—as metaphors for contemporary instruments, tools, and processes related to sustainability and digitalisation, the two interconnected post-normal imperatives. We are interested in such metaphors because we align with the notion that language helps building our experiences of and hopes for the present and the future (Andreotti et al. 2019). Language and metaphors, thus, can have an anticipatory nature (Kolliarakis 2019) and evoke possible futures. They point out to potentials, limits, horizons and blind spots of what is to emerge in the future.

2 Methods

We chose for this investigation five words originated in the field of Biology, which are currently used as digital and sustainability metaphors. These words also refer to anticipatory systems: autopoiesis, ecosystem, exaptation, regeneration, and seeds. Anticipatory systems use predictive models of themselves to deal with their present state. Wagner-Lawlor (2019) interprets this definition as something close to ‘regeneration’—one of our selected words—or the property of a system that recognises its own propensity to survive and evolve. Anticipation, therefore, is a property of everything living (Rosen 2012; Poli 2017), inherent to sensorial and corporeal relations with the world around living beings (Scarano 2024). It is related to metabolism, repair, and ultimately, well-being (Rosen 2012). An anticipatory behaviour uses one’s assumption about the future to make decisions in the present. It is, ultimately, an adaptive feature of life.

Table 1 shows the biological and selected metaphorical definitions of the five selected words related to some of their contemporary uses. Between Dec 23 and 27, 2023, we did a systematic review of the terms by using Google Scholar (GS) as search engine. Although aware of some of the criticism to GS as single search engine for this purpose (Gusenbauer and Haddaway 2020), we selected it because it informs academic books, papers and grey literature published within a given timespan and, therefore, finds significantly more citations than other collections such as Web of Science and Scopus, and covers the vast majority of the results found in both (Martín-Martín et al. 2018). In short, it is the most comprehensive search engine (Gusenbauer 2019).

Table 1 Original and metaphorical definitions and some of the contemporary uses and applications of five biological concepts
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Our first step was to search once for each word individually (<autopoiesis>,  <ecosystem>, <exaptation>, <regeneration>, <seed >), for three different timespans: 20 (2004–2023), 10 (2014–2023), and 5 (2019–2023) years. Since in GS’s ranking algorithm publication relevance (number of searches) and citation count are the most important factors (Beel et al. 2010), we understand that, for each word, by comparing the number of hits between original meaning and metaphors in these three timespans, we are able to assess how relevant metaphors are becoming across times as compared to their biological counterparts. Of course, this choice implies redundancies of papers between intervals, but this was deliberately done in order to see the magnitude of changing patterns along two decades and half a decade. Finally, each search generated thousands of results, but we worked only with the first 200 publications listed for each, i.e. the 200 most searched for and most cited ones. At GS, we checked each publication title, the information below them, and eventually the papers’ Abstracts to determine the category to which the paper belonged. In cases of doubt or when the document in question seemed of interest for our discussion in this paper, we read the whole document. Categories were: biological meaning, digital metaphor, sustainability metaphor, other metaphors. Whenever publications found in the searches were not pertinent to our research they were excluded and new publications in sequence would be accounted until 200 were completed.

As second step, for concepts that scored no or few hits as metaphors of either digitalisation or sustainability, we did another round of search with expanded terms. Namely, these were: <”autopoiesis””sustainability”>, <”digital regeneration”>, and <”seeds of a good Anthropocene”>.

3 Results and discussion

3.1 Concepts and metaphors

Table 2 shows the result of our Google Scholar search for the use of words in scientific publications, either as their historically predominant use as concepts in biological sciences or as biological metaphors within digital technology, sustainability and other domains (see also Table 1 for meanings and definitions). They presented three different patterns: (i) words that emerged in the vocabulary of biological sciences that are now a lot more used in other areas: autopoiesis and exaptation; (ii) word with a still predominant but comparatively declining presence in biological vocabulary, and with a marked growth in other areas: ecosystem; and (iii) words with continued use in biological context, but with steady increase in other areas: regeneration and seed.

Table 2 Number of hits per meaning (original and metaphors) for five biological keywords among the first 200 publications listed by Google Scholar for three distinct timespans (20, 10 and 5 years)
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Autopoiesis and exaptation fit pattern (i). These two words emerged as models, and therefore metaphors, to hypothetically interpret given parts of biological reality. They gained the status of concepts. Although originally proposed as a unifying concept for biology (Maturana and Varela 1984), the meaning of autopoiesis was soon to expand as a metaphor in the theory of knowledge as well as social and behavioural sciences (Razeto-Berry 2012). It became central to Luhman’s (1995) theory of social systems, where autopoietic systems were defined as those that produce by themselves everything they use, while remaining open to external environments (see also Table 1). A metaphor turned into theory, we argue, exemplifies Blumenberg’s (1975) claims on non-conceptuality. More recently, the word is used also as digital technology (Mikkilineni 2022) and sustainability (Valentinov 2015) metaphors. Our results only partly confirm this literature (Table 2). We have found a rather steady pattern of hits for autopoiesis in the three time-ranges surveyed, in which biological has a similar presence in scientific literature to digital autopoiesis, and both have c. 3 times less hits than for a collection of other autopoiesis metaphors altogether (in areas as varied as the arts, literature, theatre, music, dance, journalism, architecture, management, systems research, etc.). Furthermore, although autopoiesis as a sustainability metaphor was less frequent when searching for “autopoiesis” alone, when we searched GS for <“autopoiesis” “sustainability”> more than 9,000 hits were found.

Exaptation, likewise, is a term that emerged as a complement to adaptation (Gould and Vrba 1982)—originally also a metaphor that gained the status of conceptual theory—and ended up being more successfully expanded into technological than in biological contexts (Larson et al. 2013), which is confirmed by our data (Table 2). Since this metaphor (turned into concept) was first introduced in a lecture given by Stephen J. Gould in 1981, the use of the word as digital and sustainability metaphors is steadily increasing and, added to a collection of other exaptation metaphors altogether (in areas as diverse as linguistic, semiotic, architecture, design, religion, industry, ethics, business, technology, etc.), it surpasses the biological use. It also applies to functional shifts in processes that lead to more resilience and sustainability (Melis and Pievani 2022), and in the past five years the numbers of hits of exaptation as metaphor for sustainability has doubled in relation to ten- and twenty-year time ranges.

There are various speculations on why autopoiesis and exaptation were not mainstreamed in biological science (Razeto-Barry 2012; Larson et al. 2013), and the fact that they both belong to the domain of natural drift rather than natural selection (Vargas 2022) is probably part of the reason. Nevertheless, for us it remains intriguing since both are related to the emergence of novelty (Andriani and Cattani 2016), which is of utmost interest to Biology (e.g., Wegner and Lüttge 2019; Kesić 2024).

Among all five words investigated, ‘ecosystem’—a concept coined by Arthur Tansley (1871–1955) in 1935—is the one with highest increase in metaphorical use in other fields. Increase between the 20-year and 5-year time ranges investigated were three-fold both for ‘digital ecosystems’ and for other metaphors collectively (e.g., business, entrepreneurial, governance, technological innovation, start-ups, health care, etc.). However, the biological meaning remained predominant (133 × 67). Interestingly, and perhaps because of the rapid growth of the use of ecosystem as metaphor in non-biological fields, there are some words of caution. Hakala et al. (2020) claim that careless use of the metaphor increases the risk of vagueness, which might undermine its credibility and explanatory power. As a result, there is now more concern with better defining the scope to which the metaphor applies (Kuckertz 2019). These concerns and attempts of more strict definitions also apply to the digital ecosystem metaphor (Márton 2022), which has been harshly criticised recently. Welsh (2016) saw it as a rethoric black box that constrained possibilities of people perceiving their relationship with digital technology in the case of smart phones development.

The concepts of regeneration and seed form another interrelated and complementary pair. Seeds are more strongly related with generation, while stem cells relate directly with regeneration. Stem cells act as a repair system for the body and can self-renew to produce more stem cells (Lüttge et al. 2013). They have also been described as a metaphor, as the ‘novum’, a unit of transformation toward a utopian, sustainable future (Wagner-Lawlor 2019). In line with this perspective, regeneration became a metaphor for sustainability, somewhat competing with it (Scarano 2024). Table 2, however, shows that although the metaphorical use is present in scientific literature, the biological literature on regeneration (botanical, zoological, ecological, and especially medical) remains overwhelming in quantity, since the term remains largely adopted in its original field. Similarly, seeds remain widely used in botanical language, but is nevertheless also present in metaphors in various fields (finance, physics, psychology, among others). Curiously, while searching for ‘regeneration’ alone we found no hits for digital metaphors, when we searched for “digital regeneration” we found between 727 (2004–2023) and 583 hits (2019–2023). Similarly, while finding no hits for seeds being used in the context of sustainability, we found 539 hits since 2016 (the year when the term first appeared in scientific literature) for “seeds of a good Anthropocene” (see definition in Table 1).

3.2 Language ecology

Steffensen and Fill (2014) claimed that language ecology can be sub-divided in four strands: a symbolic ecology (coexistence of symbol systems within a given area), a natural ecology (how language relates to its environmental surroundings), a sociocultural ecology (as language shaped by local social and cultural forces), and a cognitive ecology (language as performance amidst a complex world). They argue that a ‘naturalised language ecology’ can, in a transdisciplinary fashion, combine all four angles and provide critical perspectives about present and future states of human societies as embedded in their shared habitats. It is still another avenue for the integration nature-culture. The case examined here very much fits this naturalised approach to language ecology. First, policy (e.g., sustainability), technology (e.g., digitalisation), and a number of other fields, resort to biological and botanical language as symbols. The symbolic nature of that will eventually be related to the human biophilic tendency (an innate human tendency to engage with natural things through positive or negative reactions; Wilson 1984) that often leads to biomimetic designs (those that emulate or are inspired by natural designs to solve societal problems; Blok and Gremmen 2016). Eventually, such metaphorical symbols can be used also as ‘black box’ rethoric on public or private discourses (Welsh 2016). Second, people’s perception of planetary ecological decline evokes a kind of language that expresses that, and since science is one of the main voices advocating transformation, it is only natural that scientific (and political) language from various fields resort to biological metaphors. Such a perception evoking a given expression of language does not need to be only intellectual, but can also derive from one’s own body knowledge of this ecological decline (Livingstone 2020). Third, in relation to the sociocultural ecology of language, the imperatives of sustainability and digitalisation—including the dynamics of their potential synergies and trade-offs (Scarano 2024)—are drivers of the patterns here described. Finally, the cognitive approach to the ecology of language—i.e., language as adaptive response to sociocultural and socioecological milieu—seems to indicate a departure from days of biological (especially botanical) blindness (see Meeker and Szabari 2020).

Somehow, Donna Haraway’s anticipated this process already in the mid-seventies. She then argued that metaphors in organismic biology during the 20th Century shifted from “life as machine” to “life as organic system” (Haraway 1976, see also McLeod and Nerlich 2017). Her argument was that this shift was a symptom that the scientific paradigm was changing; it is as if she was speaking of post-normal science nearly 20 years before Funtowicz and Ravetz (1993) coined the term. The ethos of post-normal science has been described as being composed of trust, robustness, uncertainty management, sustainability and transdisciplinarity (Kønig et al. 2017). This more robust science for policy recognises complexity and uncertainty, adopts a dialogical transdisciplinary practice, and aims for sustainability and increased public trust in science advice (Dankel et al. 2017). Such dialogue provokes a dynamic ground for language ecology from which metaphors as the ones examined in this paper emerge.

This language ecology provokes a reflection on nature-culture relationship. If our argument holds, and models/metaphors turned into biological concepts/theories, later have their meanings expanded to represent social processes, then the case here described can be illustrative of the role of nature's signals in shaping signs that contribute to social representations, organizing and establishing social relationships within these groups. Conversely, and in contrast to our argument, one can claim that such signals are theory-laden and, therefore, cultural in the first place, merely interpretative, rather than naturally existing. Either way, both alternatives seem to suggest that nature and culture are blended as one, despite the modern walls that often separate them (Scarano 2024). Additionally, it highlights the significance of sociocultural determinants in the interaction with these signs in the daily lives of contemporary societies and digital communication.

3.3 Ontological expansion

We also embrace the notion that reality is continuously expanding, since novelty always emerge from innovation processes (biological evolution included).

Innovation, therefore, is not something that happens when someone comes up with a new brilliant idea. It happens when socioecological practices change. This topic has been explored in depth by Tuomi (2019), who defines ontological expansion as the continuous expansion of reality, which is underpinned by three principles that produce innovation: constant creation, functional shift, and relational ontology. Semiotic systems such as human languages are in constant creation (Nölle and Galantucci 2023). The biological vocabulary addressed here first emerged as models/metaphors to address a given phenomenon. The phenomenon, or that given portion of reality, was already there, but when a ‘name’ appears to try and interpret it, creation takes place. Not only of a word, but of a proposition or a way of interpreting reality. When such models/metaphors become established as concepts/theories, their meanings can be expanded as metaphors to describe other portions of reality, therefore experimenting a functional shift (Von Mengden 2016). Finally, constant creation and functional shifts of interpretation and meanings evolve through a relational ontology, whereby concept and metaphor, subject and object, organism and environment, nature and culture, resonate with each other and are in permanent interaction and continuity (Tuomi 2019). Thus, this interplay between concepts and metaphors in our study fits all three principles of ontological expansion and are in harmony also with the thoughts of Henri Bergson (1859–1941) and Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961), both of which presuppose expansive reality (Bannon 2011, de Freitas and Ferrara 2015, Tuomi 2019).

Furthermore, the five words chosen for this study also express the three processes that define ontological expansion. Seed, regeneration, and autopoiesis are in essence biological processes of constant creation. Exaptation is about functional shift. Ecosystems are the space/time units where relational ontologies take place. In harmony with the principle of ontological expansion, the dimension discussed earlier grounds a conception of ‘being’ as intersubjective and shaped by the constantly transforming possibilities offered by society. The symbolic dimension, reminiscent of the Hjelmslevian category, highlights the role of language and social forces in promoting changes, allowing for intersubjective thought while leaving room for individual existence (Hjelmslev 1943).

4 Final remarks

A metaphorical use of a vocabulary largely used in botany and plant physiology—in contemporary relevant scientific and sociopolitical fields such as digitalisation and sustainability—results from a language ecology that suggests an ongoing shift in perception from “life as machine” to “life as organic”, as Haraway (1976) framed it half a century ago. Of course, this transition is still incomplete, when, for instance, one notices that for many it is easier to apply the word intelligence to machines than it is to plants (Santos et al. 2024). All these contrasting and simultaneous patterns reinforces the notion that our present times are liminal, transitional, and have brought science and society to a post-normal stance (Funtowicz and Ravetz 1993). The concepts examined here have a predicative value and anticipatory nature, and their metaphors symptomize an ontological expansion, since they combine the pre-requisites of constant creation, functional shift, and relational ontology (Tuomi 2019). This ontological expansion holds the potential to be anticipatory, and even adaptive. Although the current state of multicrise may not inspire much optimism, the language ecology discussed here—which suggests a shift from ‘life as machine’ to ‘life as organic’—brings a glimmer of hope for reconciliation among humans, nature, and technology. In a world that is becoming increasingly interconnected and interdependent, Hong Kong philosopher Yuk Hui (2020) reminds us that only by addressing this challenge “new earth and people that do not yet exist” (Deleuze and Guattari 1994) might emerge.