Signs and Signatures of Intelligence

Abstract: Research into the emergence and evolution of intelligence is underrepresented in astrobiology. I propose noosemiotics, the study of noosignatures, to address this gap. Noosignatures are the structured traces that minds leave on a medium, whether physical (tools, etchings, architecture) or signal-based (encoded transmissions, complex animal communication), that remain detectable as the products of intelligence regardless of whether their meaning can be recovered. Where biosignatures mark life and technosignatures mark technology, noosignatures mark the space between. This paper defines noosemiotics, situates it within astrobiology, and proposes a research program for empirical metrics, with material culture as the primary test bed.