The field of semiotics is described as a general study of knowing. Knowing in a broad sense as a process that assumes (and includes) at least memory (together with heredity), anticipation, communication, meaningful information, and needs, is a distinctive feature of living systems. 

What makes the living and the non-living very different from each other is their different relation to what is not, to what is absent. That which is alive has expectancies. Once dead, one does not expect. 

Expectancy, or anticipation, means that something is not only itself but also stands for something else – for that which is expected. This is exactly the general feature of the sign, according to Peirce’s widely repeated definition.