Explorations In Dynamic Semiosis

The Primacy of Semiosis provides a semiotic that subverts the opposition between realism and idealism; one in which what have been called 'nature' and 'culture' interpenetrate in an expanding collective of human and non-human.

Contributed articles.

The French mathematician René Thom (Fields medal 1958) died in 2002. In this volume his contributions to biology, semiotics and linguistics are discussed by a group of scholars who have continued his work and have shaped the new paradigm of dynamic semiotics and linguistics. Thom's heritage is full of revolutionary ideas and deep insights which stem from a rich intuition and a sharp awareness of the current state of the sciences, including their potentials and risks. The contributions to this volume are elaborations of papers given at a colloquium at the International Center for Semiotics and Linguistics of the University of Urbino (Italy), in 2005. The central concern of this volume is semiogenesis, i.e. the evolution and differentiation of meaningful («pregnant») forms in the field of symbolic systems - from bio-communication to language and cultural forms like music, art, architecture or urban forms. The basic questions are: How are meanings created and further differentiated? Where do they come from? What kind of forces drive their unfolding? How can complex cultural forms be understood based on simple morphodynamic principles? Applications concern the perception of forms by animals and humans, the categorization of forms e.g. in a lexicon, and predication or other complex symbolic behaviors which show up in grammar or in cultural artifacts like the unfolding of urban centers.

This is the first anthology in cognitive semiotics, the transdisciplinary study of meaning, mind and communication, which integrates semiotics, cognitive science and linguistics. The four parts are Meta-theoretical perspectives, Semiotic development and evolution, Meaning across media, modes and modalities, and Language, blends and metaphors.

This book is about patterns of development in the history of culture. Bringing together three areas of research: semiotics, cultural history, and evolutionary psychology, it attempts to bridge the gap that still separates the study of culture from the cognitive sciences. The multidisciplinary approach chosen by the contributors derives its impetus from the deep conviction that in order to understand the logic of cultural development, one must take the building blocks of culture, that is, signs and language, as a starting point for research. Central issues related to patterns of cultural evolution are dealt with in contributions on the development of mind and culture, the history of the media, the diversity of sign systems, culture and code, and the dynamics of semiosis. Theoretically oriented contributions alternate with in-depth case studies on such diverging topics as the evolution of language and art in prehistory, ritual as the fountainhead of indirect communication, developments in renaissance painting, the evolution of classification systems in chemistry, changing attitudes toward animal consciousness, and developments in computer technology.

Can semiotics and computers be compatible? Can computation advance semiotics by enhancing the scientific basis of the theory of signs? Coupling semiotics, a philosophical and phenomenological tradition concerned with theories of signs, with computation, a formal discipline, may seem controversial and paradoxical. Computational Semiotics tackles these controversies head-on and attempts to bridge this gap. Showing how semiotics can build the same type of conceptual, formal, and computational models as other scientific projects, this book opens up a rich domain of inquiry toward the formal understanding of semiotic artifacts and processes. Examining how pairing semiotics with computation can bring more methodological rigor and logical consistency to the epistemic quest for the forms and functions of meaning, without compromising the important interpretive dynamics of semiotics, this book offers a new cutting-edge, model-driven theory to the field.