Semiosis

(see also languaging, paradigm, micro-paradigm and other keywords)

"all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not composed exclusively of signs…along with their representational and inferential relations…without signs, man can neither perceive, feel, act or think.”

(Peirce, 1868)

Why is it in the glossary?

• Some might say that we don't need more words, virtue signalling or nice pictures - we need action!
• We know that we must soon transition from the current (extraction/disposal) paradigm, but how?
• We are awash with scientific facts but have no affirmative vision of how we really want to live.
• Unfortunately, as consumers and voters, our duty is limited to choosing, rather than dreaming.
• This helps to explain why progress remains so slow. Small ('practical') steps will not be enough.
• Big, radical ideas may have merit but are commonly dismissed as unrealistic (i.e. "Utopian").

New meanings create new opportunities

• It is possible that affordable solutions are hiding in plain sight - maybe right under our noses.
• Our monkey brains struggle to differentiate between the unthinkable and the impossible.
• We tend to filter out anomalies that don't fit into existing systems of value and meaning.
• By creating new meanings society has more chance to try out new beliefs and customs.
• Perhaps artists will play an important role in helping the transition to a new paradigm.
• They are licensed to create new meanings without having to justify or explain them.
• This may be invaluable if they help us to uncover unforeseen opportunities for change.

Entangled in meaning

• It is hard to understand meaning because it requires us to ask ourselves how we mean meaning.
• How we define it depends partly on who we are, why we are asking, and the context in which we ask it.
• It is common to describe the making of meaning using terms such as signs (see semiotics) as.

Seeing meanings as signs

• The tendency to see all communication in terms of signs is an old one that probably needs re-thinking.
• We expect scientists to identify abstract patterns & trends (e.g. semantics, logic, syntactics).
• But if we endeavour to make new meanings, the idea that we are creating 'signs' may feel inappropriate.
• Artists immersed in the processes of making meaning, will probably be immersed.
• It makes more sense after the event than it does when we are fully '.
  • For example, artists or designers might be intrigued by who creates meaning and where it resides:
  • "Art is not about itself but the attention we bring to it." (Marcel Duchamp)
• But this process may distance us from our personal, situated, self-reflexive role in the creation of meaning.
• For example, the linguistics theorist Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913) saw only an arbitrary relationship between what we mean and with what means we try to communicate it. (Holdcraft, 1991).
• He used the related concepts of signifiers (what we mean) and signs (whatever words, sounds, images, gestures we use to invoke them).

Signs of life

• How is meaning applied within abstract theory (e.g. logic) compared with hands-on practice (e.g. medicine)?
• Thinking about living systems is useful (practically) if it encourages us to be alert, flexible and resourceful.
• It is interesting that the first use of the term signs is attributed to two 17th century physicians.
• Henry Stubbes coined the term ‘semeiotics’ (from Greek words meaning ‘observant of signs’ and ‘a sign, a mark’ to describe how doctors read a patient’s symptoms (Stubbes, 1670).
• John Locke (1602-1734): divides science into three categories -
  • 1. the nature of things (Nature)
  • 2. the moral nature of human action in pursuit of any end, especially happiness
  • 3. how 1) and 2) are reconciled and made known
• Locke called the third category the 'doctrine of signs' (semeiotike).
• It is interesting that Locke's legacy includes a pragmatic sense of semiotics
  • (i.e. "signs and how they work in the world'')
  • Nor is there any thing to be relied upon in Physick, but an exact knowledge of medicinal physiology (founded on observation, not principles), semeiotics, method of curing, and tried (not excogitated, not commanding) medicines."

(Locke, 1823)

Signs of action

helped to establish the notion of

• From this detached, scientific perspective, de Saussure found no essential correlation between

Semantics: Relation between signs and the things to which they refer; their denotata, or meaning

• Syntactics: Relations among signs in formal structures

1. Linguistics - Ferdinand de Saussure
2. Languaging - Maturana & Varela
3. Bio-semiotics / eco-semiotics - Jakob von Uexküll (1864-1944)
4. Pragmatics: Relation between signs and the effects they have on the people who use them - Charles Peirce

Semiosis

• Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) later applied the word semiosis to any action that uses signs to create, or to interpret meaning.
• A sign means anything (other than the sign itself) that communicates a meaning to the interpreter of the sign.
• Slightly different theories of signs were developed by the linguist and logician, Ferdinand de Saussure .
• However, although Peirce and de Saussure were interested in different aspects of communication, each understood that a sign could be almost anything.

In the nineteenth century, Charles Sanders Peirce defined what he termed "semiotic" (which he sometimes spelled as "semeiotic") as the "quasi-necessary, or formal doctrine of signs", which abstracts "what must be the characters of all signs used by...an intelligence capable of learning by experience",7 and which is philosophical logic pursued in terms of signs and sign processes.8 Charles Morris followed Peirce in using the term "semiotic" and in extending the discipline beyond human communication to animal learning and use of signals.

Further reading

• Austin, J., L., (1962), "How to do things with words", Clarendon, 1962
• Barthes, R., "Empire of Signs", Jonathan Cape, 1982
• Barthes, R., "Mythologies", Paladin Books, London, 1973
• Barthes, R., "Sade, Fourier, Loyola", Jonathan Cape, London, 1977
• Barthes, R., "The Death of the Author", transl. by Heath, S., in "Image, Music, Text", Hill and Wang, 1977
• Barthes, R., "The Fashion System", trans. Ward, M. & Howard, R., New York: Hill & Wang, 1983
• Bateson, Gregory (1972). Steps to an Ecology of Mind. New York: Ballantine.
• Crowe, Norman (1997). Nature and the Idea of a Man-Made World: An Investigation into the Evolutionary Roots of Form and Order in the Built Environment. Cambridge (Mass.): The MIT Press.
• Gibson, James J., The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. New Jersey, USA
• Goleman, D., Emotional Intelligence; why it can matter more than IQ, Bloomsbury, Great Britain, 1996
• Hardin, G., 'The Tragedy of the Commons' in Garrett Hardin and John Baden (eds.), Managing the Commons (San Francisco
• Hoffmeyer, Jesper (1996). Signs of Meaning in the Universe. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
• Holdcroft, D., 1991. Saussure: signs, system and arbitrariness. Cambridge University Press.
• Hornborg, Alf (1996). Ecology as semiotics: Outlines of a contextualist paradigm for human ecology. In Nature and Society: Anthropological Perspectives, Philippe Descola and Gisli Pálsson (eds.), 45–62. London: Routledge.
• Kull, Kalevi (1998). Semiotic ecology: different natures in the semiosphere. Sign Systems Studies 26: 344-371.
• Lakoff, G. and Johnson, M., Metaphors We Live By, Chicago: University of Chicago, 1980
• Margulis, Lynn, (ed,), Symbiosis as a Source of Evolutionary Innovation: Speciation and Morphogenesis, The MIT Press, 1991
• Maturana, H., & Varela, F., G., The Tree of Knowledge, Shambhala, Boston & London, 1987/1998
• Nöth, Winfried (1998). Ecosemiotics. Sign Systems Studies 26: 332-343.
• Rapoport, Amos (1994). Spatial organization and the built environment. In Companion Encyclopedia of Anthropology, Tim Ingold (ed.), 460–502. London: Routledge.
• Simmons, I. G. (1993). Interpreting Nature: Cultural Constructions of the Environment. London: Routledge.
• Soper, K., (1995), What is Nature? Culture, Politics and the Non-Human", Routledge, 1995
• Sperber, D., & Wilson, D., (1986), Relevance; Communication and Cognition, Basil Blackwell, Cambridge, Mass.
• Tanizaki, J., (1933), “In Praise of Shadows”, 1933
• Trivers, R., L., The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism, Quarterly Review of Biology, 1971, 46, (4), 35-57, quoted in Wilson, E., O., 'The Genetic Evolution of Altruism; psychological and sociological principles', chapter in 'Altruism, Sympathy and Helping', edited by Lauren Wispé, Academic Press, New York and London, 1978, pp. 33-35
• Wood, J., (2007), Designing for Micro-utopias; thinking beyond the possible, Gower, UK, 2007