No detailed description available for "The Semiotic Web 1991: Biosemiotics".

Peirce's (1906) proposal that the universe as a whole, even if it does not consist exclusively of signs, is yet everywhere perfused with signs, is a thesis that better than any other sums up the life and work of Thomas A. Sebeok, "inventor" of semiotics as we know it today. Semiotics - the doctrine of signs - has a long and intriguing history that extends back well beyond the last century, two and a half millennia to Hippocrates of Cos. It ranges through the teachings of Augustine, Scholastic philosophy, the work of Peirce and Saussure. Yet a fully-fledged doctrine of signs, with many horizons for the future, was the result of Sebeok's work in the twentieth century. The massive influence of this work, as well as Sebeok's convening of semiotic projects and encouragement of a huge number of researchers globally, which, in turn, set in train countless research projects, is difficult to document and has not been assessed until now. This volume, using the testimonies of key witnesses and participants in the semiotic project, offers a picture of how Sebeok, through his development of knowledge of endosemiotics, phytosemiotics, biosemiotics and sociosemiotics, enabled semiotics in general to redraw the boundaries of science and the humanities as well as nature and culture.

The study of semiotics underwent a gradual but radical paradigm shift during the past century, from a glottocentric (language-centered) enterprise to one that encompasses the whole terrestrial biosphere. In this collection of 17 essays, Thomas A. Sebeok, one of the seminal thinkers in the field, shows how this progression took place. His wide-ranging discussion of the evolution of the field covers many facets, including discussions of biosemiotics, semiotics as a bridge between the humanities and natural sciences, semiosis, nonverbal communication, cat and horse behavior, the semiotic self, and women in semiotics. This thorough account will appeal to seasoned scholars and neophytes alike.

This book invites readers to embark on a journey into the world of agency encompassing humans, other organisms, cells, intracellular molecular agents, colonies, populations, ecological systems, and artificial autonomous systems. We combine mechanistic and non-mechanistic approaches in the analysis of the function and evolution of organisms, their subagents, and multi-organism systems, and in this way offer a theoretical platform for integrating biosemiotics with both natural science and the humanities/social sciences. Agents are autonomous systems that incorporate knowledge on how to make sense of their environment and use it to achieve their goals. The functions of all agents are supported by mechanisms at the lowest level; however, the explanatory power of mechanistic analysis is not sufficient for complex agents. Non-mechanistic methods rely on the goal-directedness of agents whose dynamics follow self-stabilized dynamic attractors. The properties of attractors depend on stable or slowly changing factors, and such dependencies can be interpreted as sign relations if they are adaptive in nature. Agents can replace or redirect mechanisms on demand in order to preserve their functions; for performing higher-level semiotic functions, mechanisms are thus only means. We assume that mechanism and semiosis are not mutually exclusive, and that simple agents can interpret signs mechanistically. This assumption allows us to extend semiotic analysis to all agents, including ribosomes in cells, computers, and robots. This book challenges established traditions in natural science and the humanities/social sciences: semiotics no longer appears as restricted to humans and rational thinking, and biology is no longer limited to rely exclusively on mechanistic reasoning.

This book presents programmatic texts on biosemiotics, written collectively by world leading scholars in the field (Deacon, Emmeche, Favareau, Hoffmeyer, Kull, Markoš, Pattee, Stjernfelt). In addition, the book includes chapters which focus closely on semiotic case studies (Bruni, Kotov, Maran, Neuman, Turovski).According to the central thesis of biosemiotics, sign processes characterise all living systems and the very nature of life, and their diverse phenomena can be best explained via the dynamics and typology of sign relations. The authors are therefore presenting a deeper view on biological evolution, intentionality of organisms, the role of communication in the living world and the nature of sign systems — all topics which are described in this volume. This has important consequences on the methodology and epistemology of biology and study of life phenomena in general, which the authors aim to help the reader better understand.

The Routledge Companion to Semiotics provides the ideal introduction to semiotics, containing engaging essays from an impressive range of international leaders in the field. Topics covered include: the history, development, and uses of semiotics key theorists, including Saussure, Peirce and Sebeok crucial and contemporary topics such as biosemiotics, sociosemiotics and semioethics the semiotics of media and culture, nature and cognition. Featuring an extended glossary of key terms and thinkers as well as suggestions for further reading, this is an invaluable reference guide for students of semiotics at all levels.

The first edition of ELL (1993, Ron Asher, Editor) was hailed as "the field's standard reference work for a generation". Now the all-new second edition matches ELL's comprehensiveness and high quality, expanded for a new generation, while being the first encyclopedia to really exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics. * The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field * An entirely new work, with new editors, new authors, new topics and newly commissioned articles with a handful of classic articles * The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics through the online edition * Ground-breaking and International in scope and approach * Alphabetically arranged with extensive cross-referencing * Available in print and online, priced separately. The online version will include updates as subjects develop ELL2 includes: * c. 7,500,000 words * c. 11,000 pages * c. 3,000 articles * c. 1,500 figures: 130 halftones and 150 colour * Supplementary audio, video and text files online * c. 3,500 glossary definitions * c. 39,000 references * Extensive list of commonly used abbreviations * List of languages of the world (including information on no. of speakers, language family, etc.) * Approximately 700 biographical entries (now includes contemporary linguists) * 200 language maps in print and online Also available online via ScienceDirect – featuring extensive browsing, searching, and internal cross-referencing between articles in the work, plus dynamic linking to journal articles and abstract databases, making navigation flexible and easy. For more information, pricing options and availability visit www.info.sciencedirect.com. The first Encyclopedia to exploit the multimedia potential of linguistics Ground-breaking in scope - wider than any predecessor An invaluable resource for researchers, academics, students and professionals in the fields of: linguistics, anthropology, education, psychology, language acquisition, language pathology, cognitive science, sociology, the law, the media, medicine & computer science. The most authoritative, up-to-date, comprehensive, and international reference source in its field

Language is the species-specific human version of the animal system of communication. In contrast to non-human animals, language enables humans to invent a plurality of possible worlds; reflect upon signs; be responsible for our actions; gain conscious awareness of our inevitable mutual involvement in the network of life on this planet; and be responsibly involved in the destiny of the planet. The author looks at semiotics, the study of signs, symbols, and communication as developing sequentially rather than successively, more synchronically than diachronically. She discusses the contemporary phenomenon that people in today's society have witnessed and participated in, as part of the development of semiotics. Although there is a long history preceding semiotics, in a sense the field is, as a phenomenon, more "of our time" than of any time past. Its leading figures, whom Petrilli examines, belong to the twentieth and twenty-first century. Semiotics is associated with a capacity for listening. This capacity is also the condition for reconnecting to and recovering the ancient vocation of semiotics as that branch of medical science relating to the interpretation of signs or symptoms. The pragmatic aspect of global semiotics studies the impact of language or signs on those who use them, and looks for consequences in actual practice. In this respect, Petrilli theorizes that the task for semiotics in the era of globalization is nothing less than to take responsibility for life in its totality.

In Janet Frame: Semiotics and Biosemiotics in Her Early Fiction, Paul Matthew St. Pierre exploits the linguistic discipline of semiotics and the neurobiological discipline of biosemiotics to propose an original and dynamic reading of the first four works of fiction by New Zealand writer Janet Frame (1924-2004): The Lagoon: Stories (1951), Owls Do Cry (1957), Faces in the Water (1961), and The Edge of the Alphabet (1962). Opposing the prevailing reading of Frame's early fiction as autobiographical, deriving from her medical history, he argues her books are singular evocations of her astonishing imagination. His purpose is to fix this historical record and provide an alternative model for interpreting one of the 20th century's most stylistically demanding and rewarding writers. Semiotics and biosemiotics are his means for unlocking the early fiction and her later works to a polemical analysis focusing on language, sign transmissions, writing the body, and the biosemiotic self. In The Lagoon, Owls Do Cry, Faces in the Water, and The Edge of the Alphabet Frame produced what St. Pierre interprets as an original semiotic and biosemiotic modeling system that she applied throughout her oeuvre of twenty books, comprising eight story collections, seven novels, a book of poetry, a children's novel, and three volumes of autobiography. Using this modeling system, she designed her fiction as a visual verbal field consisting of still and moving images generated in the imagination, located in the brains and central nervous systems of her narrators, characters, and readers, and, primarily, of the author herself. The author discusses the significations of: 1) Frame's image-signs in water, glass, photographs, film, membranes, skin, and clothing; 2) her primary sign repertoire of objects, language, and human persons in the figures of blood, skin, and sun; 3) her body-signs, including those generated in the circulatory and neurological systems of all human organisms as biosemiotic living systems, in facial displays and body parts such as teeth, temples, eyes, skin, hair, nostrils, shoulders, knees, cheeks, vaginas, and prefrontal lobes; 4) her theories of the body, normalcy, and selfhood in the figures of urine, feces, blood, sweat, bile, saliva, phlegm, and semen, and body parts such as feet, hands, noses, teeth, lips, entrails, and wombs, in the context of social forces of dismemberment; 5) her biosemiotic system applied to her subsequent books, constituting her theory of human beings as sign-transmitting organisms, living systems doubled with and interchangeable with the closed sign system of her oeuvre. Janet Frame: Semiotics and Biosemiotics in Her Early Fiction is designed to appeal to the international audience of Frame readers and a specialized audience of semioticians and biosemioticians who investigate how sign transmissions function in visual verbal fields and related living systems.

No detailed description available for "Semiotics around the World: Synthesis in Diversity".