Space has more than three dimensions. Our sense of space is generated by movement, that is, by time. But space is foremost a multimodal experience: visual, tactile, auditory, olfactory, and gustative. There is also an inner dimension when we feel parts of our body aching or enjoying pleasure. This inner space, however, is not the [...]
Contemporary semiotics is rich in various models and methods which have clustered over the years to form hybrid descriptive tools. Most approaches are unashamedly eclectic and researchers usually engage in heuristics rather than in some normative logic of discovery such as those which are believed to characterize the empirical and formal sciences. Although a few [...]
Can signs be toxic? Can there be killer signs, either because of their inherent properties or because of their sheer number? Notwithstanding the claims of the modern avatars of Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Pangloss, signs might not be the benign and useful entities which perfuse the universe as utopian semiotics and its assumption of rational [...]
One of the current frontiers of science is the geology and biology of the deep sea. Glimpses of the ocean floor show dramatic landscapes of mountain chains, profound valleys, tumultuous volcanic vents that are teeming with puzzling forms of life which have evolved in these extreme, photonless environments.
It is useful to be reminded from time to time that dogmas are the opium of intelligence. They literally stop the inquiry and put the critical mind to sleep or lead it to wander into wishful landscapes. It seems that semiotics has entered an epistemological coma. The whole discourse that is marketed under this name [...]
At the very least, semiotics is a good idea. Trying to understand how humans make sense of their lives, their environment, and the ways in which they interact with, and influence each other through signs is a fundamental endeavour. Semiotics, under any other name, is bound to have emerged when early humans evolved the cognitive capacity to encompass more than a single point of view and represent others as a source of signs, and discriminated between intentional and non-intentional signs with considerable adaptive consequences.