Notes for Editors’ Preface:
“Pars Pro Toto”

¹ Much of what follows in this Section I of the Preface is abstracted from a longer treatment by John Deely, “A Context for Narrative Universals or: Semiology as a Pars Semeiotica”, presented first as an ISISSS 84 Evening Lecture (Toronto, June 21) and scheduled for publication in The American Journal of Semiotics 4.2.

² What we here call “the Poinsot-Locke-Peirce tradition” is substantially identical with what Sebeok, looking more at the contemporary inspiration than at the foundational development historically conceived as such, earlier called “the Locke-Peirce-Morris tradition”, in contrast to “the Saussurean pattern of thought and action” (p. 256 above). See the updated discussion in “Challenging Signs at the Crossroads”, Williams’ Preface (1985a) to the reprint of Sebeok 1976; see also Sebeok 1982. Doctrinal links between Peirce and Poinsot, as they appear in Locke’s doctrinal perspective, are spelled out in Deely 1985: 491-498.

Notes for Reading 2:
John Deely, “The Coalescence of Semiotic Consciousness”

¹ Let us ask whether ideas as semiotically conceived, that is, as (formal) signs, might not be simply states of our nervous system. The answer is that ideas and neural conditions cannot be so identified, for the reason that brain states are in principle (under appropriate instrumentation) directly sense perceptible, while, by contrast, ideas in principle—that is, in order to be ideas and to function according to the rationale of their admission as real—are not sense perceptible, but are rather that on which every sense perceptible object as actually perceived here and now depends. Let us call them “mental events” in contrast to “physical events”, that is, in contrast to items of possible sense apprehension. Thus, in a semiotic perspective, the same reasoning that leads us to affirm the reality of ideas as mental in contradistinction to brain states as physical, also requires us to preclude the reduction of the mental to the physical, and to preclude as well identification of the mental with that of which we are directly aware in cognition. The reduction and identification are alike incompatible with the semiotic (sign) structure of apprehension itself as underlying all observation and constituting its ground.

Moreover, this analysis removes the principal ground on which behaviorists and analytic philosophers have repudiated the existence of ideas, namely, the ground that we have no direct awareness of them in our experience as something distinct or separable from the objective “physical” being of the marks seen and expressions heard. Indeed, the thrust of this argument is heuristically just what the semiotic analysis of ideas would lead us to expect. In short, the line of argument from which contemporary Anglo-American analysis of language rejects the existence of ideas in the modern sense, supports the acceptance of the existence of ideas in the semiotic sense, i.e., as making present in our consciousness objects which they themselves are not. The recent attempts of mainstream philosophers to explain away the mental somehow in terms of the physical is shown by semiotic analysis to be misguided. That same line of analysis demonstrates the wrongheadedness of the more enduring modern tendency to close thought within its own constructions, with the result of making experience of communication unintelligible or merely apparent at best. What the analysis of cognition from a semiotic point of view quickly reveals is that the solipsistic and reductionistic tendencies of mainstream modern and contemporary philosophy and psychology have as their common root an inadequate understanding of the phenomenon of signifying which is at the heart of cognitive life.

The counter to both these tendencies, accordingly, and the opening of a new era of understanding, can be found in a careful establishment of the foundations of the doctrine of signs (semiotic in the strict sense) and in the extension of such an analysis to all the phenomena of which signs make up part (the interdisciplinary field of semiotics). The possibilities of such a work and perspective seem to have been first secured systematically as early as 1632a in the Treatise on Signs of John Poinsot, while the actual project has begun to go forward only in most recent times, especially under the influence of Charles S. Peirce. Thus the dominant interest of Poinsot’s Treatise is the prospective significance of a seminal treatment, illuminating possibilities of a future age. “Poinsot’s thought”, commented Sebeok (1982: x), belongs to the mainstream of semiotic discourse “as the ‘missing link’ between the ancients and the moderns in the history of semiotic, a pivot as well as a divide between two huge intellective landscapes the ecology of neither of which could be fully appreciated” prior to the publication of his Treatise in a modern edition.

² “It should now be apparent how great is the too frequently committed blunder of representing the opposition of the syllogism and induction as the simple opposition of two movements proceeding in contrary directions on the same road. Such a representation betrays a complete misunderstanding of the true nature of this opposition and even risks confusing the syllogism with descensus. The opposition between the syllogism and induction is much deeper: it is a fundamental opposition. The very paths which they pursue are different. One moves entirely upon the intelligible plane; the other leads from the plane of sense experience to the intelligible plane, from the plane of the particular or the singular to the plane of the universal (or inversely). The syllogism is based entirely upon the connection of two terms with a same third term (the middle term). Induction replaces the middle term by an enumeration of parts and is entirely based upon the connection of individuals or of parts with the universal whole” (Maritain 1923: 267).

³ If this is understood, it will also be seen that, far from providing a tool for adjudicating philosophical disputes, as has been commonly supposed, philosophical dispute precisely is tacitly set aside and taken as settled whenever and as long as one has recourse to logistic methods, notably propositional functions and quantifiers. This point is beginning to be recognized among contemporaries, so that one may hope its importance will eventually sink in. (For extended discussions from very different standpoints, see Strawson 1952: esp. 193-194; Deely 1975a: esp. 266-267, 1985a; Küng 1967: 8-9.)

Notes for Reading 3:
Thomas A. Sebeok, “The Doctrine of Signs”

¹ The reasons therefor were forcefully argued by Karl R. Popper in his 1977 book on The Self and the Brain, with John C. Eccles.

² This man-sign analogy, and implications of the semiotics of identity more generally, constitute the central themes of Man’s Glassy Essence, an important new book by the distinguished Chicago anthropologist, Milton Singer.

Notes for Reading 6:
Umberto Eco, Roberto Lambertini, Costantino Marmo, and Andrea Tabarroni,
“Latratus Canis, or: The Dog’s Barking”

¹ Aquinas introduces under “non significativa” a twofold distinction—litterata/non litterata and articulata/non articulata—which poses some difficulties. Aquinas seems to have gotten the distinction from Ammonius’ Commentary on the Perihermenias (c.400), translated by Moerbeke in 1268; for it is the position of Ammonius, according to which these two distinctions are handled as basically synonymous, which Aquinas follows—but choosing his own words and examples—in his own uncompleted Commentarium super libros Perihermenias (c. 1269-1274), lectio iv.

This point is important in the history of semiotics, because there is a rather different use made of these same expressions among the Latin grammarians, from Priscian (c.526) to the modistae, and these materially overlapping but formally divergent uses serve to identify semiotically two cultural heredities among the Latins, one of a logico-linguistic character in which the bark of the dog has a fixed place of marginality, another of a naturalistic character in which the bark proves to occupy a position which is neither fixed nor strictly marginal.

None of the Latin predecessors of Priscian present a scheme according to the oppositions articulata/inarticulata litterata/illiterata. For them, vox is simply divided into articulata on the one hand and confusa (seu inarticulata) on the other. If one turns to the Greek tradition, however, at least three passages are known which present a clear parallelism with Priscian’s treatment “De voce” in his Institutions, the earliest in Apollonius Dyscolus (i. 100-200), and two later ones in Ammonius (loc. cit.) and John Damascene (i.742-749). Moreover, Ammonius, probably writing against Apollonius Dyscolus, expresses, in his commentary on the De Interpretatione, an irritation with the incongruity of the classification of the grammarians (“. . .risibile utique erit”) which arises from their way of drawing the twofold distinction in question, which may be summarized in the following table, and is precisely the classification introduced into Latin grammatical tradition by Priscian:

In this way of drawing the twofold distinction, the articulatio of the vox is identified with its significatio, a point on which Priscian is followed, as we have said, by all the medieval grammarians. In a more complete discussion of this research (Eco, Lambertini, Marmo, and Tabarroni 1984: 9-12), a possible reason for this identification is conjectured, and problems about the internal coherence of this way of drawing the matrix are raised. Here, it is enough to note that, if we view Aquinas from the standpoint of Priscian, we cannot understand why the voces articulatae don’t coincide with the voces significativae, whereas to speak of non-signifying and articulated sounds is a contradiction in terms. (And, in general, this classification in the hands of the philosophers has in common with that of the grammarians only some homonymies, such as to create an impression of overlap and generate unbearable confusion when an effort is made to place them in a common scheme. For Aquinas the feature “litterata” is a grammatological or graphematic one, whereas the feature “articulata” is a phonological one in the linguistic sense of ‘second articulation’. For the grammarians, on the contrary, the feature “litterata” concerns the phonological second articulation, while “articulata” meant “endowed or correlated with a meaning”, and was a semantic feature.) Thus we find ourselves on the road toward identifying two differing semiotic traditions, each of which assigns to the bark of the dog a different status.

In the logico-philosophical tradition, directly dependent on the lessons of Ammonius and remaining foreign to the lessons of the grammarians, the articulatio continues to be identified with the litteratio and therefore with the possibility of a written translation of sound. How this affects the bark of the dog we will see on resuming our main discussion. In the logico-linguistic tradition of the grammarians, along the line of Priscian, the bark of the dog has from this point only a most sad destiny—that is, one devoid of further interest. It is perhaps natural for a grammarian that the only interesting things are the sounds articulated by a man, according of course to a grammar, in order to express meanings. The sounds of animals, therefore, have no interest whatsoever. And so it is that in the texts of the grammarians one sees that the bark of the dog goes to occupy positions always more marginal.

At this point the tradition of the grammarians no longer interests us. It is obvious that the grammarians are concerned exclusively with the grammar of human languages, and not with general semiotics, not to mention zoosemiotics. What interests us instead is the tradition of the philosophers who continue to grant to the dog a certain honorable and labile position in the classification of signs; the philosophers also interest us because, beyond the classifications they stretch out from the reserves of the Aristotelian De Interpretatione they are continually inclined to make supplementary observations, such as those of Aquinas to which we now return.

² It is not immediately clear why Bacon distinguishes the signs of type 1.1. from those of the type 1.3. It would seem that while in the type 1.3. there is a clear relation of cause and effect, in those of the type 1.1. there is only a relation of concomitance between events, certain where the concomitance is a necessary concomitance, uncertain where the concomitance is merely likely or probable. Yet it remains obscure why the wet earth, as a probable sign of rain in the past, is not classified among the vestigia. Even more curious is the locating of pictures and images, intentional products of man, among the natural signs. Bacon reasons that what is intentionally made is the object (statue or portrait), but the resemblance between the real person and the representation is owing to a kind of homology between the form of the signans and the form of the signatum; Augustine had been much more subtle in his De doctrina Christiana (II.35.38-39) with his perception of the widely conventional nature of images and mimetic representations.

³ Intentio is assumed by Bacon in its epistemological sense developed by the Scholastics, as a turning of the soul toward a cognitive object, as distinct from any act of will (cf. Vescovini 1965: 64-69). It is thus clear how there can be intentio even in cases absent reason and will; for it is enough that there be an immediate impulse of the sensitive soul “quasi subito per privationem temporis sensibilis”. Thus those signs ordered by the soul without any deliberation of reason or choice by the will—type 2.2—are said to function “naturaliter”, but they have no connection with the natural signs of type 1. These natural signs—type 1.—are called “natural” with reference to nature as substance, while the naturally functioning signs of 2.2. are called “natural” because they are born from an impulse of the soul in the order of operative quality. In any event, the distinction is clear: the signa naturalia of type 1. perform their function without regard to any intention, while the signa naturaliter ordinata of type 2.2.—the wail of the infirm and the bark of the dog, etc.—are considered precisely as springing from an intention, an impulse of the sensitive soul tending to express that which the animal, human or not, feels. So it is that in this classification the bark, without finding itself next to Holy Scripture and separated from the wail, as in the provocation of Augustine, yet comes to stand more or less on the same side with the other signs (type 2.1.) emitted by and with deliberate intention of reason and will.

⁴ For the wrong attribution to Marsilius see A. Maieru 1972.

Note for Reading 9:
Martin Krampen, “Phytosemiotics”

¹ Editors’ note: In the original publication of Krampen’s essay, this section was preceded by a technical section titled Measurements of oxygen and carbon dioxide. The omitted section contains a technical discussion summarized in a series of tables, and aims “to demonstrate the meaning of plants to human life and to point out the necessity for further investigation in phytosemiotics”. Considerations of space required the omission of this quantitative discussion in reprinting the essay for general readership in the present volume. Readers interested in the technical details are referred to Krampen 1981: 197-203. The opening sentence of the present section has been edited to smooth the transition.

Notes for Reading 10:
John Deely, “On the Notion of Phytosemiotics”

¹ “Il me semble, quand je suis a Fontainebleu, que je sympathise de toutes mes forces avec la vitalité puissante des arbres qui m’entourent. Quant à réproduire jusqu’à leur forme, je suis sans doute trop encroûté dans la mienne pour cela; mais, en y réfléchissant bien, il ne me paraît pas déraisonnable de supposer que toutes les formes de l’existence dorment plus ou moins profondément ensevelies au fond de chaque être; car sous les traits bien arrêtés de la forme humaine dont je suis revêtu. Un oeil un peu percant doit reconnaître sans peine le contour plus vague de l’animalité, qui voile à son tour la forme encore plus flottante et plus indécise de la simple organisation: or l’une des déterminations possibles de l’organisation est l’arboréité, qui engendre à son tour la chênéité. Donc la chênéité est cachée quelque part dans mon fond, et peut être quelquefois tentée d’en sortir et de paraître à son tour dias in luminis oras, bien que l’humanité, qui a pris les devants sur elle, le lui défende, et lui barre le chemin.”

² Liber II, lect. 9, n. 347: “Definit ipsam primam animam, quae dicitur anima vegetabilis; quae quidem in plantis est anima, in animalibus pars animae. . . . Ad cuius definitions intellectum, sciendum est, quod inter tres operationes animae vegetabilis, est quidam ordo. Nam prima eius operatio est nutritio, per quam salvatur aliquid ut est. Secunda autem perfectior est augmentum, quo aliquid proficit in maiorem perfectionem, et secundum quantitatem et secundum virtutem. Tertia autem perfectissima et finalis est generatio per quam aliquid iam quasi in seipso perfectum existens, alteri esse et perfectionem tradit. Tunc enim unumquodque maxime perfectum est, ut in quarto Meteororum dicitur (8), cum potest facere alterum tale, quale ipsum est. Quia igitur iustum est, ut omnia definiantur et denominentur a fine, finis autem operum animae vegetabilis est generare alterum tale quale ipsum est, sequitur quod ipsa sit conveniens definitio primae animae, scilicet vegetabilis, ut sit generativa alterius similis secundum speciem.”

³ Sebeok 1974a: 108-109: “le fond du problème de l’analogie entre code génétique et code linguistique est en réalité très different quand on le prend d’un point de vue linguistique. Le langage est un mécanisme très particulier, organisé de manière hierarchique. Cette organisation hiérarchique est généralement désignée sous le nom de dualité, mais en réalité ce terme prête à confusion car il signifie essentiellement que l’on a un ensemble de sous-systèmes, et que le sous-système de base comporte un répertoire universel de traits binaires. C’est ce que les linguistes appelent des traits distinctifs (distinctive features), traits qui sont en eux-mêmes dépourvus de signification, mais à l’aide desquels on peut fabriquer un nombre infini de phrases, lesquelles forment un autre sous-système. Pour ce qui est de l’ensemble des systèmes de communication des organismes, ceci constitue un phénomène unique, car nulle, part ailleurs dans le monde animal on ne trouve traçe d’une telle organisation hiérarchique. Le code génétique, si je le comprends bien, fonctionne de manière analogue. On a quatre unités de base qui sont en elles-mêmes dépourvues de signification, mais qui se combinent en des unités plus grandes, lesquelles se combinent en unités encore plus grandes qui, finalement, donnent lieu à un nombre infini de suites. C’est là le coeur de l’analogie, mais Jakobson est allé encore plus loin et a trouvé des analogies beaucoup plus fines, et je suis un peu gêné de devoir ajouter qu’il se réfère la explicitement à Monod.”

Notes for Reading 11:
T. L. Short, “Life Among the Legisigns”

¹ For example, in writings of as late as c.1907 (MS 318) Peirce identified the emotional/energetic/logical trichotomy with the immediate/dynamic/final trichotomy of interpretants, despite the fact that he based these trichotomies on different principles which, if consistently followed, lead us to the view that the two trichotomies are not identical but intersect, yielding nine types of sign in all. Similarly, Peirce explicitly identified the final and ultimate interpretants even in the same paragraph, where he defined them quite differently (1905: MS 298). I believe that keeping these distinctions distinct gives us the best systematic reconstruction of Peirce’s most mature thought. It seems to me, especially, that Peirce’s late (1908) division of signs by 10 trichotomies into 66 classes depends upon there being emotional, energetic, and logical examples of each of the immediate, dynamic, and final types of interpretant. And it seems to me that Peirce’s view that pragmatism is a theory of meaning and not of truth requires him to admit that final logical interpretants may occur in verbal as well as in ultimate form and that some ultimate interpretations may be less than final. For details, see Short (1981).

² The late Douglas Greenlee suggested (1973: 48) that because a qualisign, in itself, is only a possibility, it is not a sign but “only an aspect or factor of any sign”. Peirce of course admitted that a qualisign “cannot actually act as a sign until it is embodied . . .” (1903: 2.244). But he goes on to say that “the embodiment has nothing to do with its being a sign”. The point is that even if it cannot function as a sign until it is embodied, the quality is itself significant. Hence, the quality is an embodied sign and not just an aspect of an embodying sign. (It will of course be the latter also; for the fact of embodiment is significant, too. But that constitutes another sign—a sinsign—with another significance.) Despite their being significant in themselves, Greenlee was right when he said that qualisigns are aspects of all other signs; for no sinsign can be such without qualities, and every legisign is a type of sinsign.

³ The ground of a sign is not to be confused with the significance which it grounds: these are two distinct relations of sign to object. Even in the case of symbols there is a distinction between the rule that specifies its interpretation and the interpretation thus specified. It follows that while significance is irreducibly triadic, the ground, in itself, need not be. When the ground is itself triadic and semeiotical, Peirce described the sign as “genuine” and all other signs as “degenerate”. Symbols alone are genuine signs (1885: 3.359-363). Several commentators have thought for this or for other reasons that Peirce either held or should have held that symbols are the only real signs. But Peirce always included degenerate signs among his classes of signs. For more details, and for references, see Short 1981: 221 n. 5.

⁴ The principles referred to in this paragraph have been discussed in print by Weiss and Burks (1945: 383-388), and by Lieb (1953: Appendix B). Where Lieb differs from Weiss and Burks, I find that I agree with Lieb.

⁵ Greenlee (1973, 88) claims that “Since the sign cannot represent its object solely by virtue of dyadic action, we must look elsewhere for the ground of the sign-object relation. And again, as in the case of the icon, we shall find this ground in a symbolic connection.” But mere symbols, which are always general, could never serve by themselves to pick out an individual thing. Therefore, indexical significance is irreducible to symbolic significance, and our application of symbols to individual things can only occur by means of indices. Greenlee bases the claim quoted on an example of pointing to an object; but as I explain in the text, such pointing requires a cooperation of pointing as an index of direction with other sorts of signs, and hence, does not prove or illustrate a reduction of indexical to symbolic significance. Another argument Greenlee makes for his claim is that indices signify dyadically if at all, while significance is triadic. But this confuses the ground of significance with significance itself. The ground can be dyadic, but the possibility of forming an interpretant on such a ground brings in a third factor.

⁶ Peirce indicates otherwise in 1904: 8.335, where he says that a symptom of disease in general is a legisign. But this would make the general type of any sign a legisign; so I think we must conclude that Peirce slipped here.

⁷ “Meaning” is not a technical term of Peirce’s semeiotic, and those commentators who ask, with respect to Peirce’s semeiotic rather than with respect to his pragmatism, “What is Peirce’s theory of meaning?” are not asking a very helpful question. The same can be said of the question, “What is Peirce’s theory of reference?” This is not to say that Peirce did not use the words “meaning” and “reference” in presenting his theory of signs; but he used them informally, sometimes to refer to one thing, sometimes as meaning another. Still, if we insist on finding a theory of reference, it would be in Peirce’s account of the relation of a sign to its dynamic object: for that is what answers to what most philosophers have in mind when they speak of reference. And in the case of meaning, Peirce did come, eventually, to give “meaning” a technical definition as being the interpretant of a sign (c.1907: MS 318, 00238). The occasion for this seems to have been his semeiotic reformulation of the pragmatic theory of meaning, beginning in about 1903. However, Peirce sometimes spoke of the immediate interpretant and other times of the final interpretant as being the meaning of a sign, and sometimes of all three types of interpretant as three different types of meaning (c.1907: MS 318). On Peirce’s view, then, “meaning” is best defined as referring to an effect which the sign is fit to produce or does produce or would eventually produce. Meaning is thus entirely different from reference.

⁸ I have been privileged to read in typescript portions of Professor Jarrett Brock’s extensive and careful work on Peirce’s theory of what Searle and others call “speech acts”. For the tip of this particular iceberg, see Brock 1981.

⁹ A rigid designator will continue to refer to the same thing under any counterfactual condition under which it refers to anything at all. Thus, “Ronald Reagan” is a rigid designator whereas “the President of the United States in 1981” is not; for the former would still refer to the same person under the supposition that Jimmy Carter was re-elected, whereas the latter would not. Rigid designators cannot be symbolic or iconic; for then they would refer to whatever satisfied the general type they either describe or exemplify. Hence, they must be indexical legisigns. They continue to refer to the same things under counter-factual conditions because their significance has been established by existential connections in the actual world. It is the actual person actually named “Ronald” to whom we refer even under the supposition of various counter-factual conditions, such as that he lost the election or such as that he is really named “Sylvester”. I do not mean to suggest that Peirce anticipated the important implications which Kripke has drawn from his account of rigid designation. See Kripke (1980, passim).

¹⁰ Peirce’s commentators have been none too clear about legisigns and symbols. For example, Greenlee argues (1973: 85) that all legisigns are symbolic; in particular, while Peirce classified demonstrative pronouns as indexical legisigns, Greenlee argues that they are symbolic because “. . . it is by virtue of a convention that a demonstrative pronoun is used demonstratively; dynamical connection appears to be an unnecessary condition . . .” But this overlooks the distinction between a convention which tells us to attend to a dynamic connection and a convention which establishes significance without further ado. One cannot know to what a pronoun refers only by hearing that pronoun and knowing the convention that governs its use. One has also to notice with what this individual instance of the pronoun is connected.

¹¹ See my discussion (Short 1981) of “existing for a purpose” and “acting for a purpose”.

¹² Thus, discourse itself appears to commit us to certain aims. For a related view of the ethical import of semeiotic, see Krois 1981.

¹³ While I would not dare to ascribe any of the views I express here to Professor I. C. Lieb, such little sensitivity as I have to the present topic (of arguments, propositions, etc.) is due to courses I have been privileged to take from him.

¹⁴ In this way, Peirce’s semeiotic leads to a unified theory of rationality in thought, and conduct, without reducing either form of rationality to the other. But this theory remains to be developed. See also the penultimate paragraph of the present paper.

¹⁵ J. L. Austin once wrote (1961: 87 n.l), “With all his 66 divisions of signs, Peirce does not, I believe, distinguish between a sentence and a statement.” But Peirce’s analysis of assertion as a particular way of replicating certain legisigns does make that distinction, in effect. For the legisigns assertions replicate are, typically, declarative sentences, and assertive replications of these are statements. Ironically, Peirce’s analysis of assertion, as making oneself liable to penalty if proven wrong, is echoed nearly to the word by Austin’s own, later analysis of what is done in saying, “I know . . .” (ibid.: 66-71).

¹⁶ All the parts of Peirce’s confusion about propositions can be seen in MS 517, which has recently been dated 1904 (Fisch, Ketner, and Kloesel 1979: 17). This manuscript, which is peculiar in representing all signs as having replicas and, therefore, as being legisigns, has been published by Carolyn Eisele (Peirce 1904a).

Notes for Reading 12:
Floyd Merrell, “Structuralism and Beyond: A Critique of Presuppositions”

¹ The basic premises of structural linguistics were first articulated, albeit rather sketchily, by Ferdinand de Saussure (i. 1906-1911). This formulation may be understood primarily as a reaction against nineteenth century historical studies of language. Consequently, Saussure’s concerns lie chiefly in the realm of synchronic aspects of linguistic phenomena. During the 1930’s N. S. Trubetskoy (1939) and Roman Jakobson (1931) of the Prague school of linguistics attempted to account for historical change in language without discarding the fundamental tenets of Saussurean linguistics. More recently, the Danish linguist Louis Hjelmslev (1943) set the foundation for future linguistic studies by reformulating the “structuralist” conception of language in an elaborate methodological scheme.

² For a perceptive critique of the particular methodologies of Lacan, Lévi-Strauss, and Piaget, see Wilden 1972.

³ I do not include in my generalizations the “genetic structuralisms” of Piaget and Lucian Goldmann, since their methodology constitutes a departure from the “static” variety of structuralism which I scrutinize. Nevertheless, on another level, “genetic structuralism” can be subjected to a similar line of inquiry.

⁴ However, see Émile Benveniste’s influential critique (1966) of Saussure’s concept of arbitrariness.

⁵ This intransigent synchrony-diachrony opposition is part of the Saussurean conception of language. On the other hand, Jakobson was one of the first to suggest (1931) that this opposition is to a large degree illusory, that it is a convenient device for analysis rather than a particular mode of being.

⁶ This presupposition leads directly to the “principle of immanence” which limits structural analysis to that which occurs in the mind, a tentative basis for the accusation that structuralism in general, and Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist methodology in particular, adheres to a Kantian approach to man and his cultural products (Dubois 1969: 46-60). It is significant, therefore, that Paul Ricoeur (1963: 596-652) refers to Lévi-Strauss’ structuralist method as Kantism “without a transcendental subject”.

⁷ Lévi-Strauss proposes (1964: 13) that it is “immaterial whether . . . the thought processes of the South American Indians take shape through the medium of my thought, or whether mine takes shape through the medium of theirs. What matters is that the human mind, regardless of the identity of those who happen to be giving it expression, should display an increasingly intelligible structure as a result of the doubly reflective forward movement of the two thought processes acting one upon the other, either of which can in turn provide the spark or tinder whose conjunction will shed light on both.”

⁸ Similarily, Wylie Sypher, in his study of modern art and literature, maintains (1968: 78-79) that an overemphasis on the visually perceptible qualities of art tends to “spatialize time”. Henri Lefebvre (1966: 121-76) alludes to this “spatialization” in Lévi-Strauss’ variety of structuralism as a “new Eleatism”. It can be provisionally concluded, then, that this static quality of orthodox structuralist methodology, as well as any other analogous view of reality, is the result of an implicit “spatialization”.

⁹ See also, for instance, Greimas, who maintains (1970: 13-27) that the scientific conception of the universe is that of a great “semiotic hierarchy”.

¹⁰ There has, however, been controversy concerning the respective positions of each system in the total hierarchy. For instance, Saussure originally forwarded the notion that the linguistic system is subordinate to general semiological systems. Barthes inverts this formulation suggesting the primacy of the linguistic system over all aspects of human activity. These two central propositions are antithetical, but tenable on their own grounds, as are the Kantian antinomies of thought. The argument could go on forever.

¹¹ Capek (1961: 299) attempts to demonstrate how this tendency of human thought to follow the “pathways of least resistance” is a psychological phenomenon and that psychology for this reason cannot be divorced from epistemology. He believes that epistemological conventions can become ingrained in the “subconscious” such that it is well nigh impossible to go beyond these conventions to view reality in a different light. The Newtonian paradigm has over the centuries become ingrained so as to “condition our minds” and prevent us from eliminating it overnight. Newtonian subconsciousness is incompatible with the conscious convictions of those modern physicists who outwardly profess allegiance to the relativity theory. These subconscious barriers must fall. Hence, the epistemology of modern physics “would profit enormously from a sort of ‘psychoanalysis of knowledge’ in Gaston Bachelard’s sense which would unmask the inhibiting influence of our Euclidean and Newtonian subconscious in the minds of those physicists who sincerely believe themselves to be entirely free from them.” In conjunction with this view of the cultural “embedding” of ideas, see Bateson 1972.

¹² This line of reasoning follows Bertrand Russell’s theory of logical types. To paraphrase and simplify (I hope without doing violence to a sophisticated and quite complex theory), all entities referred to in a corpus submitted for analysis may be thought of as a macrosystem which includes systems of systems, all arranged in a hierarchy of classes, or types. An individual of a particular class cannot be considered as the class itself, and conversely, a class cannot be a member of itself. To do so introduces paradox. The paradox of Epimenides the Cretan who said that all Cretans were liars effectively illustrates Russell’s point. In this statement a member of a particular class is considered on the same level as the class itself and the sentence is for this reason rendered nonsensical. In the context of the present commentary, to treat, as does structuralism, myths, the mind, dress codes, narrative texts, etc., as if they were language is to establish language as a model. However, whereas the explanatory model for structural linguistics is binarism, structuralism generally adopts binarism as a sort of “second order” model, language being the primary model. Therefore, the binary principle is for linguistics the model while for structuralism it is a metamodel, the model of a model. It is the use of this model of a model that constitutes a violation of the boundaries separating logical types and brings about a fundamental methodological problem.

¹³ This is an apparent contradiction of Lévi-Strauss’ notion that anthropology studies structures through space while history constitutes a “functional” study through time. The fact does remain that “primitive” societies in twentieth century Brazil exist simultaneously with comparable societies ten or more centuries past. On the other hand, Edmund Leach maintains (1970: 15-52) that Lévi-Strauss’ culinary triangle and other similar devices do not depend on the temporal status of societies but apply equally well to the so-called “hot” (industrialized) and “cold” (preindustrial) societies. Similarly, Jakobson’s phonemic triangle supposedly applies equally well to both “primitive” and modern languages.

¹⁴ This is Wittgenstein’s early thesis in Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1919). We may “intuit” a particular reality but on attempting to describe that reality we are lost, for its essence is, ipso facto, unutterable. The unutterability will be reflected in what is said but cannot be explicitly stated. Hence poetic discourse displays, but cannot tell in an objective fashion, and the reader must “intuit” that linguistic display just as the writer intuited the reality he displayed through language.

¹⁵ Nevertheless, it was only on the basis of this Linnaean classificatory system that a viable model of evolution could be constructed (Wiener 1967: 93).

¹⁶ Similarly, even though structuralism purports to be a holistic way of looking at man and at the world, in certain respects it is, as Capek says of the more “conservative” interpretation of relativity physics, still tied to the world view it attempts to supersede.

¹⁷ Georg Lukacs’ critique (1968: 6) of Western empirical science is analogous to my own critique, even though from a distinct vantage point. Lukacs maintains that the traditional empirical method wrenches “facts” from their living content, isolates them, and fits them into an abstract theory. Phenomena, by means of this method, are reduced “to their purely quantitative essence, to their expression in numbers and numerical relations”. A method of analysis based on immediately perceivable facts fails in so far as it cannot, as does dialectical materialism, take account of the historical character of the facts and glimpse their underlying reality. Both “bourgeois science” and “vulgar Marxism” abstract the parts and prevent them “from finding their definition within the whole and, instead, the whole was dismissed as unscientific or else it degenerated into the mere ‘idea’ or ‘sum’ of the parts. With the totality out of the way, the fetishistic relations of the isolated parts appeared as a timeless law valid for every human society” (ibid.: 9). These “timeless laws” have become an ideological weapon. For the bourgeoisie, “it is a matter of life and death to understand its own system of production in terms of eternally valid categories: it must think of capitalism as being predestined to eternal survival by the eternal laws of nature and reason. Conversely, contradictions that cannot be ignored must be shown to be purely surface phenomena, unrelated to this mode of production” (ibid.: 10-11). Although Lukacs is referring to empirical “facts” in contrast to my criticism of “isolated structures”, the timeless character ultimately implied in both methodologies is analogous. Julia Kristeva’s contention (1967: 27-42) that one must consciously rise above the ideologies that are implicit in traditional Western World heuristic models is also comparable. Furthermore, Capek’s “ingrained Newtonian mentality” prevents integration of the concrete and the abstract just as does Lukacs’ ideologically motivated bourgeois science.

¹⁸ And in Goldmann’s case, structure is conceived within a deterministic Marxist framework which becomes, in the long run, a “static” explication of the “static” relationships between instantaneous structures of a given point in history.

¹⁹ According to Lévi-Strauss (1964: 12), “Mythological analysis has not, and cannot have, as its aim to show how men think. In the particular example we are dealing with here, it is doubtful, to say the least, whether the natives of central Brazil, over and above the fact that they are fascinated by mythological stories, have any understanding of the systems of interrelations to which we reduce them . . . I, therefore, claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men’s minds without their being aware of the fact.”

²⁰ Newton compared the function of space to the function of the Supreme Being (see Capek 1961: 7-10, 12-15).

²¹ I have taken the liberty of constructing a “structural scheme” of the relations between the Newtonian, existentialist, and structuralist world views, aware of the fact that it might appear that I am employing the very analytical method I criticize. I do, however, believe that structural schemes are economical and potentially illustrate relations between structures and between elements in a structure more effectively than the conventional expository method. My criticism in this article is not directed toward the use of such schemes but toward the purpose for which they are used.

²² While Frederick Suppe (1974: 3-232) in a penetrating essay comments on various Weltanschauungen analyses of science, I will summarize what I consider the two approaches most applicable to the present study.

²³ It is worthy of note that Michel Foucault develops a “structuralist” method of historical analysis which bears resemblance to that of Kuhn. Language, according to Foucault (1966), constrains and limits human mental capacities, and only within this limiting horizon can human thought processes be properly understood. These constraints reduce the parameters of mental activity to invariant “epistemes”, which are used much as Kuhn’s “paradigms” to portray particular Weltanschauungen. Compare also this line of inquiry to Althusser’s “epistemological breaks”, a concept introduced by Gaston Bachelard in his La formation de l’esprit scientifique (1938: 249) which describes “the leap from the pre-scientific world of ideas to the scientific world; this leap involves a radical break with the whole pattern and frame of reference of the pre-scientific (ideological) notions, and the construction of a new pattern”.

²⁴ Einstein once said, “If you want to find out anything from the theoretical physicists about the methods they use, I advise you to stick closely to one principle: don’t listen to their words, fix your attention on their deeds” (quoted in Toulmin 1953: 16). In many cases that same advice may apply to leading structuralists, for the language they themselves use in building their models is perhaps not entirely conscious.

²⁵ It is conceded that structuralism generally assumes a subject who is incapable of taking an “objective” stance vis-à-vis the object under study. He is himself an “activity” rather than an entity, when observing the object, and as such rests on a level coequal with the object. Hence subject and object apparently become mutually inclusive and complementary, and neither has any being apart from the reciprocal activity between both. Nevertheless, the picture becomes confused, for it becomes difficult to “classify” without maintaining a distance from the corpus. Lévi-Strauss himself states (1962b: 40-45) that structures can appear only as the result of observation from outside.

²⁶ It has been as much as demonstrated that language is not the determinant of thought (or, by extension, world view) but that language is grounded in thought. See the studies of Piaget (1972), Vygotsky (1962), and Schaff (1964).

²⁷ This concept relates indirectly to one aspect of the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis. Contrary to the thesis forwarded in this paper, Whorf believes that language governs an individual’s perception of the universe to provide him with a particular world view. However, bracketing out this aspect of the Whorfian hypothesis, it might be stated that a language, given its syntactic structure, the breadth of its lexical repertoire, and its semantic scheme, is limited in its capacity to describe the universe from divergent and contradictory perspectives, a concept which is in line with Eddington, Bridgman, Capek, Toulmin, et al. The Hopi language, for example, contains a particular “metaphysics”, just as our language reveals the “naive” Newtonian view of space and time all Western languages are specifically designed to describe. On the other hand, the Hopi language describes a particular structure of the universe which cannot be perfectly duplicated in Western languages. In the Hopi view, “time disappears and space is altered, so that it is no longer the homogeneous and instantaneous timeless space of our supposed intuition or of classical Newtonian mechanics.” To extrapolate, Western languages, fettered as they are by Newtonian categories, are incapable of effectively describing the Einsteinian universe of space-time continuity, and they inexorably manifest what Capek calls “semantic inertia” (see Whorf 1956: 57-64).

Notes for Reading 14:
Umberto Eco, “On Symbols”

¹ Correcting Eco’s reference to In Gen. 9.1, i.e., Jerome c.389-392.

² Correcting Eco’s reference to Quodlibetales 8.6.16. ob 1, ad 1.

Notes for Reading 16:
Michael Herzfeld, “Disemia”

¹ Editors’ note: This reading is an inversion vis-à-vis the other readings in this part. Herzfeld does not so much come to a traditional sphere of culture from a semiotic perspective as take over an existing linguistic model of cultural anthropology—diglossia, as established by Ferguson—with its ideological implications of insider/outsider, in order to show that the model’s own possibilities are constricted in ways that of themselves expand holistically to the postlinguistic aspects of cultural life (along with the diglossic, but paralinguistic to and beyond it and, so to speak, as presupposed) as soon as the model is reconceptualized semiotically, i.e., so as to focus on the signifying patterns as such (pro toto domus et civi) rather than (pro parte nominali) linguistically signifying. Herzfeld shows that the ideological implications and assumptions built into this model and “all such models as political polarization, class-based differentiation of behavior (including kinesics and proxemics), ‘folk’ versus ‘urban’ culture and the like”, are part of a larger phenomenon which must be viewed semiotically in order to be analyzed according to its proper unity, and which he proposes to call “Disemia”.

² In Ardener’s formulation, the paradigmatic/syntagmatic opposition produces such pairings as opposition/conflict, exchange/transaction.

³ H (“High”) and L (“low”), though judgmental, partially reproduce indigenous attitudes, as, e.g., the view of katharevousa as “good Greek” which then leads to the classification as katharevousa of urban speech forms that are not technically of that register.

⁴ Cf. Ardener’s (1970) Realien.

⁵ This term is marked by one of its own most characteristic syntactic markers (fem. sing, ending in -i’a rather than -i or -’ia.

⁶ I.e., Ellinismos (Neo-Classical model, extroverted and “Europeanizing”) vs. Romiossini (Christian-Byzantine, introverted acknowledging Turkish and other non-European influences) (cf. Herzfeld 1981). Note that it is not only symbols that are dialectical (as, e.g., El Guindi and Selby 1976); shifters (cf. Silverstein 1976) indicating the lines of inclusion and exclusion may provide a means for reproducing the extroverted/introverted dialectic in immediate social interaction. When one is classified as a ksenos (“outsider to reference-group”) in Greek, one is shown an essentially Ellinismos-related view of the speaker; not so, when one is treated as his dhikos (“co-insider”), a situation which may occur within the same conversation.

⁷ I.e., because the first king of the new Greek state was a Bavarian (Otho I), as were many of his advisers.

⁸ Éllinikotita, i.e., “Hellenic-ness”.

Notes for Reading 18:
Richard Lanigan, “Semiotics, Communicology, and Plato’s Sophist”

¹ Editors’ note: “Communicology” is Professor Lanigan’s preferred term for communication theory and the communication sciences generally.

² Heidegger 1968: 51: “A thinking which thinks in models must not immediately be characterized as technological thinking, because the word ‘model’ is not to be understood in the technological sense as the repetition or project of something in smaller proportions. Rather, a model is that from which thinking must necessarily take off in such a way that that from which it takes off is what gives it impetus. The necessity for thinking to use thinking is related to language. The language of thinking can only start from common speech. And speech is fundamentally historico-metaphysical. An interpretation is already built into it. Viewed from this perspective, thinking has only the possibility of searching for models in order to dispense with them eventually, thus making the transition to the speculative.”

³ While I follow the standard codex practice of using Stephanus numbers for textual citation, the edition of translations I am using is that of Hamilton and Cairns 1961. It should be further noted that I am using Letter VII for convenience of explanation; I realize that the authenticity of authorship for this letter is in dispute. It simply offers a concise statement of issues with which to begin my analysis of the dialogue Sophist, which is the text of concern.

⁴ Editors’ note: The numerous diagrams accompanying the text are here presented, in accordance with the author’s original design, on the first occasion of their mention, with the exception of Figure 15, which is presented together with Figure 14 (p. 200 above) for the reason that its textual mention (p. 203 above) occurs only after the later introduction of Figure 17.

⁵ I am indebted to Professor Luis Perez, University of Saskatchewan, for bringing this point to my attention.

⁶ Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology, with its emphasis on the transcendental Ego, would be compatible with the Platonic ontology in a way that Merleau-Ponty’s existential phenomenology clearly is not. It is also important to recall that the Greeks did not have our ontological tendency to separate signifiers and signifieds: “Even a non-human object can, in the archaic period, take on a life of its own—as when an inscription on a pot reads ‘I greet you’” (Havelock 1978: 99).

Note for Reading 20:
Luigi Romeo, “Heraclitus and the Foundations of Semiotics”

¹ Editors’ note: A section from this article entitled Sources for Research on Heraclitus’ Semiotic Views (Romeo 1976: 75-79) is omitted here. The omitted section contains a mainly philological discussion of more technical than general interest, but provides an overview of the history of Heraclitean scholarship during the last hundred years, in particular the establishment of editions of Heraclitus’ fragments from Bywater 1877 through Diels 1903 to Pasquinelli 1958. Readers are referred to the original publication for the details of the discussion.

Notes for Reading 22:
Thomas A. Sebeok, Semiotics’ and Its Congeners”

¹ Editors’ note: Luigi Romeo, in a subsequent “re-evaluation of the derivation for the term in question” (1977), glosses this passage as follows (pp. 40-41): “as illustrated in the quotation above, the whole probing was confined to logical, medical, and even musical writings; no attempt was made to analyze the philological and lexicographic aspects of the problem, for both concordances and dictionaries reflect not only the cultural currency of the times but also the intellectual atmosphere. After all, how could one quote Galenus’ ‘semeiotice’ without realizing that the Latin version was published much before later speculations from logic to music? Indeed, the oldest Latin edition is Galenus 1190.” In a later note (ibid.: 47 n. 18) Romeo adds: “Russell 1939 is unaware (and Sebeok 1976: 48 [ = Sebeok 1971 in References to the present collection]: along with him) that σημειωτική could not have come ‘from writings on Greek music’ since the chronology of the documentation in print indicates that the term existed before Meibom’s and Wallis’ but did not appear in Alypius. In addition, Russell himself declares he does not know whether the term was introduced by Meibom [1652]. It is, thus, obvious that Meibom, who must have read the term in either the Thesaurus or Scapula printed at least a century earlier, either reconstructed the Greek term by transliterating it from still earlier ‘semeiotice’, or borrowed it from Stephanus 1572-1573 (or Scapula 1579, 1605, 1637, 1652 [see editorial gloss on Scapula entry in References]). Moreover, the reference adduced by Russell 1939: 406, saying that ‘The medical term given in Liddell and Scott is τó σημειωτικóv, constitutes an explanation that needs no elaboration, for Russell apparently never heard of philological tools such as the Thesaurus and its tradition”.

Romeo’s main abductions may be summarized by the following citation (Romeo 1977: 43): “Actually, Locke had [in his library] two editions [of the pirated abridgment of the originell 1572-1573 Thesaurus Graecae linguae of Henricus Stephanus], Scapula 1605 and 1663. I have Scapula 1637. So, after going in circles for so long, I had no alternative than that of assuming a very simple thing: Locke, the physician, must have read Hippocrates in his younger days; but Locke, the philosopher, must have consulted Scapula in his later days. Apparently, Locke did not have Galenus’ edition of 1490, or any later one edited with a Latin translation containing semeiotice (as well as semioticam and semiotice [Romeo 1977: 47 n. 13, adds here: “‘Semiotice’, with the monophthongized ei, would naturally be closer to Locke’s ‘σημιoτική as a transliteration of Latin into Greek!”]) for σημειωτική. Thus, one can presume that when Locke the philosopher was confronted with employing a term in philosophy, the medical concept of which he had acquired in his younger years, he doubtless borrowed the idea from Hippocrates’ σημεɩ̃ov. But on consulting Scapula he found, among the several variants, σημειωτική And, since Scapula refers to Hippocrates, as well as because Locke must have remembered all the various allotropes involving σημ-, he must have taken Scapula’s term and reference (actually the Thesaurus’ initial reference) for granted, without rechecking the original source. On the other hand, although Locke did not have Galenus in his library, it is also possible (but not probable) that Locke read Galenus’ work containing the terms semeiotice, semioticam, and semiotice.

“At my present stage of research, I personally prefer to believe that either Scapula overcame Locke (there was no Thesaurus in Locke’s library, although this does not mean that he might not have had access to it), or Locke transliterated Galenus’ ‘semiotice’ into Greek. No other solution now seems feasible until we locate further records evidencing that others may have used σημειωτική before the Thesaurus Graecae linguae. In other words, the first time in history that ‘σημειωτική’ appears as such is in the Thesaurus [of Stephanus, 1572-1573], then in Scapula [1605], for lexicographic purposes, and in Locke [1690] for philosophical reasons as ‘σημιωτική’ which suggests an influence from ‘semiotice’ without the Greek diphthong. If it did appear anywhere for musical or medical reasons, so far we only have evidence for Latin semeiotice through Galenus 1490 and later editions, but the Greek term never appeared in print before the Thesaurus. It is, indeed, significant that neither Meibom (1652) nor Wallis (1682 edition of Ptolemy c.150) was in Locke’s library according to Harrison and Laslett (1965).”

Romeo concludes: “Until new documentation is brought to light (be it in future excavations at Herculaneum or in Peirce’s oenological notes), the only fact we have, based on historical records, is that ‘σημειωτική’ never existed before it was printed in the Thesaurus Graecae linguae. Scapula (or Galenus) might have given the source to Locke. And Locke, via Peirce, found his way across the Atlantic into The Century Dictionary before returning eastward into the pages of the Oxford English Dictionary. If there is any instance of σημειωτική in any manuscripts still to be edited and published, let us hope that it will be made known to the scholarly world. Meanwhile, we only know that the ancients used either ‘σημεɩωτικoς’ for the ars and ‘σημείωσις’ for the action (or process) of σημεɩ̃α in all their morphological variants. Thus, the term ‘σημειωτική’ and Locke’s ‘σημɩωτική’ have been borrowed from classical philology, not from medical or musical sources in post-Renaissance times. Any other account for the introduction of ‘semiotics’ into the discipline must remain, at present, a matter of conjecture.”

These remarks, of course, concern the matter of looking at the name “semiotic” from Locke backwards, and are included here for the reader’s interest and as a stimulant to further researches; but the principal interest of Sebeok’s own essay for the present volume is rather its look at the name in the present context and as it indicates the main lines of development and the taking shape of semiotics today—its prospective rather than its retrospective significance.

² Peirce (in 1903b: 5.178, but unindexed) does refer to Lambert’s “large book in two volumes” on logic (“and a pretty superficial affair it is”), clearly meaning the Neues Organon, in whose second volume the Semiotik appeared; Peirce’s set is still at The Johns Hopkins, although there are no annotations in it (Max H. Fisch, personal communication).

³ Besides its medical use, French sémiotique was also used, towards the middle of the 19th century, in a military context: “Art de faire manoeuvrer les troupes en leur indiquant les mouvements par signes . . .” (Alain Rey, personal communication), a sense for which sometimes sémantique was also used (Rey 1969: 6).

Notes for Reading 23:
John Deely, “Semiotic as Framework and Direction”

¹ Maritain (1959: 39) summarizes his researches in the following table:

² Derisive and divisive reference to “ancestor worship” among semioticians is sometimes used as a tactic to belittle or ostracize so far as possible semiotic developments along traditionally humanistic, literary, and philosophical lines. Indeed there is such a thing as ancestor worship, but its polemic invocation in this context is an inappropriate tactic in a misguided strategy. Present-mindedness, with its blindness to the historicity of human thought and its ideological adhesion to scientism (and covert worship of the ghosts of positivism to boot!) is a far greater threat to the healthy development and possible realization of the perspective of the doctrine of signs. Modern scholarship, with its inclination to follow into postmodern times the positivistic biases modern culture imbibed with the powerful belief that the scientific modes of understanding alone have validity (despite their reduction of experience to its merely physical and environmental components, and despite their notorious difficulty as classically conceived to account for the role of the observer, so nicely explored at the 1982 seventh Annual Meeting of the Semiotic Society of America), hardly needs these exhortations, which tend in fact to promote ignorance of the past and rediscoveries of not only the wheel but even the club. (Edmund Leach’s counsel to semioticians, in his “Concluding Remarks” to the October 8-10, 1984, State-of-the-Art Research Conference organized by Professor Herzfeld, that “Peirce has been dead over sixty years; let him rot in peace”—is surely a high-water mark of modern culture in the distinctly ideological line of scientism. What are we to do with those Neill describes [1958] as “makers of the modern mind”, all but one of them “rotters” dead well more than sixty years?)

We have had enough of the rhetoric of two cultures. We do not need to further this modern division within semiotics; we need to transcend it. Exhortations against “ancestor worship” as incantations to close down avenues of properly humanistic inquiry, or to replace them entirely with scientific inquiry, are radically out of place in semiotics.

What is called for is a profound understanding of both humanistic and scientific modes of investigation, in order to transform them, to render both modalities as “traditionally” (i.e., currently) understood aufgehoben in the higher synthesis semiotic consciousness makes possible but cannot guarantee. What is needed are new foundations. In this perspective, the attempt to polarize debate in terms of the established genres of “the commentaries of traditional scholarship” on the one hand and “the scientific constructs compatible with the tenets of logical empiricism” on the other hand (Gardin, Bouissac, and Foote 1984) already appears as a missing of the point and a regression to the confines of classical modern philosophy—that is to say, to a point before which semiosis doubtless occurs, but semiotic has yet to reach the prise de conscience wherein it discovers what is proper to it.

³ A case in point is John Locke. It would be possible to include Locke in the Semiotic Society of America’s Annual Meeting as a Neglected Figure in the History of Semiotic Inquiry. This statement may seem at first ludicrous, since it is well known that Locke invented the term “semiotic” as far as concerns the English speaking world, and it has long been customary to make honorific mention of his Essay concerning Human Understanding in this regard. How then can he be considered neglected?

Easily. For how many realize the synecdochal function played by Locke’s key terms in the crucial and rich—but almost entirely unexplicated—passage in which he seemingly casually introduces the term “semiotic” into the universe of signs as the conclusion of his essay on human understanding? This is a matter on which the famous “scientific” modes of understanding, not even the most advanced neurophysiological manifestations thereof, can shed so much as a wave or a particle of light. And yet it is a matter which goes to the heart of semiotic consciousness. In fact, the re-definition of reality and the Innenwelt-Umwelt correspectiveness discussed in the present essay are already present in the suggestion of Locke that if “words and ideas as the great instruments of knowledge were duly weighed and distinctly considered, they would perhaps provide us with a different sort of Logic and Critic than we have hitherto been acquainted with.” But to see this, just as, for example, to “see” Professor Bouissac as the founder and moving spirit of the remarkable ISISSS Institutes, it is necessary to already know something, and to think a while besides.

In the case of Locke’s text, for example, it is necessary to know Aristotle’s original distinction between speculative and practical knowledge, and in particular to know how this version of the distinction differs from the very version Peirce employs. It is necessary to know that “physics” was an ancient name common to all the major Greek and Latin schools as the designation for the study of nature in very specific ways distinguished from mathematics and metaphysics, a name which Locke takes over and expands synecdochically to cover the realm of speculative knowledge tout court, just as he takes over the term “ethics” and makes it apply by a synecdochical expansion to the entire realm of practical knowledge in the ancient sense, that is, not only to moral and ethnic questions but also to all questions of artistic and technical production as well.

Just so, “words and ideas” function in Locke’s key passage in the literal or “obvious” sense of human linguistic expressions and intellectual conceptions, and also synecdochically to cover the entire range of outward expressions of inward conditions, factors, and states whereby organisms orient themselves and thrive in their environment. Already implied here is the discovery that the “observed world” is not just physical, but also objective in the special sense introduced and explained above—that is to say, it is more than can be accounted for by reduction to fact in the physical sense. “Reality”, in short, is not just physical, but semiosic.

With this discovery, we are beyond the classical realism and idealism debates, and on the path of semiotic consciousness. How well and how broadly Locke sketched the foundations for this possible development will require a good deal more than passing honorific mention of his invention of a term. Until the synecdoches in Locke’s seminal text—physics, ethics, logic, words, ideas—have been fully explored, he will remain in a curious way neglected.