Showing papers by "Kalevi Kull published in 2014"

Ecosemiotics: main principles and current developments

Abstract: Ecosemiotics studies the role of environmental perception and conceptual categorization in the design, construction, and transformation of environmental structures. This article provides a brief review of the history of ecosemiotics, and formulates eight core principles of the ecosemiotic approach. The ecosemiotic view understands humans as capable of both prelinguistic (biosemiotic) and linguistic (cultural) modelling of their environment. Accordingly, the diversity of structures is, to a certain extent, resultant of the types of semioses partaking in their formation. Ecosemiotics could provide geography with conceptual tools to describe the role of signs and communication in the dynamics of physical environments.

Adaptive evolution without natural selection

Abstract: A mechanism of evolution that ensures adaptive changes without the obligatory role of natural selection is described. According to this mechanism, the first event is a plastic adaptive change (change of phenotype), followed by stochastic genetic change which makes the transformation irreversible. This mechanism is similar to the organic selection mechanism as proposed by Baldwin, Lloyd Morgan and Osborn in the 1890s and later developed by Waddington, but considerably updated according to contemporary knowledge to demonstrate its independence from natural selection. Conversely, in the neo-Darwinian mechanism, the first event is random genetic change, followed by a new phenotype and natural selection or differential reproduction of genotypes. Due to the role of semiosis in the decisive first step of the mechanism described here (the ontogenic adaptation, or rearrangement of gene expression patterns and profile), it could be called a semiotic mechanism of evolution. © 2013 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2014, 112, 287–294.

Zoosemiotics is the study of animal forms of knowing

Abstract: Abstract This article characterizes briefly the central aims of the semiotic study of animal life. Semiotic sciences in general can be defined as approaches to the study of various forms of knowing (as different from physical sciences, which study various things in the world), considering that knowing is possible only due to semiosis. The semiosphere is the sphere of knowing (knowing being always related to learning and acting). The basic types of knowing (as well as semiosis) include the vegetative, the animal, and the cultural. Zoosemiotics is focused on the animal type of knowing. Animal knowing is characterized by its use of iconic and indexical relations, whereas the extensive use of symbols is a prerequisite of specifically human (cultural, language-based) semiosis. However, the human organism also includes animal knowing as an inevitable part of its knowing. Knowledge cannot be credible if it is exclusively symbolic; it requires that iconic and indexical semiosis be involved.

Semiotic study of landscapes: An overview from semiology to ecosemiotics. : 风景的符号学研究：从索绪尔符号学到生态符号学

Abstract: Semiotic study of landscapes: An overview from semiology to ecosemiotics. : 风景的符号学研究：从索绪尔符号学到生态符号学

The Acoustic Codes: How Animal Sign Processes Create Sound-Topes and Consortia via Conflict Avoidance

Abstract: In this essay we argue for the possibility to describe the co-presence of species in a community as a consortium built by acoustic codes, using mainly the examples of bird choruses. In this particular case, the consortium is maintained via the sound-tope that different bird species create by singing in a chorus. More generally, the formation of acoustic codes as well as cohesive communicative systems (the consortia) can be seen as a result of plastic adaptational behaviour of the specimen who can solve and avoid conflicts both with conspecifics and with other species in the vicinity. Thus, sign-relations appear to resolve potential conflicts, and as a foundation for symbiotic aggregations. The spatio-temporal configuration of consortia—their chronotope—includes several eco-fields as respective to different functions of the participating organisms. Biological study is combined with a semiotic approach that, as we suggest, should be more often used together to effectively describe ecological processes.

Catalysis and Scaffolding in Semiosis

Abstract: We analyze the concepts of semiotic catalysis (or semiocatalysis) and semiotic scaffolding (or semioscaffolding) in the framework of general semiotics. Semiotic catalysis (as different from chemical catalysis) concerns the qualitative aspects of catalysis. In this sense, signs are catalysts for sign processes or semiosis. Life is catalytically closed namely in the sense of semiotic catalysis. Semiosis produces scaffolding which is the way to keep and canalize communicational processes. Catalytic and scaffolding functions of signs have an important role in semiotic dynamics.

What is the main challenge for contemporary semiotics

Abstract: Once again, something important is going on in semiotics. Within the framework of preparing the fi nal talk “Semiotics taking form: Th rough the eyes of leading semioticians” at the 12th World Congress of Semiotics in Sofi a in September 2014, we asked several leading semioticians3 to give brief answers to the question: “What is the main challenge for contemporary semiotics?” We received 35+3 responses which are published below. Some years ago, Peer Bundgaard and Frederik Stjernfelt posed a similar question to 28 semioticians4 formulated as “What are the most important open problems in this fi eld and what are the prospects of progress?” Th e responses were published in a book (Bundgaard, Stjernfelt 2009). Indeed, a regular (re)formulation of the main tasks and unsolved problems can be seen as a form of self-description of semiotic inquiry, which is important for the identity and development of the fi eld. Understanding what is going on in semiotics, a broad fi eld with much variety in it, would help us to provide a better focus for our research today. For instance, it seems that the scholars working in the fi eld of (what we would at present call) semiotics in the late 19th and early 20th centuries produced much more than the semiotically oriented researchers could actually make use of during the period of rapid growth and institutionalization of semiotics in the 1960s–1970s. Th e aim of many studies conducted in the 1960s–1970s, oft en described as structuralist, supposed a formalization of the conceptual apparatus used by semioticians. For

Juri Lotman in English: Updates to bibliography

Abstract: A bibliography of Juri Lotman’s texts that have appeared in English was published in Sign Systems Studies 39(2/4). Th e list included 109 entries that had been published from 1973 to 2011 (Kull 2011). Hereby, some additions are made to this list, including both new fi ndings from the period covered earlier, as well as publications that have appeared aft er 2011. We follow the numeration of entries of the earlier list; the updated list includes 122 entries, with years of publication now ranging from 1973 to 2014. Th e publications were described de visu. 3

Towards a Theory of Evolution of Semiotic Systems

Abstract: Abstract In this paper I formulate briefly the main principles of evolution of semiotic systems. The neo-Darwinian theory of evolution does not take into account the semiosic nature of the systems under study, therefore its applicability to languages and cultures (and also to biological species as communicative semiosic systems) should be rigorously questioned. The semiotic theory of evolution should include the implications from the dynamic features of semiosis and sign systems. The two major tendencies in the evolution of semiosic systems are diversification - or introduction of new mutually incompatible systems and categories - and standardization - or development of mutual compatibility. The inclusion of agency as based on semiosis provides a non-Darwinian model, yet includes the Darwinian one as a restricted special case.

Beyond Word: On the Semiotic Mechanisms

Abstract: Juri Lotman wrote, in Russian, a book Непредсказуемые механизмы культуры — the unpredictable mechanisms of culture. Its English translator, Brian Baer, preferred to translate the title as The Unpredictable Workings of Culture (Lotman 2013). He had a reason for this — many scholars tend to refuse the term ‘mechanism’ for the phenomena of meaning-making. However, there exist quite clear cultural differences in this opinion. For instance in Russian, ‘mechanisms’ (механизмы) are understood so broadly that there is no question to use the term for purely mental creations; the case is similar in German, in Estonian, and in several other languages. It seems that the applicability of this term to culture is correlated with the usage of the term ‘science’. In Russian, in German, and in Estonian, the humanities are sciences (гуманитарные науки, Geisteswissenschaften, humanitaarteadused), while the English-language tradition tends to separate the humanities from the sciences. However, the latter has many exceptions even in English. This has to do with the discussions about the position of semiotics, of course. Although some would claim that semiotics is rather a doctrine or point of view, still we notice that semiotics is considered as science not only by Juri Lotman or Umberto Eco, but also by Charles S. Peirce (see Salupere 2011). Obviously, the question of whether semiotics is science or not is about more than usage of the word. There exist certain deep differences between semiosic and nonsemiosic systems which are related to the methods of acquiring knowledge about these. There is a difference between the study of knowledge or knowledge-acquisition (i.e., semiosic systems) and the study of non-knowledge (i.e., physical systems) — despite their union in semiosis. This said, we see that the wording Beyond Mechanism is not scientifically meaningless, however; it can also be read as On the Mechanisms of Semioses. Understanding should go beyond the words. Biosemiotics (2014) 7:465–470 DOI 10.1007/s12304-014-9209-9

The Manifesto of Tartu-Moscow Semiotics since 1973

Abstract: Abstract In 1973, a collectively written manifesto titled Theses on the Semiotic Study of Cultures was penned under the leadership of Tartu scholar Juri Lotman together with his Moscow colleagues Vjacheslav Ivanov, Vladimir Toporov, Aleksandr Pjatigorskij, and Boris Uspenskij. The appearance of this work marked the birth of a new scholarly field of research called the semiotics of culture. In the present contribution we provide a bibliographic list of republications and translations of this seminal text.