On the Medieval Theory of Signs

On the Medieval Theory of Signs PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027221081
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In the course of the long debate on the nature and the classification of signs, from Boethius to Ockham, there are at least three lines of thought: the Stoic heritage, that influences Augustine, Abelard, Francis Bacon; the Aristotelian tradition, stemming from the commentaries on De Interpretatione; the discussion of the grammarians, from Priscian to the Modistae. Modern interpreters are frequently misled by the fact that the various authors regularly used the same terms. Such a homogeneous terminology, however, covers profound theoretical differences. The aim of these essays is to show that the medieval theory of signs does not represent a unique body of semiotic notions: there are diverse and frequently alternative semiotic theories. This book thus represents an attempt to encourage further research on the still unrecognized variety of the semiotic approaches offered by the medieval philosophies of language.

On the Medieval Theory of Signs

On the Medieval Theory of Signs PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing
ISBN: 9027221081
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 236

Get Book

Book Description
In the course of the long debate on the nature and the classification of signs, from Boethius to Ockham, there are at least three lines of thought: the Stoic heritage, that influences Augustine, Abelard, Francis Bacon; the Aristotelian tradition, stemming from the commentaries on De Interpretatione; the discussion of the grammarians, from Priscian to the Modistae. Modern interpreters are frequently misled by the fact that the various authors regularly used the same terms. Such a homogeneous terminology, however, covers profound theoretical differences. The aim of these essays is to show that the medieval theory of signs does not represent a unique body of semiotic notions: there are diverse and frequently alternative semiotic theories. This book thus represents an attempt to encourage further research on the still unrecognized variety of the semiotic approaches offered by the medieval philosophies of language.

On the Medieval Theory of Signs

On the Medieval Theory of Signs PDF Author: Umberto Eco
Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Company
ISBN: 9027286043
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In the course of the long debate on the nature and the classification of signs, from Boethius to Ockham, there are at least three lines of thought: the Stoic heritage, that influences Augustine, Abelard, Francis Bacon; the Aristotelian tradition, stemming from the commentaries on De Interpretatione; the discussion of the grammarians, from Priscian to the Modistae. Modern interpreters are frequently misled by the fact that the various authors regularly used the same terms. Such a homogeneous terminology, however, covers profound theoretical differences. The aim of these essays is to show that the medieval theory of signs does not represent a unique body of semiotic notions: there are diverse and frequently alternative semiotic theories. This book thus represents an attempt to encourage further research on the still unrecognized variety of the semiotic approaches offered by the medieval philosophies of language.

The Mirror of Language (Revised Edition)

The Mirror of Language (Revised Edition) PDF Author: Marcia L. Colish
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 9780803264472
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Early Christianity faced the problem of the human word versus Christ the Word. Could language accurately describe spiritual reality? The Mirror of Language brilliantly traces the development of one prominent theory of signs from Augustine through Anselm of Canterbury, Thomas Aquinas, and Dante. Their shared epistemology validated human language as an authentic but limited index of preexistent reality, both material and spiritual. This sign theory could thereby account for the ways men receive, know, and transmit religious knowledge, always mediated through faith. Marcia L. Colish demonstrates how the three theologians used different branches of the medieval trivium to express a common sign theory: Augustine stressed rhetoric, Anselm shifted to grammar (including grammatical proofs of God's existence), and Thomas Aquinas stressed dialectic. Dante, the one poet included in this study, used the Augustinian sign theory to develop a Christian poetics that culminates in the Divine Comedy. The author points out not only the commonality but also the sharp contrasts between these writers and shows the relation between their sign theories and the intellectual ferment of the times. When first published in 1968, The Mirror of Language was recognized as a pathfinding study. This completely revised edition incorporates the scholarship of the intervening years and reflects the refinements of the author's thought. Greater prominence is given to the role of Stoicism, and sharper attention is paid to some of the thinkers and movements surrounding the major thinkers treated. Concerns of semiotics, philosophy, and literary criticism are elucidated further. The original thesis, still controversial, is now even wider ranging and more salient to current intellectual debate.

Signs in the Dust

Signs in the Dust PDF Author: Nathan Lyons
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190941286
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Modern thought is characterized by a dichotomy of meaningful culture and unmeaning nature. Signs in the Dust uses medieval semiotics to develop a new theory of nature and culture that resists this familiar picture of things. Through readings of Thomas Aquinas, Nicholas of Cusa, and John Poinsot (John of St. Thomas), it offers a semiotic analysis of human culture in both its anthropological breadth as an enterprise of creaturely sign-making, and its theological height as a finite participation in the Trinity, which can be understood as an absolute 'cultural nature'. Signs in the Dust then extends this account of human culture backwards into the natural depth of biological and physical nature. It puts the biosemiotics of its medieval sources, along with Félix Ravaisson's philosophy of habit, into dialogue with the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis that is emerging in contemporary biology, to show how all living things participate in semiosis, so that that a cultural dimension is present through the whole order of nature and the whole of natural history. It also retrieves Aquinas' doctrine of intentions in the medium to show how signification can be attributed in a diminished way to even inanimate nature, with the ontological implication that being as such should be reconceived in semiotic terms. The phenomena of human culture are therefore to be understood not as breaks with a meaningless nature, but instead as heightenings and deepenings of natural movements of meaning that long precede and far exceed us. Against the modern divorce of nature and culture, Signs in the Dust argues that culture is natural and nature is cultural, through and through.

Peirce's Theory of Signs

Peirce's Theory of Signs PDF Author: T. L. Short
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139461915
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 13

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Book Description
In this book, T. L. Short corrects widespread misconceptions of Peirce's theory of signs and demonstrates its relevance to contemporary analytic philosophy of language, mind and science. Peirce's theory of mind, naturalistic but nonreductive, bears on debates of Fodor and Millikan, among others. His theory of inquiry avoids foundationalism and subjectivism, while his account of reference anticipated views of Kripke and Putnam. Peirce's realism falls between 'internal' and 'metaphysical' realism and is more satisfactory than either. His pragmatism is not verificationism; rather, it identifies meaning with potential growth of knowledge. Short distinguishes Peirce's mature theory of signs from his better-known but paradoxical early theory. He develops the mature theory systematically on the basis of Peirce's phenomenological categories and concept of final causation. The latter is distinguished from recent and similar views, such as Brandon's, and is shown to be grounded in forms of explanation adopted in modern science.

Sanctifying Signs

Sanctifying Signs PDF Author: David Aers
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
Sanctifying Signs presents a critical study of Christian literature, theology, and culture in late medieval England.

Knowledge Through Signs

Knowledge Through Signs PDF Author: Giovanni Manetti
Publisher: Brepols Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 358

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Book Description
Le centre Semiotic and Cognitive Studies (semiotique et etudes cognitives) de l'universite de San Marino (dirige par Umberto Eco et Patrizia Violi) veut promouvoir la recherche et les echanges interdisciplinaires dans le domaine des sciences cognitives, de la semiotique, de la psychologie, de la psycholinguistique, de la philosophie de la pensee, de l'intelligence artificielle, dans le but de comparer les traditions philosophique, semiotique et linguistique europeennes aux derniers resultats des sciences cognitives americaines. Numero 2 de la serie Semiotic and Cognitive Studies: G. Manetti, Preface, Introduction: The Concept of the Sign from Ancient to Modern Semiotics, W. Leszl, I messagi degli dei e i segni della natura, D. Sedley, Aristotle's De interpretatione and ancient semantics, A.A. Long, Stoic Psychology and the Elucidation of Language, G. Verbeke, Meaning and Role of the Expressible in Stoic Logic, E. Asmis, Epicurean Semiotics, D. Glidden, Sextus and the Erotetic Fallacy, M. Bettetini, Agostino d'Ippona: i segni, il linguaggio, M. Bettini, A proposito di Argumentum, G. Pucci, Terminus. Per una semiotica dei confini nel mondo romano, D. Maggi, Il segno creatore. Aspetti dell'integrazione del segno nella mitologia vedica, U. Eco, Jerusalem and the Temple as Signs in Medieval Culture.

Signs of Devotion

Signs of Devotion PDF Author: Virginia Blanton
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047984
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description


Signs and Society

Signs and Society PDF Author: Richard J. Parmentier
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253025141
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
A major voice in contemporary semiotic theory offers a new perspective on potent intersections of semiotic and linguistic anthropology. In Signs and Society, noted anthropologist Richard J. Parmentier demonstrates how an appreciation of signs helps us better understand human agency, meaning, and creativity. Inspired by the foundational work of C. S. Peirce and Ferdinand de Saussure, and drawing upon key insights from neighboring scholarly fields, Parmentier develops an array of innovative conceptual tools for ethnographic, historical, and literary research. Parmentier’s concepts of “transactional value,” “metapragmatic interpretant,” and “circle of semiosis,” for example, illuminate the foundations and effects of such diverse cultural forms and practices as economic exchanges on the Pacific island of Palau, Pindar’s Victory Odes in ancient Greece, and material representations of transcendence in ancient Egypt and medieval Christianity. Other studies complicate the separation of emic and etic analytical models for such cultural domains as religion, economic value, and semiotic ideology. Provocative and absorbing, these fifteen pioneering essays blaze a trail into anthropology’s future while remaining firmly rooted in its celebrated past.

Four Ages of Understanding

Four Ages of Understanding PDF Author: John Deely
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487539959
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 1054

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Book Description
This book redraws the intellectual map and sets the agenda in philosophy for the next fifty or so years. By making the theory of signs the dominant theme in Four Ages of Understanding, John Deely has produced a history of philosophy that is innovative, original, and complete. The first full-scale demonstration of the centrality of the theory of signs to the history of philosophy, Four Ages of Understanding provides a new vantage point from which to review and reinterpret the development of intellectual culture at the threshold of "globalization". Deely examines the whole movement of past developments in the history of philosophy in relation to the emergence of contemporary semiotics as the defining moment of Postmodernism. Beginning traditionally with the Pre-Socratic thinkers of early Greece, Deely gives an account of the development of the notion of signs and of the general philosophical problems and themes which give that notion a context through four ages: Ancient philosophy, covering initial Greek thought; the Latin age, philosophy in European civilization from Augustine in the 4th century to Poinsot in the 17th; the Modern period, beginning with Descartes and Locke; and the Postmodern period, beginning with Charles Sanders Peirce and continuing to the present. Reading the complete history of philosophy in light of the theory of the sign allows Deely to address the work of thinkers never before included in a general history, and in particular to overcome the gap between Ockham and Descartes which has characterized the standard treatments heretofore. One of the essential features of the book is the way in which it shows how the theme of signs opens a perspective for seeing the Latin Age from its beginning with Augustine to the work of Poinsot as an indigenous development and organic unity under which all the standard themes of ontology and epistemology find a new resolution and place. A magisterial general history of philosophy, Deely's book provides both a strong background to semiotics and a theoretical unity between philosophy's history and its immediate future. With Four Ages of Understanding Deely sets a new agenda for philosophy as a discipline entering the 21st century.