Kalevi Kull

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 . 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’ 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 , while the English-language tradition tends to separate the humanities from the sciences. However, the latter h ..

The article gives a historical overview of the institutional development of semiotics in Estonia during two centuries, and describes briefly its current status. The key characteristics of semiotics in Estonia include: seminal role of two world-level classics of semiotics from the University of Tartu, Juri Lotman and Jakob von Uexküll; the impact of Tartu–Moscow school of semiotics, with a series of summer schools in Kääriku in 1960s and the establishment of semiotic study of culture; the publication of the international journal Sign Systems Studies, since 1964; the development of biosemiotics, notably together with colleagues from Copenhagen; teaching semiotics as a major in bachelor, master, and doctoral programs in the University of Tartu, since 1994; a plurality of institutions — in addition to the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, several supporting semiotic institutions have been established since 1990s; and a wide scope of research in various branches of semiotics, including theoretical studies, empirical studies, and applied semiotics projects on governmental and other request.

This article poses the hypothesis that the problem of the intrinsic value of nature that stems from the work of G. E. Moore and is widely discussed in environmental philosophy, bas a parallel in a contemporary discussion in semiotics on the existence of semiosis in nature. From a semiotic point of view. value can be defined as an intentional dimension of sign. This is concordant with a biological interpretation of value that relates to biological needs. Thus. a semiotic approach in biology may provide a useful tool for further analysis of the intrinsic value problem in the biological realm. From an ecosemiotic point of view, the problem is also related to the concepts of bioart and ecoart. Ecoart viz environmental art is that which encompasses the human ambience, e.g., landscape or its components. Bioart call be defined as the art whose material ("clay") is a living body, living matter or communication of organisms (which may include, e.g., genetic engineering). It is concluded that the acceptance of biosemiotic view has implications for a large area of ecological philosophy.

The present article is framed within the biosemiotic glossary project as a way to address common terminology within biosemiotic research. The glossary integrates the view of the members of the biosemiotic community through a standard survey and a literature review. The concept of ‘semiotic threshold’ was first introduced by Umberto Eco, defining it as a boundary between semiotic and non-semiotic areas. We review here the concept of ‘semiotic threshold’, first describing its denotation within semiotics via an examination on the history of the concept, its synonyms, antonyms, etymology, usage in other languages and context in which it is used. Then we present a general overview of the survey among researchers, analyzing the difference in responses for the concept of ‘lower semiotic threshold’ and related concepts. From the answers we also review the difference between the general usage of ‘semiotic threshold’ versus its specific use within biosemiotics, and attempt to make a general synthesis of the concept taking into account what we have learned from the survey and the literature review.

The article gives a historical overview of the institutional development of semiotics in Estonia during two centuries, and describes briefly its current status. The key characteristics of semiotics in Estonia include: (1) seminal role of two world-level classics of semiotics from the University of Tartu, Juri Lotman and Jakob von Uexkull; (2) the impact of Tartu–Moscow school of semiotics, with a series of summer schools in Kaariku in 1960s and the establishment of semiotic study of culture; (3) the publication of the international journal Sign Systems Studies, since 1964; (4) the development of biosemiotics, notably together with colleagues from Copenhagen; (5) teaching semiotics as a major in bachelor, master, and doctoral programs in the University of Tartu, since 1994; (6) a plurality of institutions — in addition to the Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu, several supporting semiotic institutions have been established since 1990s; and (7) a wide scope of research in various branches of semiotics, including theoretical studies, empirical studies, and applied semiotics projects on governmental and other request.

The interview with one of the founders of the Tartu–Moscow school, semiotician Vyacheslav Vsevolodovich Ivanov (b. 1929) from August 2010, describes V. V. Ivanov’s opinions of several scholars and their work (including Evgenij Polivanov, Mikhail Bakhtin, Andrej Kolmogorov, Nikolaj Marr etc.), his relationships with his father Vsevolod Ivanov, as well as V. V. Ivanov’s views on the past and future of semiotics, with some emphasis on neurosemiotics, zoosemiotics, semiotics of culture, cybernetics, history of linguistics, study and protection of small languages. The interview also deals with V. V. Ivanov’s book Even and Odd.

The field of semiotics is described as a general study of knowing. Knowing in a broad sense as a process that assumes (and includes) at least memory (together with heredity), anticipation, communication, meaningful information, and needs, is a distinctive feature of living systems. Sciences are distinguished accordingly into 'phi-sciences' (that use physicalist methodology) and 'sigma-sciences' (that use semiotic methodology). Jesper Hoffmeyer’s book Biosemiotics is viewed as an inquiry into the sigma-scientific approach to living systems.

This article by Juri Lotman from the third volume of Trudy po znakovym sistemam (Sign Systems Studies) in 1967, deals with the problem of artistic modelling. The general working questions are whether art displays any characteristic traits that are common for all modelling systems and which could be the specific traits that can distinguish art from other modelling systems. Art is seen as a secondary modelling system, more precisely, as a play-type model, which is characterised simultaneously by practical and conventional behaviour and constant awareness of the possibility of alternate meanings to the one that is currently being perceived. At the same time art has play-like elements but is not the same as play, since play is inherently rule-bound, whereas art is a more flexible model thepurpose of which is truth. Art is a special type of modelling system, since it is on one hand suitable for storing very large amount of complex information, but onthe other hand it can increase the stored information and transform the consumer.

Animals are treated in philosophy dominantly as opposed to humans, without revealing their independent semiotic richness. This is a direct consequence of the common way of defining the uniqueness of humans. We analyze the concept of ‘semiotic animal’, proposed by John Deely as a definition of human specificity, according to which humans are semiotic (capable of understanding signs as signs), unlike other species, who are semiosic (capable of sign use). We compare and contrast this distinction to the more standard ways of drawing the distinction between humans and animals.