A Semiotic Folly: Seeking the Opposite of a Circle

Abstract

This paper touches upon two seminal ideas: the concept of ‘the circle’ and the concept of ‘oppositeness’. The idea of an ‘opposite’ can be applied to many things and concepts, but there would seem to be limits to such application, suggesting an impossibility of there being a ‘pure op- posite’ of anything. This paper has therefore sought, through a consideration of the concept of ‘the circle’ to explore whether such limits are indeed absolute or whether there are alternate ways of approaching the question of ‘what is an opposite’. By considering a circle according to the hierar- chy approach of the semiotic nonagon – form, existence and value – the conclusion is reached that there is an array of circle characteristics to which forms of opposition to ‘circleness’ may be identi- fied in each. Though not the reach of this paper, the residual task would then be to use the semiotic nonagon triadic analysis to find a holistic opposite which may combine all these oppositional char- acteristics into some unitary idea.