Natural signs from Plato to Thomas A. Sebeok

Abstract

Abstract The paper pays tribute to Thomas A. Sebeok with an inquiry into the place of the semiotics of nature within his system of “global semiotics” and of natural signs within his typology of signs, which distinguishes “six species of signs.” It complements Sebeok’s theory of natural signs with a historical study of semiotic definitions of natural signs in four chapters. The first, “Natural signs from Plato to the Scholastics” focuses on Plato’s Cratylus, Aristotle’s “On Interpretation,” Augustine of Hippo, and the Scholastics, in particular Roger Bacon’s distinction between natural and “given” signs. The second, “Natural signs in 20th century analytical and cognitive philosophy,” discusses Rollin’s Natural and conventional meaning as well as the definitions of natural signs proposed by Jerzy Pelc, David S. Clarke, Laird Addis, and in Ruth Garret Millikan’s teleosemiotics. The third, “Structuralist strategies of excluding natural signs from semiotics” discusses how natural signs were excluded from cultural semiotics in the writings of Roland Barthes (Mythologies), Algirdas J. Greimas, and in Umberto Eco’s early semiotic writings. The fourth investigates how C. S. Peirce overcomes the dualism of nature and convention in his general theory of signs founded on evolutionary principles. The paper concludes with reflections on Sebeok’s theory of modeling as the distinctive feature of human semiosis.