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Semiotics as a Bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences
November 2-5, 1995 -- Victoria College, University of Toronto

Semiotics functions as a means to understand the epistemological, cultural, and interpretive space that rests between Science and the Humanities. This important conference brought together views from multiple disciplines, including the Humanities, Social Sciences, Physical Sciences, Postmodern Philosophy and Information Technology.

The conference started on Thursday evening, Nov. 2, with the Opening Ceremonies and a programmatic introductory lecture by Thomas A. Sebeok: Semiotics and the Biological Sciences: The Initial Conditions. On Friday, the section "Semiotics & the Physical Sciences" was on the schedule, headed by Vilmos Voigt with Signs or Symbols in Biosphere and Sociosphere. Further contributions came from: Paul Cappon: The Canadian Study on Ethnocultural Communities facing HIV-AIDS: A new bridge between the health sciences and the humanities; Sandre Harnett-Oliver: Semiotics of a Virus; Allyson Lunny: The New Face of Electroconvulsive Therapy: Unmasking the benignancy of "cure"; Bruce Elder: Commentary on and Development of Northrop Frye's Comparison of Literature to Mathematics; François Lachance: Ricoeur on Greimas via Hilbert; Bart Testa: Fractal Mathematics and Sign-Formation in Bruce Elder's "Exultations"; Vivian Darroch-Lozowski: Body, the Attainable Border of Semiotics; Barbara Godard: Bodies for Examination; and John Deely: New Beginnings in the Study of Semiotics.

Another section was called "Semiotics & Rhetoric", headed by Frank Nuessel on The Use of Metaphor to Comprehend and Explicate Scientific Theory. Further contributions: Alan Bailin: Semiotics and the Study of Metaphor; Carolle Gagnon: Metaphor as a Particular of Case Inference; Laurence Steven: I.A. Richards and the Semiotics of Practice; Manon Regimbald: Point de vue sémiotique sur la rhétorique: In questione (de) pragmatique?; John McClelland: The Art of Rhetoric and the Science of Communication; Griffith Morgan: Metaphor and Model: The common ground between literature and science; Osvaldo Croci & Paul Colilli: The Transformation of Verbal Semiosis in Italian Politics; Ray Morris: Metaphors in Fool-making: A comparison of sociology journal debates and political cartoons; Lilia Avrutin: The Guilt of Text: An artifact as semantic investigation - toward the semiotics of the post-totalitarian cultural space.

A third section was occupied with "Semiotics & Literary Studies", chaired by Eero Tarasti speaking on An Outline for Existential Semiotics (Applied to the Arts). Further contributions: Rita Gagliano: Borge's Inquiry into the Nature of Language in Pierre Manard, Author of the Quixote; Manav Ratti: Linguistic Journeys: A Semiotic Analysis of 'King Lear'; Anthony Verna: The Memory of Poetry and the Poetry of Memory in Leopardi's 'Canti'; Florence Gobeil-Dwyer & Roger Parent: Symbolic Interaction and the Semiotics of Improvisation; Franco Ricci: Roving Eyes and Still Images: Italo Calvino and the art of Domenico Gnoli; R. Kerry White: Communication and Presence: Semiotic density in the theatrical event; Monika Boehringer: L'intra-intertextualité énonciative dans le cycle indien de M. Duras; Marie J. Myers: Dégager les systèmes sémiotiques: Textes littéraires versus textes scientifiques.

Jean-Claude Gardin introduced the section "Semiotics & the Study of Culture" and started with a lecture on Semiotic Approaches of Reasoning in Archeology: A contribution to the bridge issue. Further lectures: Phyllis Passariello: The Longing Self: Personal totems and the cultural disguises of desire; Deborah Smith-Shank: Women Artists get Personal: Narrative, myths and old wife's tales; Giovanna M. Winchkler: Semiotics and the Description of Stone Tools in Archeology; Monika Freedman: Rock & Roll and Youth Subcultures: The question of deadhead culture; Peter McLaren: Ghettocentricity and Gangsta Pedagogy: The Hip Hop nation as counterpublic sphere; Linda Rogers & Linda McDonald: Who waits for the White Knight?: Training in nice; Shelagh Lindsey: The Semiotic Domain; Francesco Loriggio: Culture and Complexity: Notes of the work of Jurij Lotman; Peter Simpson: The Signs of Everydayness: Heidegger's Subversive Semiotics.

On Saturday, Nov. 4, one of the sections dealt with "Semiotics & Modelling Processes", introduced by Jean-Guy Meunier with Programming Languages and Narratological Structures. Further lectures: Anna Marostica & Andreas Müller: Induction in Multi-Module Formal Systems: On-line learning as an essential cognitive process; Stephan Naoyuki Matsuba: The Computer Sign Game: Finding the link between literary theory and cognitive science; Martin Ryder: Production and Consumption of Meaning: The interplay between subject and object in open hypertext representation; Annamaria Caimi Valentini: The Use of Graphs in Peirce and Jevons; and Alan Davis: Graphs: The cross-disciplinary visual language of numbers.

The next section, "Semiotics & the Behavioral Sciences", was moderated by Roberta Kevelson giving a paper on Peirce and the Bridging of Science and the Humanistic Studies; followed by: Mark Davidson: 1-2-3 Hate: The semiotics of genocide; Alain Goldschlager: Un sémiotique scientifique au service de préjuges; Ivan Kalmar: Typology of Prejudice; Linda McDonald: Children's Use of a Fable as a Metaphor of Development; Linda Rogers: Exploring the Felt Pathways of the Self: From experience to meaning-making in children; and Anne Urbancic: Buying and Buying into the Ideal Child.

Another section was called "Semiotics & the Verbal Sciences". Robert Haskell took the lead with Vichian Semiotics, Cognitive Science and the Learning Paradox of the Meno: or What is a sign a sign of?. Further lectures were delivered by: Maria Anna Calamia: Emotive Meaning and Language; Maria Antonietta Pinto: Testing Figurative Language Comprehension in Adults: A psycho-semiotic view; Joel West: Vico, Peirce, Lacan: A congnitive view of linguistics; Paola Biancolini: Can we trust compliments? A comparative analysis of compliments in English and Italian; Christianne Bernier: De la couleur des énoncés: Markage du texte et présence de l'autre dans le discours; Hans-George Ruprecht: Everyday Behavior as Fiction: Pragmatics and semiotics of social conduct; and Maria Casas: Semiotic Stylistics: Grammars as texts and the problem of talking trees; Jean-François Cote: The Analytic and Dialectic Dimensions of Semiotics: Beyond Peirce toward Bakhtin; Manon Niquette: Piaget meets Peirce: Generating a model for the evaluation of public science.

"Semiotics & the Study of Meaning" was headed by Jean Umiker-Sebeok speaking about Semiotics and Information Science Theory. Further contributions: Anna Makolkin: Universals and Universal Signs; Jan Marta: Signifiants de l'identité ortho-(a)gonale: vers une nouvelle sémiotique de la subjectivité; David Ross: What is Truth?; Cinzia Bianchi: The Variety of Theoretical Objects in Semiotics; Francesco Guardiani: Arts and Sciences for Frye and McLuhan; Andrei Roman: Les concepts scientifiques, signes du savoir et signes du pouvoir; Nella Cotrupi: Signs of the Subject; Louis Hebert: Paradigme reférentiel et paradigme différentiel: les sémantiques différentielles; and Juan A. Margariños de Morentin: What Knowledge does Semiotics Warrant?

On Sunday, Nov. 5, a section on "Semiotics & Education" was on the schedule, introduced by Eddo Rigotti dealing with Semiosis versus Inferences and Deixis; followed by: Gerhard Nickel: The Role of Semiotics in FL and SL Teaching; Gary Shank & Kevin Owens: Semiosis and the Foundations of Tribal Pedagogy; Ali Reguigui: Prolégoménes a théorie du figment en syntagmatique terminologique; Grace Feuerverger: The Semiotics of Moral Dilemmas and Conflict Resolution in a Jewish-Arab-Israeli Educational Community; Letizia Grassi & Lahdili Abdelkedir: I giuochi elettronici per ragazzi e i segni; and Renzo Titone: Semiotic Aspects of Classroom Communication.

Another section dealt with the topic "Semiotics & Cognitive Science". David Lidov, who spoke about Music and Consciousness, was followed by Martin Krampen's Structures of Spatial Segments: An empirical approach to the semiotics of space; further lectures were delivered by: Martha Blanche & Juan A. Magariños de Morentin: Cognitive Ecology: The application of a semiotic methodology in folklore studies; Chantal Hilaire: Au coeur de l'hermétique tsigane; Andrew Quinn: Sémiotique cognitive et ontologie qualitative; Amadeo D'Angiulli: Descriptions and Explanations in the Mental Imagery Paradigm; Don Dedrick: The Meaning and Reference of Colour Language: Ethnography vs. cross-cultural psychology; Jean Molino: Pour une théorie de la connaissance symbolique; Bertrand Gervais: Contextes institutionnels de nos pratiques sémiotiques; and Edwina Taborsky: The Textual Society; Francesca Trusso: Semiotic Paths through Language and Space.

"Constructing the Bridge", towards the end, was considered by Pierre Maranda, whose lecture was titled Polarity of Triangulation: Humanities vs. Sciences and Semiotics. An Open Session closed the conference, dealing with the "Interdisciplinary Scope of Semiotics" (chairman: Rocco Capozzi); the participants were: Umberto Eco, Thomas A. Sebeok, Paul Perron, Susan Petrilli, and Marcel Danesi.

The Conference on "Semiotics as a Bridge between the Humanities and the Sciences" turned out to be a full success. The "bridging" is expected to continue (e.g. during the 6th Congress of the IASS-AIS, "Semiotics Bridging Nature and Culture", Guadalajara, México, July 1997).

Info: Frances Koltowski, Semiotics Research Unit, 101 Wymilwood, Victoria College, Univ. of Toronto, 73 Queen's Park Crescent, Toronto, Ontario M5S 1K7, Canada; tel. +1-416-585-4498, fax +1-416-971-3005; email <sru.victoria@utoronto.ca>

[ Top ]	[originally published in: IASS-AIS Bulletin-Annual '95 & 96= Bernard, Withalm & Réthoré 1996: 201-205] Abridged quotation fro mthe site: <http://www.cudenver.edu/~mryder/itc_data/bridge.html>
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	Gloria Withalm & Jeff Bernard - Institut für Sozio-Semiotische Studien (ISSS) email: gloria.withalm@uni-ak.ac.at, phone & fax: +43-1-5045344
	Created: February 21, 2000 (Gloria Withalm, IASS-AIS)
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