Tag Archives: cultural history

03/31/26

Looking at Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2017) “Semiosphere and history”  (Part 1 of 8)

0841 The article before me is published by Sign System Studies (volume 45(3/4), 2017, pages 335-360) by Mikhail Trunin in the School of Humanities at Tallinn University, Estonia.  The full title is “Semiosphere and history: Towards the origins of the semiotic approach to history”.  This particular volume is dedicated to semiotics and history.

0842 Juri Lotman (1922-1993 AD) and Boris Uspenskij (1937-present) are central characters in the first ascent of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics during the 1960s through the 1980s.

Lotman’s treatment of a semiotics of history connects to his conceptualization of the semiosphere.  Of course, “semiotics” stands in the place of “semiology”.

Uspenskij’s treatment of the semiotics of history starts with the Latin phrase, “historia sub species semioticae”.  The phrase transliterates (more or less) into “history as a species of semiotics”.

Or maybe, “historical under the semiotic species”.

Of course, “semiotics” stands in the place of “semiology”.

0843 Previous examinations of articles in this and other volumes of Sign System Studies provide a way to appreciate what these semiologists have in common.

0844 So, let me briefly review.

The academic development of semiological consciousness for humanities scholars starts in the Departments of Slavic languages, during the so-called “Cold War”, since the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics casts its dominant ideology as that of science.  These humanities scholars begin to frame their interpretations of Slavic literature in terms of Saussure’s semiology and structuralism.  After all, semiology and structuralism are scientific, aren’t they?

0845 Semiology deals with content, the relation between parole (spoken words) and langue (corresponding ideation).  Technically, the relation between speech and thought is not motivated (hence the qualifier, “arbitrary”), since spoken words do not image or point to their referents.  Nonetheless, civilized humans behave as if they do.  But, that behavior may be attributed to grammatical structure (for a mother tongue) or a style system (for specialized discourse).

0846 Structuralism deals with how content is situated. Humans do not behave as if a spoken word is arbitrarily related to a mental act (or thought).  Humans act as if words and thoughts are one thing.  

Rather than attributing this behavior to an innate trait evolved under conditions where a parole (manual-brachial word gesture) images and indicates its referent (by way of the natural sign-qualities of icons and indexes, respectively), the modern scientist must attribute the behavior to truncated material and efficient causes.

In this case, the situating efficient and material causes are due to a system3b. Both mother tongue and specialized discourses3b operate on the potential of ‘laws of the system’1b.

0847 Here is a fundamental interscope containing semiology3a and structuralism3b.

0848 On the content level, the normal context of Saussure’s semiology3a brings the actuality of the dyad {langue as matter2am [substantiates] parole as form2af}2a into relation with the potential of ‘signifier and signified’1a.

Cleverly, the content-level potential1a buries the evolution of language in the milieu of hand-talk in the ambiguity of the co-existence of signifier and signified.  Can a signifier exist without a signified?  Of course not. They must be belong to a monad, a single element.

Can a thought about ‘something’ exist without an image or indication of that ‘something’?

Does a manual-brachial word-gesture picture or point to its referent?

0849 Ironically, both Charles Peirce (1839-1914 AD) and Ferdinand de Saussure (1857-1913) live right before the monumental, civilization transforming battles among the enlightenment gods.  Peirce focuses on the nature of signs as triadic relations.  Saussure focuses on language as a thing (that is, a dyadic actuality).  

0850 The above figure tells the tale.  The content and situation level actualities2 are dyads, as suggested by Saussure. Normal contexts3 and potentials1 are presumed in Saussure’s tradition, but explicit in terms of Peirce’s categories.

The category-based nested form is a triadic relation.  Triadic relations constitute the human niche.  Hominins adapt into the potential of triadic relations.

The content-level appears to be a reasonable expression of Saussure’s semiology because it expresses a triadic relation.  Not only that, but the content-level category-based nested form manifests all four of Aristotle’s causalities.  The dyadic actuality, corresponding to Peirce’s category of secondness, parallels Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the home of material causes and one terminus for efficient causation.

0851 Here is a picture of the category-based nested form as a manifestation of Aristotle’s causalities.  Peirce’s category of secondness contains two contiguous real elements.  For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the one real element is matter.  The other real element is form.  The contiguity is [substantiates] or [substance].

0852 So, what does this imply?

First, Lotman and Uspenskij start out as scholars of Slavic literature in Russia, under a socialist regime, which extols its scientific credentials.  Academics in literature adapt to regime incentives by adopting Saussure’s scientific approach to language.  Saussure’s semiology is regarded as a scientific theory explaining the phenomena of language in our civilized world.

Second, the fundament interscope starts with Saussure’s semiology3a as a content-level nested form.  The actuality2 is {langue2am [substantiates] parole2af}.

Third, the category-based nested form manifests all three of Peirce’s categories as well as all four of Aristotle’s causalities.

Fourth (and yet to be discussed), Lotman’s and Upsenskij’s treatment of history and semiology starts with the fundament interscope.  Semiology characterizes a content-level interscope.  History enters the picture as a literature-based situation-level form2bf.  

0853 If these implications stand, then Upsenskij’s Latin title, “history as a species of semiotics”, will convert into “history as a species of literary text”.

03/23/26

Looking at Mikhail Trunin’s Article (2017) “Semiosphere and history”  (Part 8 of 8)

0935 What happens next?

Lotman and Uspenskij publish an article in Russian (in 1971), which is translated into English (in 1978), titled “On the semiotic mechanism of culture”.

This is followed by intense study of Vernadskij’s language of life-pressure, then the publication of Lotman’s seminal paper, “On the semiosphere”, in Russian (in 1984).

0936 The author goes to some length to distance Lotman’s concept of the semiosphere and Teilhard de Chardin’s (1881-1955) framework of Alpha-Omega Points.

Why?

De Chardin’s concept does not put the dyad, {cognition as matter2bm [substantiates] social interaction as form2bf}, into a semiological message1c.  De Chardin packages this actuality2b into a theological message1c.  A theological message1cdoes not comport with the TMS positivist intellect3a.

0937 Or does it1c now that the USSR no longer reigns?

That is question for another day.

0938 For this examination, I must stay with a positivist-loving message1c.

The crucial point is that culture-pressure2b is like life-pressure2b and the perspective-level model1c that is appropriate for this culture-pressure2b is esse_tially semiotic.

Esse_tailly?

Yes, esse_ce is matter substantiating and essence is substantiated form.

So, semiotic arrangements as matter2cm [substantiate] human conditions as form2cf.

0939 Here is a picture.

0940 Esse_ce is {semiotic arrangements as matter2cm [substantiating]}.

Essence is {[substantiated] human conditions as form2cf}.

0941 Do I need to note that the universe of messages1c is Lotman’s “semiosphere1c“?

0942 The semiosphere1c parallels the concept of biosphere1c.

One can say that the semiosphere1c contains the totality of individual texts and independent languages.  They all relate to one another.

Why?

All texts and statements are forms2af that entangle matters of the language of meaning2am.  The presence of the language of meaning2am has the potential1b of engendering the matter of cognition2bm.  Cognition as matter2amsubstantiates social interactions as form2bf.  These forms2bf are contextualized as messages1c. A universe of messages1cundergirds the doctrine2c that semiotic arrangements2cm substantiate human conditions2cf, in the normal context of mind theory3c.

0943 And what else?

This explanation also applies to the Lebenswelt that we evolved in.  See Razie Mah’s e-book, The Human Niche.   The human niche is the potential of triadic relations.

0944 According to the author, Lotman and Uspenskij agree.

They also disagree.

That is the nature of intellectual discourse and discovery.

The author tells some of the story in a section titled, “How Lotman and Uspenskij influence each other”.

0945 In our current Lebenswelt, cultural studies3b (the situation-level normal context in the derivative interscope) always involve historical processes and texts2bf (situation-level actualities of the fundament interscope).

0946 How so?

The normal context of cultural processes3b brings the dyadic actuality2b of {cognition2bm [substantiates] social interaction2bf} into relation with the possibility of presence1b.

The presence1b of what?

Literary texts2af [entangling] a language of meaning2am.

0947 In the twentieth volume of Sign Systems Studies (1987), Uspenskij publishes “On the problem of the genesis of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics”.

This examination adds value by commenting on Mikhail Trunin’s 2017 review of Uspenskij’s conflation of semiotics and history.

0948 The subtitle of the twenty-fifth volume of Sign Systems Studies (1992), the last volume edited Juri Lotman, is “Semiotics and history”.

Twenty-five years later, the forty fifth volume (2017) contains a special issue on semiotics and history.

0949 Finally, in 2025, Kaveli Kull and Ekaterina Velmezova publish Sphere of Understanding: Tartu Dialogues with Semioticians.  The book contains interviews with several of the figures mentioned in this article (volume 23 of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition, edited by Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull, Walter De Gruyter, Boston/Berlin).

0950 One wonders whether the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics will find a path to a second ascent.

0951 Surely the scenery will differ.

In the first ascent, science is god and {material arrangements [substantiate] human conditions}2c.

In the second, the divine Trinity is God and {semiotic arrangements [substantiate] human conditions}2c.

0952 So, what I am I suggesting?

Is Juri Lotman the Karl Marx of a new era?

History is a species of semiotics.

02/19/26

Looking at Peeter Torop’s Article (2017) “Semiotics of Cultural History”  (Part 1 of 11)

0953 The article before me is published by Sign System Studies (volume 45(3/4), 2017, pages 317-334) by Peeter Torop in the Department of Semiotics at Tartu University, Estonia. This particular volume is dedicated to semiotics and history.

0002 Amazingly, this article has no subtitle.

Perhaps, I may add one: An Inquiry into the Chronotope.

0954 At first, I thought that the word, “chronotope”, coined by Mikhail Bakhtin (1895-1975 AD), was “chronotrope”, where “trope” is a label for a rhetorical trick that belies the complexity of things.  Tropes change over time.

0955 For example, the Latin trope, “ens reale“, has been translated as “being that is real”, as well as “mind-independent being”.  Add time, and the parole of the chronotrope stays the same, but the matter, the langue, shifts.  “Ens reale” migrates from what the scholastics pursue in their philosophical discourses to what?… a being that is mind-independent?  Does mind independence (as matter) somehow substantiate a form (that is the elusive goal of philosophical inquiry)?

0956 If I use Aristotle’s hylomorphe as an exemplar of Peirce’s secondness, I can diagram the following “chronotrope”.

0957 Peirce’s category of secondness consists of two contiguous real elements.  For Aristotle’s hylomorphe, the real elements are matter and form.  The contiguity, placed in brackets for proper notation, is [substance] or [substantiates].  Either noun or verb is appropriate, because the contiguity can be construed as either.

0958 Does Aristotle’s hylomorphe transmogrify, over time, into mind-independence as a real element and the term, “ens reale” as another real element?

Perhaps, mind-independence could work as matter that substantiates ens reale as form.

Or, maybe, mind-independence could associate to langue and ens reale could go with parole.

0959 I suppose that tropes can shift (in time) in awkward ways.

0960 That leaves me with Bakhtin’s term, “chronotope”.

In chemistry, the nucleus of an element contains protons and neutrons.  The word, “element”, precisely labels a fixed number of protons in its nucleus.  The number of neutrons may vary, resulting in different atomic masses for two different isotopes of the same element.  The word, “isotope” labels a fixed number of protons (characterizing the element) and neutrons (contributing to the isotopic mass).  Some isotopes have too few or too many neutrons, making the nucleus unstable and subject to radioactive decay.

0961 Here is a picture.

0962 By analogy, a “chronotope” is the same element, but its placement in time may vary.

Is that correct?

0963 Is time neutronic?

Maybe the analogy of radioactive decay can introduce time into the elemental thing by producing a confounding, in the following manner.

Yes, a confounding labels one form associated with two matters, one originating and one entangled.

0964 The problem is that radioactive decay as matter cannot resolve into a substantiation of the element as form, since it changes the elemental form by altering the miox of neutrons and protons in the atom.

Well, certainly the elemental thing, {protons and neutrons as matter [substantiate] a radioactive isotope}, is subject to decay.  But, does decay itself constitute an entangled matter, especially when the occasion of radioactive decay changes the original element into another element plus a radioactive emission?

0965 In other words, if radioactive decay occupies the slot for entangled matter, then the original elemental thingchanges form upon resolution of the confounding.

0966 What a weird analogy.

Nevertheless, allow me to continue.

02/7/26

Looking at Peeter Torop’s Article (2017) “Semiotics of Cultural History”  (Part 11 of 11)

1088 The final section, on cultural semiotics as semiotics of cultural history offers the trope… er… slogan… saying, “Culture is memory.”

On the fundament, the literary text2bf offers something to remember, if for no other reason than it is encoded as a text. Texts may survive to be available to the future.  Parole2af is often not so lucky.

Time is cruel

So many texts have been lost.  Precious few oral traditions remain intact.

The issue is twofold.  The text or the oral tradition needs to survive.  Also, a code for translation must be retained… or… recoverable.

This is one of the problems with the writing of ancient Mesopotamia, where there are few texts that have more than one script in a single document.

1089 Lotman spends many hours reflecting on text and code.

Some of his reflections end up in his book, Universe of the Mind.

1090 The author presents a table on Lotman and Uspenskij’s views of the temporal aspect of chronotopical analysis.

1091 Of course, the above table does not correspond to Torop’s original table2bf (fundament and derivative, Figure 1).

Perhaps, this table further develops and refines Bakhtin’s semiological structuralist model2c (Figure 2).  

However, it is hard not to imagine that the above figure translates into an interscope.

1092 Say what?

1093 The Tartu-Moscow School expresses two interscopes, the fundament culminates in the semiological structuralist model2c and the derivative rises to a yet-to-be-determined perspective-level actuality2c.

1094 Bakhtin’s notes and scribbles express two interscopes as well.  These two interscopes constitute two adjacent tiers within a model more expansive than the semiological2a structuralist2b model2c.  The construction of Torop’s article intimates that this expanse is well worth investigating.

1095 The way that Lotman’s thing includes time shows how Torop’s tables2af entangle a language2am of presence1b (as well as meaning1a).  Lotman recognizes2bm time2af as a formal requirement of the chronotope2am and forces Torop to construct his own table (Figure 4 on page 330) as a way to situate2bf that entanglement2a.

1096 Here is a juxtaposition of the virtual nested form in the category of secondness for the derivative interscope and Torop’s reconstruction of Lotman’s approach.

1097 A virtual nested form proceeds down a column in a three-level interscope.

Here are the columns in the realm of actuality2.

1098 In the general form of the derivative interscope, a perspective-level actuality2c (to be determined) brings the situation-level actuality of {cognition2bm [substantiates] social interaction2bf} into relation with the possibility of {a literary text2af [entangling] a language2am of meaning1a, presence1b and message1c}.

1099 For Torop’s table addressing Lotman (Figure 4), the perspective-level actuality2c of {semiotic arrangements2cm[substantiate] human conditions2cf} virtually brings the situation-level actuality of {Lotman’s recognition of time2bm[substantiates] Lotman’s thing with respect to time (as a three-level table)2bf} into relation with the content-level possibility that {Torop’s tables as text2af [entangle] the chronotope’s formal requirements2am of the normal context of the Tartu-Moscow School3a}.

1100 Oh yeah, that makes sense.

Cultural history manifests in the framework of the semiotics of the text, where the text is a representation of culture.

Bakhtin’s culture, that is.

Lotman’s culture, too.

1101 If Bakhtin’s insights are formalized as text by Torop’s tables, then Torop’s tables constitute a semiological structuralist model2c of Bakhtin’s insights2af and support the entanglement of a language2am that sounds very much like any language of interpretation.

What is the meaning1a, presence1b and message1c of the chronotope?

Lotman’s thing focuses on time and produces a variation of the fundament interscope.

Torop’s table of Lotman’s consideration of time produces a categorical stairway to a perspective-level actuality2c in the derivative interscope.

1102 Once again, what is Lotman’s thing?

Oh, yes, it is the archaeological recovery of an insight that is present… at least in potential… since the very origins of Slavic civilization.

In the beginning is the Word, and the Word as matter substantiates the human condition as form.

1103 Here is a picture.

Such is the resolution, of the confounding where history substantiates culture and culture entangles semiotics.

1104 My thanks to Peeter Torop, for putting pen to paper and for building the tables that demonstrate the fecundity and the surprising beauty of the first iteration of the Tartu-Moscow School of Semiotics.  May a second iteration follow.