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The Age of the Sign: New Light on the Role of the Fourteenth Century in the History of Semiotics*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Ludger Kaczmarek
Ludger Kaczmarek
Affiliation:
University of Münster
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Extract

Semiotics, the age-old investigation of signs, is still striving for acknowledgement as a scientific (and academic) discipline. Though the ‘linguistic turn’ in the philosophical disciplines seemed to be followed by a ‘semiotic turn’ in many sciences during the 1970s, efforts were not crowned by great success. When seen from a certain distance, a definition of semiotics as a discipline can only be obtained from its history. Research into the sources of the human pre-occupation with signs, and with concepts or conceptions of signs, is really desirable and even necessary when a field of considerable scientific interest at the brink of being awarded the rank of a discipline runs the risk of getting lost between the unificationism of the Morris-type and the elegance of pseudo-mathematical empty classificationism (such as demonstrated in the late Max Bense's Stuttgart School) on the one side, and profitable exploitation of the sign's popularized design qualities on the other.

Type
Critical Notices/Études critiques
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 31 , Issue 3: Philosophy in the Fourteenth Century , Summer 1992 , pp. 509 - 516
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1992

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References

Notes

1 For modern systematic philosophical reconstructions of the mentioned and related terms and their respective relations (apart from the classic ‘semiotic triangle’ in Ogden, C. K. and Richards, I. A., The Meaning of Meaning: A Study of the Influence of Language upon Thought and of the Science of Symbolism, 10th ed. [1923; rpt. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1949], p. 11)Google Scholar, see the synopses and graphs in Bunge, Mario, Treatise on Basic Philosophy, Vol. 1: Sense and Reference (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1974)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sellars, Wilfrid, “Towards a Theory of Predication,” in James Bogen and James E. McGuire, How Things Are: Studies in Predication and the History of Philosophy and Science (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985), p. 285–322.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Represented most aptly by Heidegger's reading of Thomas of Erfurt's modi significandi in Jhe mistakenly assumed context of Duns Scotus's philosophy.

3 Cf. Peirce, Charles Sanders, Collected Papers, edited by Hartshorne, Charles and Burks, A. W. (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1965), Vol. 2, nr. 227Google Scholar: “Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I have shown, only another name for semiotic …, the quasi-necessary, or formal, doctrine of signs.”

4 For those interested in recent work devoted to medieval symbolism and pansemiotics, in the roles and values of symbols, signs and things in the hermeneutic-exegetical theories and practice of the early and late Middle Ages, I would like to add to Biard's bibliography: Ohly, Friedrich, Schriften zur Bedeutungsforschung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1977)Google Scholar; Brinkmann, Hennig, Mittelalterliche Hermeneutik (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Eco, Umberto, Arte e bellezza nell'estetica medievale (Milano: Bompiani, 1987)Google Scholar.

5 According to Peirce, Collected Papers, Vol. 1, nr. 29.

6 An important study on Burley's theory of language not mentioned by Biard is Kunze, Peter, “Satzwahrheit und sprachliche Verweisung. Walter Burleighs Lehre von der ‘suppositio termini’ in Auseinandersetzung mit der mittelaterlichen Tradition und der Logik William's of Ockham” (Ph.D. dissertation, Freiburg im Breisgau, 1980)Google Scholar; see also Kunze's introduction and commentary to his translation (with Latin text) of Burley, 's De puritate artis logicae: Von der Reinheit der Kunst der Logik. Erster Traktat. Von den Eigenschaften der Termini (Hamburg: Meiner, 1988).Google Scholar

7 Cf. especially Biard, Joël, “Sémiologie et théorie des catégories chez Albert de Saxe,” in Biard, J., ed., Intinéraires d'Albert de Saxe. Paris-Vienne au XIVe siècle, Études de philosophie médiévale, XIX, (Paris: Vrin, 1991), p. 87–100.Google Scholar

8 For an additional study of the modi significandi pertaining to our question, see Gabler, Darius, Die semantischen und syntaktischen Funktionen im Tractatus “De modis significandi sive grammatica speculativa” des Thomas von Erfurt. Die Probleme der mittelalterlichen Semiotik (Bern: Peter Lang, 1987).Google Scholar

9 Cf. Biard, Intinéraires d'Albert de Saxe, p. 242–88.

10 Cf. Lorenz, Sönke, Studium generale Erfordense. Zum Erfurter Schulleben im 13. und 14. Jahrhundert (Stuttgart: Hiersemann, 1989).Google Scholar

11 Ibid., p. 233–34.

12 This is not the place to discuss such questions. For closer discussion see the introduction to my forthcoming edition of the Improbatio modorum significandi sive Destructiones modorum significandi, Bochumer Studien zur Philosophie (Amsterdam: Grüner, 1992). For a discussion of the text in Erfurt about 1378–98, see also Kneepkens, C. H., “Erfurt, Ampl. Q. 70A: A Quaestiones-Commentary on the Second Part of Alexander de Villa Dei's ‘Doctrinale’ by Marsilius of Inghen? An Explorative Note on a Specimen of Conceptualist Grammar,” Vivarium, 28 (1990): 26–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Let me add a study of considerable semiotic interest which, because of its somewhat cryptic title, escaped most researchers on Pierre d'Ailly, viz., Hübener, Wolfgang, “Der theologisch-philosophische Konservativismus des Jean Gerson,” in Zimmermann, Albert, ed., Antiqui und Moderni, Miscellanea Mediaevalia, Vol. 9 (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1974), p. 171–200.Google Scholar

13 See the warning issued against interpretations of Augustine as advocating a philosophically relevant theory of language in Flasch, Kurt, Augustin. Einführung in sein Denken (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1980), p. 121ff.Google Scholar

14 For a recent and most interesting study — of the ‘constructive type’ — on the properties of terms, signification and supposition, see Dufour, Carlos A., Die Lehre der Proprietates Terminorum. Sinn und Referenz in mittelalterlicher Logik (München: Philosophia, 1989).Google Scholar

15 For a critical assessment of the being and essence of language — in contrast to its organization and functioning — especially during the Middle Ages, see Kobusch, Theo, Sein und Sprache. Historische Grundlegung einer Ontologie der Sprache (Leiden: Brill, 1987).Google Scholar