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The polysemy of the sign: From quantum computing to the garden of forking paths
Published/Copyright:
April 24, 2008
Abstract
In both natural language and biology, signs are polysemous, with a range of possible meanings before interaction-in-context determines their value. What is the meaning of polysemy? What is the role of polysemy in linguistic and biological systems? In this paper, I present the idea that organisms function by using two di¤erent, orthogonal modes of communication: digital (involving discrete units) and analogue (involving continuous values). I argue that the polysemy of the sign, here metaphorically interpreted as a ‘superposition,’ is necessary for orchestrating these modes and tying them to a concrete context of interaction.
Published Online: 2008-04-24
Published in Print: 2008-April
© 2008 by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG, D-10785 Berlin
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Keywords for this article
bio-semiotics;
polysemy;
digital/analogue;
superposition;
interdisciplinary research
Articles in the same Issue
- Vicissitudes de la pulsion dans la théorie narrative. Entre mythicité et littérarité
- Imitation, intertextuality, and hyperreality in U.S. higher education
- An approach to context in human-computer interaction
- The status of poetry as an aesthetic object
- L'aspectualite et le tempo dans ‘Encore L'amour’ de Pierre Reverdy
- Application of Peircean symbol to symbol-mediated dialogic interpreting activity
- Semiotic phenomenology and the ‘dialectical approach’ to intercultural communication: Paradigm crisis and the actualities of research practice
- The polysemy of the sign: From quantum computing to the garden of forking paths
- Online brands: Branding, possible worlds, and interactive grammars
- Compound constructions: A reply to Bundgaard et al.
- Sign and the lambda-term
- Semiotics unbounded: An editorial comment
- Understanding and misunderstanding: A theoretical-philosophical approach to semiotics
- Strolling through Semiotics Unbounded
- Seeking other routes
- The ongoing critique of dialogical reason
- Is the semiosic sphere's center everywhere and its circumference nowhere?
- Semiotics Unbounded and Japan
- Semiotics undoubtedly unbounded
- Sign machines in the framework of Semiotics Unbounded
- Interpretive semiotics
