Cognition and semiotic processing of luminous stimuli in various orders of the natural world
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José Luis Caivano
Jose Luis Caivano is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Architecture; director of the Research Program on Color and Visual Semiotics. He has published 2 books as author, 12 books as editor, and more than 100 articles in international journals such as
Color Research and Application, Die Farbe, Colour: Design & Creativity, Leonardo, Semiotica ,Visio , and others.
Abstract
Semiosis, and particularly visual semiosis, is not something unique to humans. All animal species, all living beings (including other forms of life outside the animal kingdom) have semiotic activity. But we can go even beyond that. It is possible to maintain that also in the world that is usually called “inanimate” or “inert” some kind of semiotic activity takes place. This paper proposes a view in which the elements and organisms in the natural environment, instead of being classified into separate categories are thought of as forming a continuous gradation from one to another, from lower to upper levels of complexity and semiotic behavior. From this, and from further arguments, it is possible to maintain that semiosis permeates the entire universe. A special point is made concerning the interaction of light stimuli with matter and living organisms, which in some cases has produced the systems of vision that many animals posses, and in some other cases produce reactions and changes that can be considered as a kind of protosemiotic activity.
About the author
Jose Luis Caivano is a professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Faculty of Architecture; director of the Research Program on Color and Visual Semiotics. He has published 2 books as author, 12 books as editor, and more than 100 articles in international journals such as Color Research and Application, Die Farbe, Colour: Design & Creativity, Leonardo, Semiotica, Visio, and others.
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Note
This article is a more developed version of a paper originally presented at the 11th Conference of the International Association for Visual Semiotics, Liege, Belgium, 8–11 September 2015.
©2015 by De Gruyter Mouton
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The emergence and nature of genres – a social-dynamic account
- Cognition and semiotic processing of luminous stimuli in various orders of the natural world
- The elusory kingdoms of the mind: Glosses on José Luis Caivano’s paper
- Swampman encounters an Immediate Object
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- The emergence and nature of genres – a social-dynamic account
- Cognition and semiotic processing of luminous stimuli in various orders of the natural world
- The elusory kingdoms of the mind: Glosses on José Luis Caivano’s paper
- Swampman encounters an Immediate Object
