Böcker i Toronto Studies in Semiotics and Communication-serien

A growing field of inquiry, biosemiotics is a theory of cognition and communication that unites the living and the cultural world. What is missing from this theory, however, is the unification of the information and computational realms of the non-living natural and technical world. Cybersemiotics provides such a framework.By integrating cybernetic information theory into the unique semiotic framework of C.S. Peirce, Soren Brier attempts to find a unified conceptual framework that encompasses the complex area of information, cognition, and communication science. This integration is performed through Niklas Luhmann's autopoietic systems theory of social communication. The link between cybernetics and semiotics is, further, an ethological and evolutionary theory of embodiment combined with Lakoff and Johnson's 'philosophy in the flesh.' This demands the development of a transdisciplinary philosophy of knowledge as much common sense as it is cultured in the humanities and the sciences. Such an epistemological and ontological framework is also developed in this volume.Cybersemiotics not only builds a bridge between science and culture, it provides a framework that encompasses them both. The cybersemiotic framework offers a platform for a new level of global dialogue between knowledge systems, including a view of science that does not compete with religion but offers the possibility for mutual and fruitful exchange.

C.S. Peirce, the founder of pragmatism, was an American philosopher and mathematician whose influence has been enormous on the field of semiotics. Merrell uses Pierce's theories to reply to the all-important question: "What and where is meaning?"

This updated second edition of Signs combines some of Sebeok?s most important essays with a new general introduction, introductory passages at the outset of each chapter, a glossary, and brief biographies of the major semioticians.

The author of the widely acclaimed Morphology of the Folktale has written an original, comprehensive, and exciting study on how humour works, and on everything you wanted to know about the genre, in a clear, approachable, and insightful manner.

Providing a dynamic, forward-looking reorientation towards a new universe of reference, Remodelling Communication makes a significant, productive contribution to communication theory.

Following Sebeok, Merrell reminds us that 'any and all investigation of nature and of the nature of signs and life must ultimately be semiotic in nature.'

Horst Ruthrof argues that the body is an integral part of this hermeneutic activity and proposes that language is no more than a symbolic grid which does not signify at all unless it is brought to life by non-linguistic signs.