5. System and Structure. Semiotics as Encyclopaedic Theory of Complexity

Cf. Fabbri (2005).

There are various reasons for that, not least the total indifference in the theory of systems, epistemology of models and those scientific reflections that, on the contrary, guided Eco in writing books such as The Open Work and A Theory of Semiotics (but also, later, Kant and the Platypus).

Cf. Eco (1968), Greimas and Courtés (1979), Fabbri (2005).

Cf. Greimas and Courtés (1979).

Greimas and Courtés (1979): “Text”. I worked extensively on these points in Paolucci (2010), Chap. 2.

This is also the definition itself that Peirce gives for iconism, i.e. the categorical principle that in his opinion is at the basis of every cognition.

Cf. Ferraris (2012), Ferraris and De Caro (2012).

Cf. Morin (1986).

The original french simply speaks of “language”.

Cf. Licata (2008).

Cf. Zinna (2001).

However, in Hjelmslev, things are much more complex if we consider not only works such as Prolegomena to a theory of language or Linguistic Essays, but the true masterpieces of structural linguistics such as The Category of Cases, “Structure générale des correlations linguistiques” (General structure of linguistic correlations) or Resumé of a theory of language. In these works there is a place within structural linguistics for everything Saussure believed pertained to the first dimension of value, i.e. all nonhomogeneous dependencies (or “non-uniform”, as it is often translated). The key concept in this sense is fragmentation, which for Hjelmslev flanks that of analysis. Indeed, analysis is the «description of an object by the uniform dependencies of other objects on it and on each other» (R, Def. 3). Instead, fragmentation is the description opposite to analysis, i.e. the «description of an object by the non-uniform dependence of other objects on it and on each other» (R, Def. 4). According to Hjelmslev, this is exactly what occurs in the participative relations between tensive terms or inside the «analysis by dimensions». «The common term for analysis and fragmentation is dissection» (R, Def. 4), i.e. «cutting», «severing!, as in anatomy, where parts and organs of the body are dissected, sectioned and separated in order to study or describe them. I have worked extensively on these issues, with special attention on the relation between participative oppositions, analyses, nonhomogeneous dependencies and the first dimension of value in Saussure in Paolucci (2010), Chap. 1.

Already in Raison et poétique du sens, and precisely in reference to the two meanings of Saussurean value, Claude Zilberberg (1983: 17) very correctly noted that the whole of generative semiotics «is constituted towards the adoption of the second principle and the non-theorised abandonment of the first» [TN: my translation].

Cf. Eco (1984), Carta (2012).

Cf. La Mantia (2012).

This is Morin’s definition of complexity (1986: 36–40).

Cf. Serres (1968, 1972).