The alchemy of terminology, symbols, and signs ...

Or, 'What is a nurse doing … in a chemistry class?' [Ack. See Estrada]

In reading, I was reminded that chemistry adopted mathematical symbols for its own use. Not only that, but as a core science (with physics and biology, emerging from natural philosophy) there is a historical development from the time of alchemy:

Please see (with a graphical abstract):

C.Wentrup, The Transition from Alchemical to Modern Chemical Symbolism: from Bergman and Guiton de Morveau to Hassenfratz and Adet, Higgins, Richter, Dalton, and Berzelius. ChemPlusChem. 2024, 89, e202400033. https://doi.org/10.1002/cplu.202400033

This journey matters today as the use of symbols, in mathematics or other fields can be a barrier to learning and hence personal and disciplinary progress:

Ollie Hunter. Lost in translation: Demystify scientific symbolic language to help your chemistry students overcome any potential learning barriers. Royal Society of Chemistry, 23 May 2022.

As acknowledged many times, it is easy to take a word, or concept from one discipline and 'fit' it to - or in another. Or is it? Estrada concludes:

“The complexities of modern science and modern society have created a need for scientific generalists, for men trained in many fields of science.” This is a paradigm of science in the XXI century, where the advent of such fields like the study of complex systems requires multidisciplinary approaches. But the previous phrase was not written in the XXI century. It is the starting sentence in The education of a scientific generalist” published in Science in 1949 (Bode et al. 1949).' p.161. 

'Mathematics has been defined as the science of patterns. Thus, mathematicians search for “numerical patterns, patterns of shape, patterns of motion, patterns of behavior, voting patterns in a population, patterns of repeating chance events, and so on” (Byers 2010). Once a pattern is identified either in chemistry or in mathematics, the researcher can proceed to the clarification of the systematic rule which is behind that pattern. This is evident in the analogy used here between code-breaking and structure elucidation. This attachment to patterns makes both chemists and mathematicians very prone to the use of pictures. An organic chemist hardly can say anything about the chemical reactivity (or any physical or chemical property) of a molecule from its exact quantum-mechanical Hamiltonian. However, she will construct a complete narrative about the physical and chemical properties of a molecular structure drawn in a piece of paper, even if such a molecule is completely imagined. The power of pictures in mathematics is discussed in the book Mathematics and the Unexpected by Ivar Ekeland (1990) where its value is recognized as fundamental in the early stages of the development of mathematical ideas. This also introduces a very important analogy among chemists and mathematicians. Namely, that they use a proper language in their respective fields. While physicists use the mathematical language in their investigations, chemists use the sophisticated language of chemical formulas and specific symbols to represent charges, rearrangements, partial equilibria, etc. These “invented” languages mainly appear only in Chemistry and in Mathematics, making them unique intellectual activities.' p.162.

With thanks to the author, Ernesto Estrada IFISC for additional thoughts and insights:

Estrada, E. What is a mathematician doing…in a chemistry class?. Found Chem 26, 141–166 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10698-023-09497-4

CFP: Nonsense in Language and Thought

Guest editor: 
Krystian Bogucki (Polish Academy of Sciences)

Deadline for submissions: 
the 31st of July 2026 

Description:

Studia Semiotyczne (Semiotic Studies) invites submissions for a special issue of the journal. Papers should be written in English and prepared for blind review. 

An interest in nonsense was a hallmark of the early analytic philosophy. Bertrand Russell (1908) thought that a theory of nonsense could help us avoid some daunting paradoxes in logic. Ludwig Wittgenstein (1922, 1953) and Rudolf Carnap (1931) recognised nonsense as a fundamental concept for philosophical criticism. They claimed that much of philosophical discourse is defective in the most fundamental way: it is neither true nor false, it does not consist of thoughts and propositions ? it is nonsense. According to the early Wittgenstein, philosophers want to describe the nature of the world, thought, language and ethics, but they unwittingly fall into nonsense. The Tractatus was supposed to free us from this troublesome position by presenting a perspicuous notation. On the other hand, the later Wittgenstein claimed that we should compare deceptive philosophical images with our ordinary ways of thinking and speaking in order to avoid nonsense. Philosophical problems arise when language goes on holiday, so we must always remember the everyday use of concepts. For Carnap, propositions should be reducible to sense data and constructed according to the rules of logical syntax in order to be meaningful. 

Later, the topic of nonsense was discussed by Alfred Ayer, Gilbert Ryle, Willard V. O. Quine, Arthur Prior, Richard Routley and Georg H. von Wright, among others. Since the late 1970s, however, the interest in nonsense has faded. Only recently, some important works have been published. The first important stimulus came from foundational works on theories of nonsense (Cappelen 2012, 2013; Camp 2004; Glock 2015; Magidor 2009, 2013). The second source of the revival of interest in nonsense was Wittgenstein scholarship on the austere and substantial conceptions of nonsense (Conant 2001; Diamond 1995, 2005; Glock 2004; Hacker 2003; Moore 2003; Sullivan 2003). Some works also examined the relation of nonsense to other phenomena (Gotham 2017, Keller and Keller 2021, Shaw 2015, Sorensen 2003). 

The important questions to be addressed in the forthcoming volume are (to name but a few):

• What are the sources of nonsense? 
• Are some parts of philosophical and non-philosophical discourse nonsense?
• What is the relation between nonsense and figurative speech?
• Is it at all possible to be wrong whether our own thoughts are meaningful? 

We hope that the special issue of Studia Semiotyczne will further strengthen and deepen the scholarly interest in nonsense. 

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

Theories of nonsense
Nonsense and logical syntax
Nonsense and category mistakes
Nonsense and figurative speech (e.g. metaphor, metonymy)
Nonsense and fiction
History of the concept of nonsense (in particular Wittgenstein's and the Vienna Circle's views on nonsense)
Nonsense and understanding
Nonsense and illusions of sense
Nonsense and quantification
Nonsense and linguistics
Nonsense and ineffability
Nonsense, knowledge-how and knowledge-that
Logics of nonsense
Nonsense and semantic paradoxes
How to diagnose philosophical nonsense?
Metaphilosophical and methodological issues concerning nonsense

In order to submit the paper one is kindly asked to submit the manuscript by sending it to:
krystian.bogucki AT ifispan.edu.pl and studiasemiotyczne AT pts.edu.pl 

All submitted papers will be double-blind peer-reviewed.

My source (and emphasis):
Philos-L "The Liverpool List" is run by the Department of Philosophy, University of Liverpool 
https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/philosophy/philos-l/

Praying ... for PEACE

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES              

humanistic ------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL   

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PRAY	PREY
PRAY	PREY

Call for Papers “THE CULTURAL EXPLOSION OF AI: ...

Navigating the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence, Society, and Culture”

Artificial intelligence has burst into the cultural space with the speed of an explosion. As with any powerful explosion, its initial impact is a spectacular blinding flash, followed by a shock wave with real effects. Perhaps we are still at the very beginning, but often the intensity of the blinding flash is proportional to the real effect that follows, both in terms of sweeping away existing forms and as long-term cultural “radiation”.

According to Lotman, a cultural explosion is a period of transformation when rapid and large-scale changes occur in cultural systems, leading to a significant increase in the creation of new information. It is estimated that artificial intelligence produces as much cultural text in one year as humanity has produced throughout its millennia-long history until the advent of the digital age. More interestingly, this new textual production is entering its most productive phase with the invention of Transformer architecture, which is almost a literal algorithmic realization of Lotman's concept of translation — the main mechanism of semiotic metabolism in the Semiosphere.

Training Large Language Models (LLMs), which is the foundation of AI, suspiciously resembles the way Umberto Eco models culture in the structure of a rhizome, which computer scientists call a "neural network." His encyclopedic model is based precisely on what LLMs extract from huge arrays of existing text—the statistic constancy of sign usage. In a polemic with textual immanentists, Eco postulates as part of the reader's encyclopedic competence the ability to inferentially reproduce the possible contexts of sign usage that make up the text. For many, the “magic” of artificial intelligence in its current form lies in its understanding of our questions to it, achieved with the Attention Mechanism, which, as a principle of cooperation between author and reader, is quite literally described in "The Role of the Reader" (1994).

The hardest to find were a fruitful correspondences between generative semiotics and generative media like Chat GPT, as paradoxical as that may sound, but surely there are such correspondences, and they are likely to be discovered in the future. In any case, as a theory of meaning generation on the one hand and an endless machine for creating meaningful texts on the other, the cultural explosion of AI will not leave this breed of semioticians unemployed.

We welcome contributions on the following key topics, but not limited to them:

- Semiotic models of AI generated cultural content
- Semiotic analysis of AI texts generation
- Semiotic theory of generative media
- Socio-cultural consequences of AI's advent
- Transdisciplinary collaboration between semiotics and informatics
- AI in creative practices in the arts
- AI in creative practices in marketing and advertising
- AI in research and education
- Cultural-economic implications of AI
- AI in pop culture
- AI in videogames and XR

Send here your proposal for papers (200-300 words): DigitASC AT nbu.bg

Deadline for the abstracts : 31 January 2025;

Deadline for full papers: 15 June 2025;

Deadline for the final revised papers: 31 August 2025;

Publication: December 2025

Digital Age in Semiotics & Communication, a journal from the Southeast European Center for Semiotic Studies at the New Bulgarian University and founded by Prof. Kristian Bankov, explores the new forms of knowledge, social and linguistic interaction, and cultural phenomena generated by the advent of the Internet and information technologies.

A topic is chosen for each issue by the editorial board, but the topics will be always related to the issues of the digital environment. The working language of the journal is English. It uses double-blind review, meaning that both the reviewer’s and the author’s identities are concealed from each other throughout the review process.

Link to the archive of the first six issues: https://ojs.nbu.bg/index.php/DASC/issue/archive

For more information and submission of papers: DigitASC AT nbu.bg

My source:
--

Departamento de Filosofia, Comunicação e Informação
Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra
3004-530 Coimbra, Portugal

E-mail: iestudosfilosoficos AT gmail.com
Sítio Web: http://www.uc.pt/fluc/ief
YouTube: https://youtube.com/@uidief
Academia: https://coimbra.academia.edu/ief

Hodges' model: An architectonic sense-making tool

"Translation by architectonic map is a sense-making tool inspired by Peirce's use of the term, architectonic, to describe the systematic form of a body of knowledge. Theorists create a structure around which their approach to understanding human conduct is built. Familiarity with the overall structure facilitates generalized discourse among those interested in the framework. An architectonic map identifies all the major components of a scientific text or canon, including its assumptions, concepts, propositions, and theories, and the paths connecting these components. Mapping architectonics is an intersemiotic (across two different types of sign systems) translation process when the translation product is a diagram, and an intralingual process when the product is a narrative." p.111. (My emphasis)

"Models employ symbols (terms and their meanings), but also have an iconic function (a design meant to represent a object or process in important ways) and an indexical function (notation indicating and pointing to persons, processes, relationships, organizations)." p.112. 

Individual
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HUMANISTIC  --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

 SOCIOLOGY  :    POLITICAL 

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Group

person concepts critical thinking	person maps framework
languages dialogue - narrative shared understanding social worlds* anthropology	organisations communities of practice professions, scope of practice *translation here too: policy, power, status ...

Forte, J. A. (2009). Interactionist Practice: A Signs, Symbols, and Social Worlds Approach. Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 32(1), 86–122. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23263237

"Diagrammatic Immanence"

Diagrammatic Immanence

"There is thus a naturally 'pragmatic' epistemology intrinsic to categories: from the standpoint of category theory objects are investigated and known only via their interactions with other objects, not 'in themselves''. The space of possible maps from one object to another determines what can be known of those objects as such. Over the past several decades, category theory has proven extraordinarily successful in unifying diverse fields of mathematics and providing a less arbitrary and more productive foundation for mathematics than set theory. Because of its intrinsic orientation towards relations, it connects more readily and with fewer idealist assumptions than set theory to the real world and its component structures." p.10. 

"A meaning of whatever sort is necessarily determined by its position in a space of various intersecting structures, each with its own rich tangle of relations. Each of the 'single' topics being discussed opens up internally into a complex arrangement of mappings between, words, sentences, semantics, phonemes - all the systematic orders of differential relations that structuralism has taught us to recognise. And these orders are themselves embedded in actual material and historical processes.

The seemingly intractable complexity of actual language (parole and not only langue) is one of the reasons linguistic semantics have tended to resist mathematical and logical formalisation so stubbornly. Meaning is enacted in singular events and in this way resists abstract treatment. Yet at the same time, meaning presupposes translatability.  All the singular grain of the interlocking systems of some actual conversational exchange connects potentially to the systems of innumerable others. Any adequate categorical representation of linguistic events and, more generally, semiotic processes must be both rigorous and and flexible enough to track the logical and structural underpinnings of meaning and at the same time facilitate the blurring and affordances of translation." p.141.

Gangle, R. (2016). Diagrammatic Immanence: Category Theory and Philosophy. Edinburgh University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.3366/j.ctt1bgzc38

studium and punctum c/o Rose (2012)

'Care' as a Photograph - duality . . .

Visual Methodologies

"It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world; they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures." [Barthes 1982: 5-6] p.121.

 "The referent is there in photographic images in ways it is not in other sorts of visual imagery, Barthes argues. And a result, he suggests that photographs can be interpreted in two ways. First, there is a level of the studium, which is a culturally informed reading of the image, one that interprets the signs of the photographs. But he says that some photographs produce a different response, which is a second kind of reading, by containing what he called a punctum. A punctum is unintentional and ungeneralisable; it is a sensitive point in an image which pricks, bruises, disturbs a particular viewer out of their usual viewing habits. And he went so far as to suggest that 'while the studium is ultimately always coded, the punctum is not [Barthes 1982: 51]. That is, there are points in some photographs that escape signifiers and shock the viewer with their 'intractable reality' [Barthes 1982: 119]. And while shock is something that most adverts aim to achieve, it is the case that recent advertising is relying more and more, not only on the transfer of meaning between signs, but on the evocation of a feeling or a mood attached to a brand that is difficult to analyse using semiological terminology." p.122.

On twitter* @h2cm over the years I've noted a certain stance, an aversion even, to generalist approaches in nursing (as suggested apparently by Hodges' model). The simplicity of Hodges' model in its template (basic) form belies how the model can address both generalist and specialist practice and theory. Bluntly: choose your domain; slice, dice and drill as you wish. 

Rose's reference to Barthes, in-particular studium and punctum stands out. We can equate the former with the situation as found, the clues provided in the referral details, the initial cues, data and information gleaned upon assessment. What might be expected, so to speak, including assumptions. 

But the punctum, may be described - interpreted in person-centred (yet professionally balanced) terms. Especially in assessment, planning, intervention and evaluation. The punctum signifies salience: what is important to this person. If the academic emphasis is upon ‘reflection in action’, ‘reflection on action’, ‘single loop learning’ and ‘double loop learning’ (Schön, 1987), can the punctum represent empathy, rapport, the sustenance of dignity and respect, an individual's sense-making? 

Our photograph, taken through Hodges' model is comprised of four frames. The photograph is  compound, and with several exposures it can be animated.^ When played, it reveals a hint, a fraction, an interval in an individual's (potential) health career. A light upon the several-fold determinants of health and their influence and impact upon life chances experienced and exercised to date - and to follow (climate change). 
 

Rose, G. (2012). Visual Methodologies: An Introduction to Researching with Visual Materials (3rd ed.). London: Sage. PB. [Now in 5th edition.] Image - Amazon.

Schön , D. (1987). Educating the reflective practitioner. San Francisco, CA: Jossy Bass. 

*Yes, I know.

^The Producer - Director depends on your Spiritual stance.

Rose (2012) now with student nurses [on placement from Chester University].

Spheres of influence and integration

Ack:

International Open Seminar on Semiotics: 

a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing

 

INDIVIDUAL

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HUMANISTIC --------------------------------------  MECHANISTIC      

SOCIOLOGY  :   POLITICAL 

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	BIOSPHERE
SEMIOSPHERE

 

My source via Philos-L "The Liverpool List":

⚘A Holistic Approach to Semiotics: Juri Lotman ☀ Marek Tamm

 

Universe of the Mind
A Semiotic Theory of Culture
Yuri M. Lotman
Introduction by Umberto Eco

 

I actually had hold of a copy of this book in Hay-on-Wye last month, but back-on-the-shelf it had to go. Must now buy a copy. The title and the introduction by Eco caught my eye initially. Lotman's thought and its fluidity - individual-collective; whole-part ... has much to offer in studying Hodges' model. 

 

 

[Next visit to Hay-on-Wye as advised, I will email in advance, so if needed books ( just one or two ;-) ] can be brought from the warehouse to Green Ink.]

Book image: Indiana University Press

Call for Papers: Diagrams 2021

The organization of Diagrams 2021 is making rapid progress. Five outstanding Keynote speakers have now been announced. Also, the free, online conference has adopted a novel approach to the program structure that is expected to provide fair access to the conference across multiple time zones.

 Find more details in the 2^nd call for papers attached below or on the webpage www.diagrams-conference.org/2021 - and do pass on the information if you know researchers or students for whom it may be relevant.

Best,

Mikkel Willum Johansen 

Publicity Chair

Diagrams 2021

 

*** Call for Papers: Diagrams 2021 ***

12^th International Conference on the Theory and Application of Diagrams

September 28 – 30, 2021

Virtual Event

www.diagrams-conference.org/2021

 

*** Highlights ***

 

- FREE REGISTRATION

- Proceedings published by Springer

- Three Tracks: Main, Philosophy, and Psychology and Education.

- Graduate Symposium

- Best Paper and Best Student Paper awards

- Submission dates in April 2021.

 

***************** Keynote Speakers Announced *******************

Shaaron Ainsworth, University of Nottingham

Daniel Rosenberg, University of Oregon

Katarina Scheiter, University of Tubingen

Atsushi Shimojima, Doshisha University

Frederik Stjernfelt, Aalborg University of Copenhagen

 

Francesco Bellucci, University of Bologna, is the Inspirational ECR Speaker for Diagrams 2021

******************* Novel Program Schedule *********************

Diagrams 2021 will adopt a novel approach to scheduling talks, to accommodate different time zones across the globe. See

http://www.diagrams-conference.org/2021/index.php/program/

for more details.

*************************************************************

Diagrams is the only conference series that provides a united forum for all areas that are concerned with the study of diagrams and has a multidisciplinary emphasis.

For 2021, *MAIN TRACK* conference topics include, but are not limited to:

– applications of diagrams,
– computational models of reasoning with, and interpretation of, diagrams,
– design of diagrammatic notations,
– diagram understanding by humans or machines,
– diagram aesthetics and layout,– evaluation of diagrammatic notations,
– graphical communication and literacy,
– heterogeneous notations involving diagrams,
– history of diagrammatic notations,
– information visualization using diagrams,
– nature of diagrams and diagramming,
– novel technologies for diagram use,
– reasoning with diagrams,
– semiotics of diagrams,
– software to support the use of diagrams, and
– usability and human-computer interaction issues concerning diagrams.

In addition to the main track, Diagrams 2021 will have two further tracks: Philosophy, and Psychology and Education; for their topics of interest, see

http://www.diagrams-conference.org/2021/index.php/calls/main-track/

http://www.diagrams-conference.org/2021/index.php/calls/philosophy/

http://www.diagrams-conference.org/2021/index.php/calls/psychology-of-diagrams/.

 

If the main research contribution of your submission is considered to fit either of the other tracks then you are strongly encouraged to submit to the respective special track, each of which has a dedicated program committee.

Authors of accepted submissions will be expected to be in attendance at the virtual conference to present their research and respond to questions presented by delegates. All presenters must accept that it is not within the power of the organisers to prevent delegates from recording  talks. However, when registering, delegates will be asked to confirm that they will not record any part of the conference.

*****************************************************************

Submission Categories

The conference will include presentations of refereed Papers, Abstracts, and Posters, alongside a graduate symposium.

We invite submissions for peer review that focus on any aspect of diagrams research, as follows:

- Long Papers (16 pages),

- Abstracts (3 pages),

- Short Papers (8 pages),

- Posters (4 pages – this is both a maximum and minimum requirement).

More details and all important dates can be found on at www.diagrams-conference.org/2021.

*****************************************************************

________________________________

Mikkel Willum Johansen

Associate professor

Department of Science Education

University of Copenhagen