Статья из журнала Semiotica, 2010, Issue 179, Pages 145–258While the conceptual history of the sign is immensely enlightening, history is never enough. If, before Augustine, it had occurred to no one that such diverse phenomena as are covered by this term had something in common, and if, in the time of Aquinas, Fonseca, and Poinsot, diferent usages of the term
were in competition, the reason is not simply intellectual confusion, but rather that meaning is of many kinds. In this essay, I have shifted the terrain from socio-history to phylogeny and ontogeny, suggesting that, in the child, as well as in the human species, perception is the primary type of meaning, whereas true signs are acquired much later, followed by signs systems and organism-independent artifacts. The whole point of having a semiotic theory, it is argued, is to be able to account for the di¤erences, and not only the similarities, of di¤erent kinds of meaning.Keywords: sign; intentionality; picture; Umwelt; phenomenology; ecological
psychology.
