(Soup is nutritious but not very filling- just like this glossary)
Just as knowledge in general is never complete, neither is this glossary. It’s just meant to be a tool to help organize your thoughts while enjoying the rest of your meal.
Archive: documents or records relating to the activities, business dealings, etc., of a person, family, corporation, association, community, or nation. Archives contain primary source documents that have accumulated over the course of an individual or organization's lifetime. In general, archives consist of records that have been selected for permanent or long-term preservation on grounds of their enduring cultural, historical, or evidentiary value. Archival records are normally unpublished and almost always unique, unlike books or magazines for which many identical copies exist. This means that archives (the places) are quite distinct from libraries with regard to their functions and organization, although archival collections can often be found within library buildings. According to Yuri Lotman, when something biological or technological becomes obsolete, “it finds a resting place in a museum, as a dead exhibit. In the history of art, however, works which come down to us from remote cultural periods continue to play a part in cultural development as living factors. A work of art may ‘die’ and come alive again; once thought to be out of date, it may become modern and even prophetic for what it tells of the future.” He goes on to say, “everything contained in the actual memory of culture is directly or in directly part of that culture’s synchrony. “(Lotman 127). Burroughs on the ancient Mayans: “No way to know if we have here the sonnets, the Mona Lisa or the remnants of a Sears Roebuck catalogue after the old out-house burned down in a brush fire. A whole civilization went up in smoke…”
Avant-garde: the advance group in any field, especially in the arts, whose works are characterized chiefly by unorthodox and experimental methods; represents a pushing of the boundaries of what is accepted as the norm, primarily in the cultural realm. The term has out-lived its relevancy, becoming diluted and stripped of its original meaning. According to Hans Berten, this suggests that our culture has entered a new post-modern age, when the former modernist ways of thinking have been rendered redundant (1995). This redundancy is illustrated with the very term “neo-avant-garde.” Hal Foster critiques Theory of the Avant-Garde by Peter Burger: “…his very premise is problematic- that one theory can comprehend the avant-garde, that all its activities can be subsumed under the project to destroy the false autonomy of bourgeois art. And yet these problems pale next to his dismissal of the post-war avant-garde as merely neo…”
Deconstruction: an approach, introduced by French philosopher Jacques Derrida, which pursues the meaning of a text to the point of exposing the supposed contradictions and internal oppositions upon which it is founded—supposedly showing that those foundations are irreducibly complex, unstable, or impossible. Deconstruction generally tries to demonstrate that any text is not a discrete whole but contains several irreconcilable and contradictory meanings; that any text therefore has more than one interpretation; that the text itself links these interpretations inextricably; that the incompatibility of these interpretations is irreducible; and thus that an interpretative reading cannot go beyond a certain point.
Dwelling: from dictionary.com: “a building or place of shelter to live in; place of residence.” From Heidegger: “To dwell, to be set at peace, means to remain at peace within the free sphere that safeguards each thing in its nature. The fundamental character of dwelling is this sparing and preserving.” (Consider how this “sparing and preserving” relates to archives). Heidegger is concerned with the relationship between building and dwelling, both etymologically and conceptually. He wrote: “We attain to dwelling, so it seems, only by means of building. The latter, building, has the former, dwelling, as its goal. Still, not every building is a dwelling.” He included his thoughts on how language evolves, why it evolves, and the ways in which former meanings and usages of a word still fundamentally influence contemporary usage. ‘Building’ and ‘dwelling’, like ‘house’ and ‘home’, are two words which can be interchangeable but are unique in their connotations. Discussion of these two words also allows Heidegger to tie in another one of his favorite themes: the nature of human existence.
Epistemology: The branch of philosophy that investigates the origin, nature, methods, and limits of human knowledge. Key Questions: How do we know what we know? What is knowledge? How is it acquired?
Knowledge: The definition of knowledge is a matter of on-going debate among philosophers in the field of epistemology. The classical definition, described but not ultimately endorsed by Plato, specifies that a statement must meet three criteria in order to be considered knowledge: it must be justified, true, and believed. Some dictionary definitions include: clear and certain mental apprehension; something that is or may be known; awareness, as of a fact or circumstance. Wittgenstein observed that one can say "He believes it, but it isn't so", but not "He knows it, but it isn't so". In most realistic cases, it is not possible to have an exhaustive understanding of an information domain, so then we have to live with the fact that our knowledge is always not complete, that is, partial. Maintaining skepticism means that a scientist will never be absolutely certain when they are correct and when they are not. It is thus an irony of proper scientific method that one must doubt even when correct, in the hopes that this practice will lead to greater convergence on the truth in general.
Language: Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication. A language is a system of signs for encoding and decoding information. The English word derives from Latin lingua, "language, tongue." This metaphoric relation between language and the tongue exists in many languages and testifies to the historical prominence of spoken languages. When used as a general concept, "language" refers to the cognitive faculty that enables humans to learn and use systems of complex communication. Human language is highly complex in that it is based on a set of rules relating symbols to their meanings, thereby forming an infinite number of possible utterances from a finite number of elements. Language is thought to have originated when early hominids first started cooperating, adapting earlier systems of communication based on expressive signs to include a theory of other minds and shared intentionality. This development is thought to have coincided with an increase in brain volume. All languages rely on the process of semiosis to relate a sign with a particular meaning. These signs can be written, verbal, or gesture. What makes human language unique? Human language is unique in comparison to other forms of communication, such as those used by other animals, because it allows humans to produce an infinite set of utterances from a finite set of element, and because the symbols and grammatical rules of any particular language are largely arbitrary, so that the system can only be acquired through social interaction. The known systems of communication used by animals, on the other hand, can only express a finite number of utterances that are mostly genetically transmitted. Human language is also unique in that its complex structure has evolved to serve a much wider range of functions than any other kinds of communication system. The principle of linguistic relativity is the idea that differences in the way languages encode cultural and cognitive categories affect the way people think, so that speakers of different languages will tend to think and behave differently depending on the language they use.
Memory: the mental capacity of retaining/reviving information or of recognizing previous experiences; the length of time over which recollection extends, as in “a time within the memory of living persons.” Also: the tendency for a material, system, etc, to show effects that depend on its past treatment or history; the ability of a material, etc, to return to a former state after a constraint has been removed.
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order tosuggest a resemblance. From the Greek, "meta" means after, along with, or beyond. "Phor" is from the Latin, and means the bearer of something else. Etymologically, metaphor is something that bears a message beyond that which is apparent. We learn about metaphors as students, as just another element of language, such as participles and compound sentences, but metaphors are much more than a figure of speech or a grammatical structure. If definitions are the bones of our language, then metaphors are the muscle.
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order tosuggest a resemblance. From the Greek, "meta" means after, along with, or beyond. "Phor" is from the Latin, and means the bearer of something else. Etymologically, metaphor is something that bears a message beyond that which is apparent. We learn about metaphors as students, as just another element of language, such as participles and compound sentences, but metaphors are much more than a figure of speech or a grammatical structure. If definitions are the bones of our language, then metaphors are the muscle.
Narrative: a story or account of events, experiences, or the like, whether true or fictitious. In fine arts, it is the representation of stories or events pictorially or sculpturally. Along with exposition, argumentation and description, narration, broadly defined, is one of four rhetorical modes of discourse. Stories are an important aspect of culture. Many works of art and most works of literature tell stories; indeed, most of the humanities involve stories. Owen Flanagan of Duke University, a leading consciousness researcher, writes that “Evidence strongly suggests that humans in all cultures come to cast their own identity in some sort of narrative form. We are inveterate storytellers.”
Order: (Dictionary.com lists 56 different definitions and uses for the word order. That fact alone is interesting in the context of this week’s debate.) In philosophy, the natural order is the moral source from which natural law seeks to derive its authority. It encompasses the natural relations of beings to one another, in the absence of law, which natural law attempts to reinforce. In contrast, divine law seeks authority from God, and positive law seeks authority from government. Some interesting dictionary definitions include: the disposition of things following one after another, as in space or time; succession or sequence; a condition in which each thing is properly disposed with reference to other things and to its purpose; methodical or harmonious arrangement; formal disposition or array.
Power: a measure of an entity's ability to control its environment, including the behavior of other entities. The term authority is often used for power, perceived as legitimate by the social structure. Power can be seen as evil or unjust, but the exercise of power is accepted as endemic to humans as social beings. Lotman describes the power of the nucleus of the semiosphere: when one part of the semiosphere defines its own structure (whether its language, politics or structure) it “strives to extend these norms over the whole semiosphere… the dialect of Florence, for instance, became the literary language or Italy, the legal norms of Rome became the laws of the whole Roman Empire, and the etiquette of the court of Louis XIV became the etiquette of all the courts of Europe.” (Lotman 128). What do people mean when they say “Knowledge is power?” Some fun quotes: “Life is a search after power: and this is an element with which the world is so saturated,—there is no chink or crevice in which it is not lodged,—that no honest seeking goes unrewarded.” –Ralph Waldo Emerson. "Power may be at the end of a gun, but sometimes it's also at the end of the shadow or the image of a gun.” –Jean Genet
Semiosis: is any form of activity, conduct, or process that involves signs, including the production of meaning. Briefly – semiosis is sign process. The term was introduced by Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) to describe a process that interprets signs as referring to their objects. One school of thought argues that language is the semiotic prototype and its study illuminates principles that can be applied to other sign systems. The opposing school argues that there is a metasign system and that language is simply one of many codes for communicating meaning, citing the way in which human infants learn about their environment before they have acquired language. Whichever may be right, a preliminary definition of semiosis is any action or influence for communicating meaning by establishing relationships between signs which are to be interpreted by an audience.
Semiosphere: the sphere of semiosis in which sign processes operate in the set of all interconnected Umwelten. The concept was first coined by Juri Lotman in 1982, who provides this analogy for semiosphere: “imagine a museum hall where exhibits from different periods are on display, along with inscriptions in known and unknown languages, and instructions for decoding them; besides there are the explanations composed by the museum staff, plans for tours and rules for the behavior of the visitors. Imagine also in this hall tour-leaders and the visitors and imagine all this as a single mechanism. This is the image of a semiosphere. We have to remember that all elements of the semiosphere are in dynamic, not static, correlations whose terms are constantly changing.” (Lotman 127).
Semiotic System: “The highest and final act of a semiotic system’s structural organization is when it describes itself. This is the stage when grammars are written, customs and laws codified.” (Lotman 128)
Skepticism: Skepticism, as an epistemological argument, poses the question of whether knowledge, in the first place, is possible. Skeptics argue that the belief in something does not necessarily justify an assertion of knowledge of it. Most philosophies have weaknesses and can be criticized and this is a general principle of progression in philosophy. The philosophy of skepticism asserts that no truth is knowable or only probable. Some say the scientific method also asserts probable findings, because the number of cases tested is always limited and they constitute perceptual observations. To claim that the proposition “no truth is knowable” is knowably true is to refute oneself, as it is contradictory.
Structuralism: Structuralism is an intellectual movement that developed in France in the 1950s and 1960s, in which human culture is analyzed semiotically (i.e., as a system of signs). The structuralist mode of reasoning has been applied in a diverse range of fields, including anthropology, sociology, psychology, literary criticism, and architecture. In Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in General Linguistics, the analysis focuses not on the use of language but rather on the underlying system of language. This approach examines how the elements of language relate to each other in the present, synchronically rather than diachronically. Saussure argued that linguistic signs were composed of two parts: 1: the signifier: the "sound pattern" of a word, either in mental projection—as when one silently recites lines from a poem to one's self—or in actual, physical realization as part of a speech act, and 2. the signified: the concept or meaning of the word.
Symbol: a word, phrase, image, or the like having a complex of associated meanings and perceived as having inherent value separable from that which is symbolized, as being part of that which is symbolized, and as performing its normal function of standing for or representing that which is symbolized: usually conceived as deriving its meaning chiefly from the structure in which it appears, and generally distinguished from a sign. Burroughs made an interesting observation (or more like an opinion) regarding the connection of symbol to language: “…Chinese, a total language closer to multilevel structure of experience, with a script derived from hieroglyphs, more closely related to the objects and areas being described. The equanimity of the Chinese is undoubtedly derived from their language being structured for greater sanity.”
Umwelten: According to Jakob von Uexküll and Thomas A. Sebeok, umwelt (plural: umwelten; the German word Umwelt means "environment" or "surrounding world") is the "biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal." The term is usually translated as "self-centered world". Uexküll theorized that organisms could have different umwelten, even though they share the same environment.
Word: a unit of language, consisting of one or more spoken sounds or their written representation, that functions as a principal carrier of meaning. “A word is dead When it is said, Some say. I say it just Begins to live That day.” –Emily Dickinson. “Between a sign and the thing it signifies there is the fixed, determined relationship of cause and effect. We see this in the case of the footprint in the sand, the tear on the eyelash, or the trademark of a commercial product. But no matter how closely tied a symbol is to the thing symbolized, the relation is variable, flexible, and free. It is in poetry, however, that the symbolic value of words reaches its apex. The cross has become the symbol of Christianity not because of its form but because the Christians, following St. Paul, at a definite moment in their history, decided to adopt the instrument of Christ's torture as their emblem. Similarly, the relation between a word and its meaning depends on its origin, its history, and its usage.” –Nicola Charamonte. According to William S. Burroughs, “the word has not been recognized as a virus because it has achieved a state of stable symbiosis with the host.”
