Read

In the 1st half of 2010, my reading log shows I have read 4.486pp, written by 199 authors (abstracts included). If this (not very quick) reading pace keeps up (as it has of late), I may read something like 36,000pp during my 4 year PhD studies.

Author Top 5 (in parenthesis: second half of 2009, first half):

1 (-, 53). Michael Polanyi

2 (-). Ralph H. Lutts

3 (6, 26). Arne Næss

4 (12, 1). John Deely

5 (-). Walter Gulick

The following thinkers have been treated the most in what I have read these 6 months (out of 218 thinkers logged):

1 (-). Michael Polanyi

2 (10, 5). Jakob von Uexküll

3 (16, 1). Charles Sanders Peirce

4 (18), 10. Thomas Sebeok

5 (29, 18). Maurice Merleau-Ponty

6 (-). Marjorie Grene

7 (5, 11). René Descartes

8 (-). William J. Long

9 (3, 18). Immanuel Kant

10. Aristotle (2, 3), Heidegger (14, 7), Theodore Roosevelt (-)

As we see, scientist-come-philosopher Michael Polanyi (1891-1976) - who I first read last spring - tops both lists, and I have also taken interest in his part-colleague Marjorie Grene (1910-2009), who's #7 at the author list and #6 in the about-list. For totally unrelated top 10-lists, including 10 Truly Awful Ways To Be Killed By An Animal, see Listverse.

Academic news in brief IX

1) Saturday - two days ago - I finished my quarterly report for the research project "The Cultural Heritage of Environmental Spaces. A Comparative Analysis Between Estonia and Norway" (5pp).
2) In the process of this year's doctoral attestation review, I was informed that my doctoral school should be the Estonian Graduate School of Culture Studies and Arts (GSCSA) (application submitted).
3) The interview with professor in biosemiotics Kalevi Kull (my supervisor), conducted by me and Riin Magnus, has now been fully transcribed, and is in the process of being edited ("The bio-translator"). The final text will include a full biosemiotic bibliography, and replies to questions by Don Favareau, Timo Maran and Paul Cobley.
4) A couple of weeks ago, on the 21st of June, I met in Oslo with green criminologists Ragnhild Sollund and Guri Larsen to develop our planned anthology on human-animal and human-nature relations. We have sketched the topics of around 18 chapters and discussed potential contributors. Invitations to participate will likely be sent in August.

5) The 'opponent' (commentator) at my presentation on illegal wolf hunting in the seminar series Kriminalpolitisk seminar (University of Oslo) in November will likely be professor of criminology Kjersti Ericsson (1944-). Program for the series appears here.
6) Yesterday John Deely - who will this autumn publish Medieval Philosophy Redefined - agreed that we will submit a book proposal (for softcover publication) involving the four first semioethics interviews. I am very much looking forward to that enterprise.
7) Faithful to tradition, Marcello Barbieri has published photos from the 10th gathering in biosemiotics, which took place in Braga, Portugal, a week ago.
8) Through my company, Spør Filosofen, I have been booked for a philosophical presentation of "The future of the growth economy" at Aker Maritime Hydraulics (by the Aker MH philosophy and literature group).

Previous posts:
Academic news in brief VIII
Academic news in brief VII
Academic news in brief VI
Academic news in brief V
Academic news in brief IV
Academic news in brief III
Academic news in brief II
Academic news in brief I (March 30, 2009)

Third semioethics interview approaching publication

I am right now in the process of proof-reading "The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness", which will be published in the book Semiotics: Theory and applications.

Nova Publishers have now launched a site for the collection, which is edited by Steven C. Hamel, and included in the "Languages and Linguistics" series. The book, which will cost no less than 129$, is scheduled for publication in the 4th quarter of 2010. Below is Nova's book description and the table of contents (any emphasis is mine).

Book Description:
Semiotics is the study of sign processes (semiosis), or signification and communication, signs and symbols, and is usually divided into three branches: Semantics, Syntactics, and Pragmatics. Semiotics is frequently seen as having important anthropological dimensions. In general, semiotic theories take signs or sign systems as their object of study: the communication of information in living organisms is covered in biosemiotics or zoosemiosis. This book discusses the theory and application of semiotics across a broad spectrum and has gathered current research from around the globe.

Table of Contents:
Preface

Signifying the Transition from Modern to Post-Modern Schooling through Analyzing Changes in the Material Culture of Schools (Kostas Dimopoulos, Associate Professor of Learning Materials, Dept of Social and Educational Policy, University of Peloponnese, Greece)

Beyond Signification: The Co-Evolution of Subject and Semiosis (Tahir Wood, University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa)

Language, Emotion, and Health: A Semiotic Perspective on the Writing Cure (Louise Sundararajan, Chulmin Kim, Martina Reynolds, Chris R. Brewin, Rochester Regional Forensic Unit, Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, New York, and others)

Re-Thinking the Place of Semiotics in Psychology and its Implications for Psychological Research (Agnes Petocz, University of Western Sydney)

How Israelis Represent the Problem of Violence in their Schools: A Case Study of a Discursive Construction (Douglas J. Glick, Department of Anthropology, Binghamton University, Binghamton, New York)

The Semioethics Interviews III: John Deely: Human Understanding in the Age of Global Awareness (Morten Tønnessen, Department of Semiotics, Institute of Philosophy and Semiotics, University of Tartu, Estonia, and others)

A Semiotics Discourse Analysis Framework: Understanding Meaning Making in Science Education Contexts (Kamini Jaipal-Jamani, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ont., Canada)

Semiotic Constraints of the Biological Organization (Abir U. Igamberdiev, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Department of Biology, St. John’s, NL, Canada)

Corpus-Based Approaches to Metaphor and Metonymy: Review of Stefanowitsch, Anatol, Gries, Stefan Th. (eds.) (Zhiying Xin, School of Foreign Languages, Sun Yat-sen University, P. R. China)

The Role of Sign Vehicles in Mediating Teachers’ Mathematical Problem Solving (Sinikka Kaartinen, Timo Latomaa, University of Oulu, Finland)

Interaction and Interactivity: A Semiotic Commentary (Jan M. Broekman, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Law, Penn State University Dickinson School of Law, Pennsylvania)

Multimodal Stylistics: The Happy Marriage of Stylistics and Semiotics (Nina Nørgaard, Institute of Language and Communication, University of Southern Denmark)