Special Issue 'Semiotics of nature' published

HORTUS SEMIOTICUS (no. 6)
SPECIAL ISSUE ON THE SEMIOTICS OF NATURE
Guest editors: Riin Magnus, Nelly Mäekivi and Morten Tønnessen

Dear readers,

We are delighted to announce that the journal Hortus Semioticus has now published a special issue on the semiotics of nature. All together with 7 papers, a foreword, an interview, Meditationes Semioticae and 2 overview articles, this issue is almost exclusively in English. The papers of contributing MA and PhD students are all original papers written within a scientific framework which encapsuls the topics of meaning, value, communication, signification, representation, and cognition in and of nature.
1) Nelly Mäekivi, Riin Magnus and Morten Tønnessen: Editors foreword to the Special Issue Semiotics of Nature
2) Remo Gramigna: Augustine’s legacy for the history of zoosemiotics
3) John Haglund and Johan Blomberg: The meaning-sharing network
4) Silver Rattasepp: The idea of the extended organism in the 20th century history of ideas
5) Sara Cannizzaro: On form, function and meaning: working out the foundations of biosemiotics
6) Svitlana Biedarieva: Reflections in the Umwelten
7) Arlene Tucker: A metaphor is a metaphor
8) Patrick Masius: What are elephants doing in a Nazi concentration camp? The meaning of nature in the human catastrophe
9) Riin Magnus and Morten Tønnessen: The bio-translator. Interview with professor in biosemiotics Kalevi Kull (with his complete biosemiotic bibliography)
10) Meditationes Semioticae – this time by Kaie Kotov: Do you mind? Does it matter? Semiotics as a science of noosphere
11) Ülevaade: Acta Semiotica Estica VII

We hope that for our readers and contributors, these papers will encourage even more interest in the field, and open yet new horizons.

edu

I have registered at Academia.edu.

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The list of papers there (11) is not complete - but I have accepted whatever their system could find on its own.

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I have not listed any past talk, but have added the 4 upcoming talks I have scheduled as for now.

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My CV is there, though, offering a more complete overview (but the latest updates appears here, in Utopian Realism).

About the international phenomenology congress in Bergen

On a belated note, I took part in the 60th international congress of phenomenology in Bergen August 10-13, where I presented my paper "Semiotics of being and Uexküllian phenomenology" for a limited but qualified audience in a group session.

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This was my first encounter with the World Phenomenology Institute, lead by Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka. Registering for the conference, I became a member (by choice) of International Society of Phenomenology and Sciences of Life, which seems, unfortunately, not to have much activities.

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My paper will be revised by October 1st, and hopefully published in the conference proceedings, which will appear as a volume of Analecta Husserliana.

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In Bergen I further mingled with local phenomenologists, and joined the email list of a University of Bergen phenomenology group.

"Mapping human impact" to be revised

A fortnight ago I got to read the review of my CECT paper "Mapping human impact", which made just as much sense as my paper. I will revise it within September 15th, to be included in the proceedings of the second CECT conference, which will appear within the end of the year.

References

I am in the (slow) process of preparing a more detailed academic bibliography, including works written by others that refer to my work. One of the latest references made is in Don Favareau's "Introduction: An evolutionary history of biosemiotics" (from Essential reading in biosemiotics), where I'm referred to (p55), though not included in the literature list.

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Quote:

In the areas of animal studies, ethology and zoology, Mette Böll (2002), Karel Kleisner (2007, 2008), Dominique Lestel (2002), Timo Maran (2003), Dario Martinelli (2005), Stephen Pain (2007), Morten Tønnessen (2003), and Aleksei Turovski (2000) are all pursuing biosemiotic lines of investigation in their work.

Zoosemiotics book review published

My book review "A stroll around the worlds of zoosemioticians and other animals" was published electronically in Semiotica the 24th of August (print version: issue 181, pp. 317-325). Unfortunatelly the proof reading I reported was not executed - an errata crediting the research projects I am involved in will be published in no. 182, in October.

Article for Signs

Yesterday I was invited to contribute with an article to the online, peer-reiewed semiotic journal Signs, based in Denmark. I have started pondering on the theme "The cultural semiotic of wolves and sheep". Unlike another article I am mentally prepared to write, "The symbolic construction of the Big Bad Wolf in contemporary Scandinavia", this one will be global and historical in its scope.