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8:18

(In »From semiotics via memetics to the collapse of militant atheism«)

This does not have to mean that the role of semiotics as a scientific discipline is passé – quite the contrary. The focus of modern semiotics is in fact no longer on producing a theory of signs, and not of memes either, nor how these relate to each other – it is nowadays memetics rather than semiotics that is fulfilling Locke’s original vision of a science of signs – but on a theory of how the signs are interpreted by, and both mentally and physiologically de facto influence, their hosts: a pragmatic phenomenon that is called semiosis. What is really interesting arises and shows itself when we remove ourselves from the mental to the physiological, since we can then just as easily study the spread of signs between animals and plants as between humans, not to mention the communication across the boundaries between the various categories of biology. Accordingly, semiotics comes down to the study of biological signalling systems, while memetics pursues the construction of explanatory models for the genesis and the disintegration of cultural paradigms.