Cognitive dynamics

Abstract

The proliferation of disciplinary labels, distinctions, borders, and hierarchies is an interesting semiotic phenomenon per se. In particular, the need to circumscribe a new semiotics field and then denoting it as transdisciplinary appears instead to be an exercise of politics. One cannot but fall into the paradox of any systemic organization, nicely described by Simmel a long time before: By choosing two items from the undisturbed store of natural things in order to designate them as “separate,” we have already related them to one another in our consciousness, we have emphasized these two together against whatever lies between them. And conversely, we can only sense those things to be related which we have previously somehow isolated from one another; things must first be separated from one another in order to be together. (Simmel 1994: 5)