Semiosphere, “Thinking Worlds” and Scientific knowledge (About an idea of Jurij Lotman)

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze Jurij Lotman’s notion of semiosphere, focusing on its interdisciplinary background, the logic of its constitution and the inner tensions resulting from that logic. Two ideas of semiosphere coexist in Lotman’s texts: infinite and finite, global and limited. For explaining this ambiguity, several interpretations may be put forward, corresponding to different disciplines (semiotics, biology and philosophy) and engaging different types of dynamics or negativity (systemic, organic and reflective). The last, philosophic explanation leads to the problem of subjectivity: Lotman seems to avoid it (as a scholar committed to the empirical, and not speculative mode of thinking), but it reappears in the epistemology of his research, upon which the notion of semiosphere is grounded.