Subject collection: Semiotics (98 titles, 1967–2015)

This volume shows that the notions of embodied or situated cognition, which have transformed the scientific study of intelligence have the potential to reorient cultural studies as well. The essays adapt and amplify embodied cognition in such different fields as art history, literature, history of science, religious studies, philosophy, biology, and cognitive science. The topics include the biological genesis of teleology, the dependence of meaning in signs upon biological embodiment, the notion of image schema and the concept of force in cognitive semantics, pictorial self-portraiture as a means to study self-perception, the difference between reading aloud and silent reading as a way to make sense of literary texts, intermodal (kinesthetic) understanding of art, psychosomatic medicine, laughter as a medical and ethical phenomenon, the valuation of laughter and the body in religion, and how embodied cognition revives and extends earlier attempts to develop a philosophical anthropology. (Series A)

Significs is one of those (by no means exclusively) sign theoretically relevant movements which arose at the turn of the century. It established a philosophical tradition which, from its very inception, was interlaced with widely varying movements ranging, for example, from Breal's semantics to Carnap's and Neurath's logical empiricism. In this volume, an international group of well-known scholars from various disciplines undertakes a broad re-evaluation of significs and its development which promises also to yield a better knowledge of research approaches in linguistics, semiotics, philosophy, and psychology with which significs was related or vied for acceptance. Contributions deal with Lady Welby's biography and socio-cultural background, the intellectual context of the signific movement at the turn of the century and the relationships between Welby's semiotic and philosophical ideas on the one hand and those of her contemporaries (Breal, Peirce, Schiller, Vailati etc.) and followers (Ogden, Van Eeden, Mannoury etc.) on the other. Descriptions of the historiographically most important archive materials, a bibliography of publications on Lady Welby and her significs and an index of names conclude the volume.