INVITATION TO A FREE INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON SEMIOTICS
WEDNESDAY THE 25TH OF NOVEMBER 2009
CBS, Dalgas Have 15, auditorium SC.033 by the Central Hall.

The New Semiotics
Transdisciplinary insight as the way to renew our understanding of communication and our ability to manage knowledge.

Moving from the information society to the knowledge society, we are forced to leave the old version of the cognitive science based on the model of information science behind us. The aim is to develop a broader, transdisciplinary, and more evolutionary framework for studying the development of cognition, communication and knowledge in the human life-world. This is necessary in order to gain a deeper understanding of knowledge management than offered by the present logicistic, formalistic and computerized models in the business, engineering and computerized knowledge management world on one hand, and the narrative, mythological and connotative models in the world of arts, fiction and religion on the other. The new trend - brought to us, among other things, from the pressure of general as well as intellectual and disciplinary globalization - of making creative innovation the central force of renewal in the European and American computerized gene- and nano-societies demands a new ability to draw on knowledge from both the sciences, humanities, social sciences as well as philosophy and religion. Put in another way: information and meaning, logic and emotion have to be united in new creative ways as it has been seen in the development of architecture, design, advertising and the fictional worlds of computer games, movies and fiction novels over the last 20-30 years. The narrative and emotional aspect of knowledge has for too long been banned in information science, engineering, economics and knowledge management. Thus it has been necessary to develop a broader evolutionary and ecological understanding of embodied knowledge and forms of meaning as the foundation for spoken and written language and the communication through pictures. We are now focusing much more on the integrated contribution of language, ‘gesture’, and pictorial representations, where ‘gesture’ nowadays is understood to cover hand gestures as well as body postures and facial expressions as important parts of the wholeness of total communication. The talks in this symposium will explore different dimensions of semiotics as a transdisciplinary study of the various forms knowledge and meaning-making take; explore their present relevance, and indicate path of future development.

Invited talks and schedule:

9.00-9.15: Welcome and Introduction by Søren Brier, IKK, LaCoMe.

9.15-10.00: Professor Robert Innis:

Meaningful Connections - Semiotics, Pragmatism, and the Forms of Sense

10.00-10.15: Questions and discussion.

10.15-10.30 Break.

10.30.-11.15: Professor Göran Sonesson:

Pictorial semiotics on the way from phenomenology to empirical studies of development and evolution

11.15-11.30: Questions and discussion.

11.30-11.45: Break

11.45-12.30: Professor Paul Bouissac:

The development of a semiotic culture at the interface of philosophy and science

12.30-12.45 Questions and discussion.

12.45-13.30 Lunch

13.30-14.15: Professor Per Durst-Andersen:

The grammar of linguistic semiotics. Reading Peirce in a modern linguistic light

14.15-14.30 Questions and discussion.

14.30-14.45: Break

14.45-15.30: Professor Kalevi Kull:

Biosemiotics - To know, what life knows

15.30-15.45: Questions and discussion.

15.45-16.00: Break

16.00-16.40: Professor Søren Brier:

Cybersemiotics as a transdisciplinary paradigm integrating the semiotic and the informational paradigms through a new interpretation of Luhmann and Peirce.

16.40-17.00: Questions and discussion.

Free Admittance. Everybody is welcome. Coffee and lunch can be bought at the cafeteria next to the lecture hall. Registration: please send an email to Mie Hedegaard, mh.iadh@cbs.dk.

Note also that the day before (Tuesday the 24th of November) Torkild Thellefsen defends his dissertation: “Fundamental Signs and Significance-effects – A Semiotic outline of Fundamental Signs, Significance-effects, Knowledge Profiling and their use in Knowledge Organization and Branding” in the same hall at 13.00-17.00 with a reception afterwards, and that participation here is also free.

CBS, Dalgas Have 15, auditorium SC.033 by the central hall is right next to the Metro station Lindevang, and there is free parking at the back of the building, where all entrance doors lead to the central hall.