Denotation | Systems Community of Inquiry

There is a close relationship between the pragmatic theory of signs and the pragmatic theory of inquiry. In fact, the correspondence between the two studies exhibits so many congruences and parallels it is often best to treat them as integral parts of one and the same subject. In a very real sense, inquiry is the process by which sign relations come to be established and continue to evolve. In other words, inquiry, “thinking” in its best sense, “is a term denoting the various ways in which things acquire significance” (Dewey, 38).

Tracing the passage of inquiry through the medium of signs calls for an active, intricate form of cooperation between the converging modes of investigation. Its proper character is best understood by realizing the theory of inquiry is adapted to study the developmental aspects of sign relations, a subject the theory of signs is specialized to treat from comparative and structural points of view.

References

Dewey, J. (1910), How We Think, D.C. Heath, Boston, MA. Reprinted (1991), Prometheus Books, Buffalo, NY. Online.
Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), pp. 40–52. Archive. Journal. Online (doc) (pdf).

Resources

Sign Relation • OEIS • MyWikiBiz • Wikiversity
Survey of Semiotics, Semiosis, Sign Relations
Survey of Inquiry Driven Systems

cc: Academia.edu • Laws of Form • Research Gate • Syscoi
cc: Cybernetics • Structural Modeling • Systems Science

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Thus, if a sunflower, in turning towards the sun, becomes by that very act fully capable, without further condition, of reproducing a sunflower which turns in precisely corresponding ways toward the sun, and of doing so with the same reproductive power, the sunflower would become a Representamen of the sun.

— C.S. Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 2.274

In his picturesque illustration of a sign relation, along with his tracing of a corresponding sign process, or semiosis, Peirce uses the technical term representamen for his concept of a sign, but the shorter word is precise enough, so long as one recognizes its meaning in a particular theory of signs is given by a specific definition of what it means to be a sign.