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Studies in Ecocriticism

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A semiotic theory of life: Lotmans principles of the

universe of the mind
Kalevi Kull
To cite this article: Kalevi Kull (2015) A semiotic theory of life: Lotmans principles of the
universe of the mind, Green Letters, 19:3, 255-266, DOI: 10.1080/14688417.2015.1069203
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2015.1069203

Published online: 25 Jul 2015.

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Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, 2015

Vol. 19, No. 3, 255266, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14688417.2015.1069203

A semiotic theory of life: Lotmans principles of the universe of the

mind
Kalevi Kull*
Department of Semiotics, University of Tartu, Tartu, Estonia

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(Received 11 April 2015; accepted 01 July 2015)

Literary scholar, cultural theorist and semiotician Juri Lotman (19221993) established
the Tartu (and Tartu-Moscow) school of semiotics in the 1960s. Besides his pioneering
work in semiotics of culture, he also developed a theory of general semiotics. We
attempt to extract some principles from Juri Lotmans formulations that characterise
the core aspects of semiosis, applicable both in semiotics of culture and in biosemiotics. These include: (1) the principle of code plurality; (2) the principle of incompatibility, or non-translatability; (3) the principle of autocommunication, or translation; (4)
the principle of semiosphere; (5) the principle of semiotic inheritance; (6) the principle
of non-gradual evolution; (7) the principle of boundaries; and (8) the principle of
modelling.
Keywords: non-translatability; code plurality; autocommunication; semiotic inheritance; semiosphere; punctualism; sign evolution; modelling systems

Sign processes can do literally everything; mind is almost almighty the art of text is
limitless; lifes evolution is open-ended; there are no limits in learning. While physical
reality is limited by physical laws, and the mathematical realm as based on formal logic is
restricted by the necessity of avoiding contradictions, the realm of imaginations and
meaning-making has no such limits. We must ask whether the science of signs, semiotics,
can tell us anything general at all about this vast diversity. Paradoxically, it can. An
important result of semiotics (with Charles S. Peirce, but also with Ferdinand de Saussure,
and further Juri Lotman, Umberto Eco, Thomas A. Sebeok and many others) establishes
the extension of the concept of logic beyond syllogistic and formal logics, and ultimately
over all meaning-making processes, thus establishing that formal logic is only a special
case. Understanding how semiotic logic as meaning-making works would contribute
substantially to the functioning of semiotics as the general theory and methodology of
the humanities, and the cultural and life sciences. Following this line of thought, we will
interpret the semiotic approach developed by Juri Lotman.
What is remarkable in Juri Lotmans (19221993) work is his (a) foundational
formulation of the principles of the semiotics of culture,1 (b) fundamental description of
communication and sign processes as modelling processes and (c) excellent analysis of
the empirical material (literature and cultural phenomena), making it possible to use his
models as a basis for contemporary semiotics. Semiotics, according to Lotman (and the
Tartu Semiotic School), is largely the study of modelling systems, since modelling is a
function of sign systems. More precisely, semiotics can be defined as the study of sign
systems and processes, in which the aspect of modelling or meaning-making is explicitly
*Email: kalevi.kull@ut.ee
2015 ASLE-UKI

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presented. The modelling of semiosis (and communication, in a broad sense) is thus the
theoretical core of semiotics.
Lotmans communication model, together with his general semiotic theory, has been
brought to our attention by several researchers (Andrews 1999, 2003; Andrews and
Maksimova 2008; Avtonomova 2009; Arn and Barei 2002; Favareau 2010; Gherlone
2014; Grzybek 1994a, 1994b; Kim 2003; Lepik 2008; Maciocco and Tagliagambe 2009;
Semenenko 2012; Shukman 1977; and others). The current study is not about the history
of Lotmans thought (although we use quotations from his works); instead, we focus on
some fundamental aspects of Lotmans model namely on those that are in good
concordance with the further development of the modelling of semiosis.
Lotmans approach in its first period (the 1960s and the 1970s) was definitely
structuralist.2 However, at least since the early 1980s, his approach was so dynamic and
processual that it could no longer be seen as semiology. This was emphasised, for
instance, by Amy Mandelker, who sees the organic turn made by Lotman as the greatest
achievement of semiotics in the twentieth century (Mandelker 1994, 1995). Mandelker
writes:
The evolution in semiotic theory during the 1980s might be compared to the shift from
Newtonian to relativistic physics. Semiotics of the Moscow-Tartu school evolved from a
theory rooted in Saussurean linguistics and in mathematical procedures to a biological,
organismic approach. In a series of largely untranslated articles from the 1980s, Juri
Lotman, the leading figure of the Moscow-Tartu school, proposes the model of the semiosphere, a metaphor based on principles of cell biology, organic chemistry, and brain science,
to map cultural dynamics. (1994, 385)

If there was an organic turn in semiotics in the 1980s, then it was of course not only
centred in Tartu. For instance, at the same time, a collective manifesto of semiotics was
published under the initiative of Thomas A. Sebeok (Anderson et al. 1984). Also in the
1980s, interest in the legacy of Charles S. Peirce increased remarkably in many countries,
and Jakob von Uexkll was included among the classics of semiotics. Since then, indeed,
the prelinguistic processes of life have become a regular part of semiotic studies.
Several Juri Lotman scholars reveal a more gradual development of Lotmans views,
emphasising the processual and dynamic aspects already in his works of the 1970s. Still,
the main conclusion is the same the model of semiosis that is described in his books The
Universe of Mind and Culture and Explosion (Lotman 1990, 2009 [1992]) represents a
profound understanding of the underlying general processes of meaning-making as
characteristic of the stage of semiotics beyond structuralism.
Mandelker adds:
The spatialised and biologised concept of the semiosphere enhances the earlier Moscow-Tartu
school notion of inner and outer cultural perspectives. [. . .] The sphere also invites the
borrowing of some suggestive topics from biophysics and cell biology: enclosure and
disclosure, resistance and responsiveness to penetration, and the assimilation of intruding
and extruding elements. [. . .] Lotmans sphere of silence embraces, encloses, and embodies
the utterance just as the biosphere [. . .] embraces all life and lies passively open to mens
husbandry. (1994, 390, 392)

In his article On the dynamics of culture, Lotman speaks with a straightforward

irony about approaches that do not include animal communication in the field of semiotics, i.e., which place the semiotic zero (the semiotic threshold) above animal life (1992,
5). Without making very strict statements about the exact position of the lower semiotic

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threshold, Lotman (a) is very clear in stating the existence of a non-semiosic world, and he
also (b) states clearly that animal communication is of semiosic nature. On some occasions he accepted that semiosis can cover the whole of life: But it may well be that
cognition is, in fact, life itself. That they are not two isomorphic things, but essentially one
and the same.3
These views had their roots in Lotmans earlier works and interests. For instance, he
compared the functional structure of a literary text and a living organism already in the
1960s: the
Relationship between the artistic idea and the construction of a literary work reminds one of
the relationship between life and the biological structure of a cell. In biology, there is no
vitalist any more who would investigate life outside the real organization of matter, its carrier.
In the science of literature they still exist. Also, a listing of the material inventory of a living
tissue cannot unlock the secrets of life: the cell is given as a complex functioning selfaccommodating system. Realization of its functions turns out to be life. A literary work is
also a complex self-accommodating system (indeed, of an other type). The idea represents the
life of a literary work, and this is similarly impossible in a body dissected by an anatomist or
outside this body. Mechanicism of the former and idealism of the latter should be replaced by
the dialectics of functional analysis. (Lotman 1967a, 97)

A large conference on Biology and linguistics was organised in 1978 in Tartu.

Focussing on the relationships between semiotics and biology, this was probably the
first international conference in biosemiotics with explicit reference to this term. The
exchange of ideas between Lotman and several other members of the Tartu-Moscow
semiotic school with the leading biological thinkers of the region (Russia, and the Baltics)
could be seen to additionally contribute in making what Mandelker has called the organic
turn.
For instance, Lotman remarks: Culture demonstrates features typical of such organisations, as a living organism and a piece of art (Lotman 1970, 105). Later, in a small
paper, Culture and the organism (1984), Lotman lists some general features, which are
common to the organism and to culture, at a certain level of abstraction memory, the
symmetric mechanism of homeostasis and asymmetric mechanisms generating new information, the explosive growth of information content in certain stages of development, etc.
He adds: Similarly to the living organism, whose normal contact to the insentient nature
means the prevenient translation of information into the structural language of biosphere, also the contact of every intellectual being with outward information requires its
translation into the sign system (Lotman 1984, 216).
Lotmans theorising as well as his analysis of examples can be seen as based on his
view on the general mechanism of meaning-making. We can trace this already in his early
works, but the clearest formulations of his model of communication can be found in his
last books. For instance, the basis of his model is described in Chapter 1 of Universe of
the Mind (Lotman 1990, 1119), and in Chapters 1 and 2 of Culture and Explosion (2009
[1992], 16). This also seems to demonstrate that Lotmans views are well compatible
with the view on semiosis as the general basis of cognition that characterises all living
systems.4
Lotmans view on semiosis can be described via three basic principles: (1) code
plurality, (2) incompatibility and (3) autocommunication. These three principles are
mutually related to each other, meaning that they can be seen as certain aspects of the
same model. However, there are additional important aspects in his view that characterise,
first, the semiotic space; second, semiotic dynamics; and, third, the epistemological role of

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K. Kull

semiosis. With regard to the semiotic space, these are: (4) the semiosphere, and its
precondition (5) semiotic inheritance. Regarding semiotic dynamics, this concerns (6)
non-gradual evolution. With regard to the epistemological role of semiosis, these are (7)
boundaries and (8) modelling. Below, we describe briefly all these principles.

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1. Code plurality
The principle of code plurality states that one code is insufficient for semiosis, at least two
codes are necessary for it, that more than one language or sign system (at least two) is
required in order to have semiosis and that semiotic dualism is the minimal form of
organisation of a working semiotic system.
The principle that one code is insufficient for semiosis is a statement that may look
paradoxical; however, this is perfectly the formulation that stands for the core tenet of
Lotmans model. The depth of the statement may not be understood at once from each
explanation given by Lotman himself, although it appears clearly in connection to the next
two principles.
Initially, Lotman described this aspect as a necessary requirement for a semiotic
system to have different types of coding, like conventional and representational, or
symbolic and iconic, etc. For instance, he wrote: a message to be defined as text
should be at least dually coded (Lotman 1981; this, and all subsequent translations where
the original is in Estonian or Russian, is by the author of the current article), and
elsewhere, that semiotic dualism is the minimal form of organisation of a working
semiotic system (Lotman 1990, 124).
He also says,
The idea of the possibility for a single ideal language to serve as an optimal mechanism for
the representation of reality is illusion. [. . .] The idea of an optimal model, consisting of a
single perfect universal language, is replaced by the image of a structure equipped with a
minimum of two or, rather, by an open number of diverse languages, each of which is
reciprocally dependent on the other, due to the incapacity of each to express the world
independently. (Lotman 2009 [1992], 2)

With the multiplicity of codes, therefore, the Kantian epistemological problem moves
to a solution. Lotman has stated
[. . .] two levels of objectivity may be surmised: one relates to the world of languages (this is
objective from its point of view) and one relates to the world outside the borders of language.
One of the key problems is that of the translation of the world of the content of the system (its
internal reality) to the reality that lies outside, beyond the borders of language. Out of this,
two specific issues arise:
(1) the necessity that more than one language (a minimum of two) is required in order to reflect
a given reality
(2) the inevitable fact that the space of reality cannot be represented by a single language but
only by an aggregate of languages. (Lotman 2009 [1992], 2)

2. Incompatibility
The principle of incompatibility (or inconsistency) states that there should exist a partial
non-translatability in order to have a meaningful communication, that meaning-making

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requires an incompatibility of codes and that the incompatibility or inconsistency is the

source of indeterminacy, non-predictability and semiotic freedom.
One may argue against the principle of code plurality by means of an idea of
constructing a supercode that would include as sub-codes the two or more codes about
which Lotman is speaking. However, this turns out to be impossible due to, as Lotman
states, their mutual untranslatability (or limited translatability) (Lotman 2009 [1992], 2).
Indeed, two codes are two different codes and cannot be seen as just parts of one and the
same bigger code if and only if these two codes are mutually incompatible.
Thus, what is stated by the principle of code plurality is actually the necessary condition
for semiosis the existence of incompatibility. Incompatibility, here, should be understood
in a general sense, including, for instance, logical inconsistency, non-congruent categorisation and homonymy. Incompatibility, for Lotman, and for our model of semiosis in general,
appears to be the source of indeterminacy, and of semiotic freedom.
Lotman writes:
[in case of] artistic translation [. . .] transmitter and receiver use different codes [. . .] which
overlap but are not identical. [. . .] The asymmetrical relationship, the constant need for
choice, make translation in this case an act of generating new information and exemplify
the creative function both of language and of the text. Particularly indicative is the situation
where it is not simply difference which exists between codes, but mutual untranslatability (for
instance, in the translation of a verbal text into an iconic one). (1990, 1415)

Lotman compares this situation with the case of artificial languages which may work
in machines. Since the requirement in the building of formal (mathematical) languages is
the avoidance of internally contradicting situations, these languages lack the internal
untranslatability, and therefore, they lack the mechanism of meaning-making and creativity. At the same time, a logically concise formal (mathematical) language can suit
perfectly for the description of non-semiosic world as the effectiveness of application
of mathematical language by physics has utterly proven.
Thus, semiosis is the process that occurs in the situation of incompatibility between
codes.5 In such a situation, the future of the system is indeterminate. This is the situation
of confusion. Also, this is the situation of freedom, or explosion, in Lotmans terms. It will
be resolved by making a decision (by an organism, or a culture), thus introducing a
regularity (a habit) into the system.
This (logical) kind of incompatibility between codes is something that cannot occur in
a non-living system. This is because codes are always built by living systems; they are
products of semiosis. Codes are relationships that do not persist or reappear otherwise
than being made by living systems.

3. Autocommunication
The principle of autocommunication states that autocommunication is the most general
type of communication, that it must be present for sign interpretation and that autocommunication underlies the ability for qualitative restructuring and translation.
On the one hand, semiosis requires at least two (incompatible) codes, and a life
process is required to produce these. On the other hand, the existence of a living organism
means the coexistence of code processes. If defining autocommunication as a translation
that takes place within an organism (or culture, or in any other semiosic system), then it
implies that autocommunication is the most general form of communication. There can be

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K. Kull

autocommunication without heterocommunication, but there cannot be heterocommunication without autocommunication.

Andrews and Maksimova write:
The inevitability of translation at all levels of semiotic space is one of the central operating
properties of Lotmans theory. In fact, the importance of translation for the generation of
meanings and as a fundamental part of perception itself are tenets common to both Lotmans
anthroposemiotic theory and Uexklls biosemiotic theory of the umwelt.6 (2008, 262)

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Both for Jakob Uexkll and for Juri Lotman, autocommunication is where communication
starts (see Kull and Lotman 2012). This is also related to the understanding that translation
is the process where meaning arises.
Lotmans biographer Edna Andrews mentions:
There is an interesting point of coincidence between von Uexklls theory and Lotmans modelling of the semiosphere: in both, auto-communication must be present for sign interpretation.
Lotmans model of autocommunication [. . .] defines the mechanism of meaning generation as a
combination of two modelling types: II (or auto) communication and Is/he communication.7
All cultural spaces rely on these modelling systems for the production and transference of
information. [. . .] For Lotman, autocommunication underlies the ability to qualitatively restructure and translate what is never less than a double-version of code and message in the creation of
meaningful texts.8 For Uexkll, the primacy of autocommunication provides the backdrop for any
metainterpretation that may be formulated.9 Given the structure of each umwelt, it becomes clear
that in Uexklls modelling system, all meaning is created through translation a process that
necessarily provides the outcome in the form of a metainterpretation. (Andrews 2003, 63)10

The role of the concept of autocommunication as understood in the Tartu School has
also been described by Peeter Torop:
That which on one level of culture manifests itself as a process of communication and a
dialogue between addresser and addressee can be seen on a deeper level as the autocommunication of culture and a dialogue of the culture with itself. (2008, 394)

4. Semiosphere
The principle of the semiosphere states that the qualitative diversity being completely the
result of semiosis is also a general condition for semiosis; or, otherwise, it states that the
meaningful (i.e., meaningfully plural) is forming a region in space (which covers the
sphere around the Earth). Thus the principle of the semiosphere is also the principle of the
relationality of semiotic systems that semiotic space may be regarded as a unified
mechanism; semiosis cannot exist outside of the semiosphere.
The principle of the semiosphere, although formulated in many different ways,11 can
be seen as a coherent principle that describes the ontological specificity of semiosis.
One of the very first occasions where Lotman gave a lecture on the concept of
semiosphere (on 7 May 1982) was the 8th Estonian Spring School on Theoretical
Biology, which was devoted to the theory of behaviour. The theory of the semiosphere
demonstrates (and conceptually develops) a deep connection between cultural and other
forms of life on the semiotic basis (see also Kotov and Kull 2011).
As developed by Lotman in his theory of the semiosphere (2005 [1984]), it also
embeds another important principle for general semiotics, which we would formulate
separately as the following one.

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5. Semiotic inheritance

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The principle of semiotic inheritance states that the semiosic sphere is causally selfdependent; that every sign comes from another sign omne signum ex signum semiosis
assumes earlier semiosis (except only the primary origin of semiosis).
This principle (more than the principle of the semiosphere, strictly speaking) establishes the relationship with Vernadskys concept of biosphere. The self-dependence of
both semiosis and life (Vernadsky used to call this principle Redis rule omne vivum ex
vivo) is where Lotman saw the major similarity between semiosphere and biosphere. This
comes clear from Lotmans letter to Boris Uspensky, written in 19 March 1982, in which
Lotman first outlines his position:
While reading Vernadsky I was seized by one of his assertions. As you know, once in our
Moscow seminar [. . .] I dared to declare that a text can exist (e.g., can be socially comprehended as a text) if another text preceded it, and that any developed culture must be preceded
by a developed culture. And now I have discovered in Vernadskys writing a thought, deeply
substantiated by his vast experience in studying cosmic geology, that life can only spring into
existence from life, i.e., it is preceded by life. [. . .] Obviously, just as all forms of living
activity belong to life, from the actions of anaerobic bacteria to the most complex forms, so
thought (semiosis) has both simple and complex forms. [. . .] Only the pre-existence of a
semiotic sphere makes a message become a message. Only the existence of consciousness
explains existence of consciousness. (1997, 630)

6. Non-gradual evolution
The principle of non-gradual (punctuated) evolution states that in the development of a semiosic
system, explosive or disrupted and continuous or gradual processes alternate and co-occur.
The principle of non-gradual evolution means that the development of a semiosic
system includes two very different periods or stages. Namely, in the evolution of semiosis,
explosive or disrupted, and continuous or gradual processes alternate and co-occur.
Lotman writes in The Unpredictable Workings of Culture:
For the Tartu-Moscow School the shift from gradual processes to explosive moments was
determined when the centre of scholarly attention was relocated from the field of linguistics
to the semiotics of art. Art is a child of explosion. The work of art is born in a moment of
explosion and cannot be understood without taking into account the very nature of that birth
(2013 [1992], 87). And he adds:
Does cultural evolution take place gradually and principally as a process devoid of the
unexpected, or as a chain of unpredictable explosions? [. . .] Before us lie two aspects of
one inseparable unity. They can be separated only in pure abstraction or as a result of illness
in a dying society. Neither a system made up of explosions alone nor a system devoid of
explosions can exist as a healthy organism. This has never been possible. [. . .] Gradual
evolution and shifts to unpredictability must form a complex whole. It is appropriate to
remember that unpredictability experienced in the realm of art can be carried over into reality
in a form free of catastrophes, similar to the way an injection provides an organism with
immunity. (Lotman 2013 [1992], 130131)

7. Boundaries
The principle of boundaries states that boundaries are the source of diversity and
creativity of semiotic systems.
In the article about the semiosphere, Lotman wrote:

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K. Kull

One of the fundamental concepts of semiotic delimitation lies in the notion of boundary
[]. [. . .] The semiotic border is represented by the sum of bilingual translatable
filters, passing through which the text is translated into another language (or languages)
[. . .]. The function of any border or film from the membrane of a living cell to the biosphere
as a film (according to Vernadsky) covering our planet, to the delimitation of the semiosphere
comes down to a limitation of penetration, filtering and the transformative processing of the
external to the internal. (2005 [1984]: 208210)

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Boundary, or border (or more generally surface), is both a source and a product of
communication. It can be seen just as an aspect of the semiosphere; however, since it is a
major phenomenon in the formation of structures, as well as a general aspect of translation
and mediation, and also a condition for the epistemic relation of self and other, it serves a
separate formulation.
Lotman writes:
The border [] of semiotic space is the most important functional and structural
position, giving substance to its semiotic mechanism. The border is a bilingual mechanism,
translating external communications into the internal language of the semiosphere and vice
versa. Thus, only with the help of the boundary is the semiosphere able to establish contact
with non-semiotic and extra-semiotic spaces. As soon as we move into the realm of
semantics, we have to appeal to an extra-semiotic reality. However, let us not forget, that
this reality becomes for a given semiosphere a reality in itself only insofar as it has been
translated into the language of the semiosphere (in the same way that external chemical
materials may be adopted by a cell only if they have been transformed into the internal
biochemical structures characteristic of it: in both cases these are particular manifestations
of one and the same law). (Lotman 2005 [1984], 210)

8. Modelling
The principle of modelling states that semiotic systems are themselves modelling systems.
Indeed, semiosis is a modelling process, since it always includes an iconic aspect.
Lotman has emphasised the modelling function of texts and semiosphere, and treated
translation as a modelling device, whereas there exist different levels of modelling systems.
For instance, Lotman writes: Systems that have a natural language as their basis and
that acquire supplementary superstructures, thus creating languages of a second level, can
appropriately be called secondary modelling systems (1967b, 131).
Of course, this does not mean that all components of semiotic systems are models (cf.
Lotman 2011 [1967], 251 p. 2.2).12
Calling their summer schools of the 1960s the Schools on Secondary Modelling
Systems,13 Lotman and his colleagues stated very early that semiotic systems are modelling
systems, or ways of translating (thus mapping and knowing the world, the umwelt).

9. Concluding remarks
As a certain summary of Lotmans views, let us give here a longer quotation from his
interview in 1990:
When we are communicating, you and I, we are interested, in a way, in vmaximum
translatability. When I think, non-translatability becomes a useful factor. Let us assume we
create two ideal persons. They understand each other perfectly and fully, as we might imagine
two identical bowling balls. What are they going to talk about? To talk, I do not need a
perfect copy of myself, I need another person. I need a difficulty, since the difficulty means

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the creation of the new, a new thought. Only an old thought can be translated ideally. [. . .]
Semiotics of animals is researching such aspects as, for instance, sexual communication,
eating, breeding; these are traditional forms and animals acquire and transmit them. Such
behavior is a language similar to our language of folklore. It is repeated as the same, and
every time created anew. Humans, however, consider the repeated forms of behavior to be
secondary, and promote unexpected behavior. Evidently, man when he appeared resembled a
mad animal, and I suppose that was the reason why this relatively weak creature could
survive and kill much bigger animals. They were not able to predict his behavior. In such a
way I would speak about the semiotics of mammals, which to me seems real. This is another
semiotics, another type of language but we are not only humans, we are also mammals, and
therefore we also have mastery of that language. It could be suppressed, or more dynamic, or
less dynamic.14 The appearance of language in our sense of the word was an upheaval,
perhaps a tragic one, but a groundbreaking upheaval which created a fundamentally new
situation. This is one aspect of the approach of semiotics to animals, which allows us to
penetrate into the world of semiotic constants, invariable situations and inheritable behavior.
On the whole, I think that zoosemiotics should become part of linguistics, or linguistics part
of zoosemiotics; let us not argue about the priority, but it seems to me that a zoologist ought
to be a linguist, and maybe a linguist ought to be a zoologist (see Kull 1999, 124125).

Thus, we have pointed to these aspects of Lotmans legacy that can be effectively used
for the integrative development of semiotics in the twenty-first century. Indeed, Lotmans
biographer, American semiotician Edna Andrews, has noted that it is clear that Lotmans
system is in harmony with the models presented by Sebeok, Jakobson, and von Uexkll
(Andrews 2003, 24). John Deely adds:
Jakob von Uexkll and Juri Lotman [. . . ] the heritage of these two figures have proved to be
the foundation stones in some ways more important even than the, so far, more widely
recognized figures of Ferdinand de Saussure and Charles Peirce for the future of semiotics
within university life and intellectual life generally. (2012, 214)

Lotmans humanitarian approach together with his view on the semiotic study of culture
as 15 (see also Schreider 1993), and on culture as an organic semiotic system, results
in the establishment of the semiotics of culture (Salupere, Torop and Kull 2013), which is
rich and profound, in order to provide the principles for general semiotics.
Also, the method to be used for the furtherance of semiotics can be derived from
Lotmans thought. This can be derived from the principle of incompatibility stating that
the aim of our scholarly work is to make the descriptions logically compatible, consistent.
The same principle of incompatibility allows us to formulate the difference between the
arts and the sciences in a logically consistent way. While the arts use implicit incompatibilities to make meanings (thus producing the multiple interpretations with tension
between these), the function of sciences, instead, is to make the incompatibilities explicit.
The two major domains of sciences differ namely in this: the incompatibilities can be
made explicit by either (a) removing them (physical sciences) then the study objects will
not include incompatibilities (which is the case of physical objects), or (b) just describing
them (semiotic sciences) then objects may include incompatibilities (as it should always
be in case of semiosic objects). Thus, once again, semiotics can be defined as such a study
of meaning-making systems in which the aspect of meaning-making is explicitly
described.

Acknowledgements
I thank Mihhail Lotman and Ekaterina Velmezova for creative conversations and co-work.

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K. Kull

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding
This work is related to the project IUT244 (Semiotic modelling of self-description mechanisms:
Theory and applications), and the Centre of Excellence in Cultural Theory (supported by the
European Union through the European Regional Development Fund).

Notes
1.

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2.

3.
4.

5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

Including the initiation of the collective manifesto on semiotics of culture in 1973. See
Salupere, Torop and Kull (2013).
Cf. the evaluation by Vyacheslav V. Ivanov (whom J. Lotman regarded very highly), in the last
paragraph of his From the next century (Ivanov 1994, 490): I think that Lotmans plan to
make all semiotic fields of knowledge into a mathematically exact science, closely connected
to natural science (biology) and history, will be achieved next century, to which Lotman
belongs with all his testament of thoughts.
J. Lotman, in an interview with K. Kull, June 1992; see Kull (1999).
We can see this interpretation of Lotman as an aspect of the development of New Tartu
Semiotics the semiotic research in Lotmans school that started with the establishment of the
Department of Semiotics in the University of Tartu in 1992 (Torop 2000; Kull et al. 2011;
Kull, Lotman 2012) and that has established the connections with the views of the semiotics
groups in Bloomington and Copenhagen, in addition to the earlier co-work with Moscow
semioticians (Deely 2010, 32; 4142; 9597).
Cf. Peregrin (2011), who proves a statement about the fundamental status of incompatibility
for logic.
Uexkll (1982 [1940]).
Lotman (1990, 2135).
Lotman (1990, 22).
Uexkll (1982, 9).
About translation between umwelten, see Kull and Torop (2011).
See for a list of definitions of the semiosphere in Kull (1998); it would also be reasonable to
state that there is no real difference between Lotmans and Hoffmeyers (1997) view on the
semiosphere (Hoffmeyer just extends it to include biosemiosis).
On the concept of model in Lotman, see also Torop (1999).
About these summer schools, see Salupere (2012).
See also Lotman (1988), in which he describes animal movements as sign systems.
Science (in Russian); in the Russian language, similar to German (Wissenschaft), scientific is
not limited to natural sciences, it is rather an academic (systematic and critical) study in general.

Notes on contributor
Kalevi Kull is Professor of Biosemiotics and head of the Department of Semiotics in the University
of Tartu, Estonia. His research deals with semiotic approach in biology, mechanisms of biodiversity,
and theory and history of semiotics. His works include Jakob von Uexkll: A Paradigm for Biology
and Semiotics, Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the action of Signs (with Claus Emmeche), a.o.
He is an editor of book series Semiotics, Communication, Cognition (with Paul Cobley),
Biosemiotics (with Jesper Hoffmeyer and Alexei Sharov) and Tartu Semiotics Library, and of the
journal Sign Systems Studies.

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