Semiotics Killed the Cat

MikeL

Semiotics (describing things in terms of function rather than design) has been getting a great rap lately – maybe too great. It may be the reason so many scientists and even lay-people attack the idea of a god. What do you think?

Semiotics is great for local explanations of occurrences. By local I mean explanations at the level of examination- So, if we are talking about cells, then semiotics would be talking in terms of plasma membranes, cell walls and transport molecules. If we’re talking about atoms then we would be talking about electrons and protons. Any level beneath the local level could be considered a global level. We don’t talk about cell function in terms of up and down quarks as this more global semiotic language doesn’t fit.

Using Semiotics, science seeks to understand at the local level. The more successful the local explanation is, the less the global level is referenced.

Semiotics though, ‘objectifies’ the continuous world by assigning discreet properties (such as cell wall) to much more complex phenomenon. Rather than understanding a continuous flow of energy densities into atoms into molecules and seeing the wall as the arrangement of these energy densities, semiotics creates discreet worlds separated from the ones below and above it. By using semiotics to continually reduce emergent phenomenon to our own experiences we cease to marvel at the level of complexity upon which the local layer stands.

Semiotics is needed though for the volume of information is staggering when we enter complex arrangements, and semiotics lets us hold the important information in mind. Semiotics is a necessary cognitive shorthand. Imagine trying to explain neuronal signalling by explaining the energy state changes in atoms – and yet it could be done.

What is often overlooked is that semiotics represents information loss. To say that a planet orbits a sun or that a heart beats represents information loss and creates discreetness where there should be continuity. This is probably the reason there is difficulty in uniting theories of the universe with Quantum Mechanics.

When one layer of discreet semiotics is overlaid upon another semiotic layer, like a mask upon a mask, biology upon chemistry there a sense that the lower level of semiotic understanding does not apply or is irrelevant. After all, how do subatomic energy configurations contribute to an understanding of the circulatory system? We become blind to the continuous nature of reality, we no longer need nor seek global truth when local explanations are closed. The ‘but why’ questions are answered with local explanations of 'how'.

There are always exceptions to the rules though, because fundamentally semiotics is only a representation of the truth of a system at a certain hierarchical level. As an undergraduate I once suggested to a graduate student that finding a new property of an atom does not change our understanding of hydrostatic pressure. He was horrified, and suggested it did.

Due to the local understanding we derive through semiotics, we might marvel at the sentient nature of energy fields as atoms bind with other atoms, and at the sentient nature of ourselves, but we can’t link them and can’t tie them to a greater concept. We don’t see ourselves as nothing more than those same atomic energy configurations. Therein, of course, lies the true wonder of the nature of being. The energy states that coalesce to form us.

Science, so fixated on understanding at the local level – so specialised in their attempt – scorns the search for a deeper global truth as a failure to understand local truth sufficiently, or as an irrelevancy. It is a type of giving up - not trying hard enough, an unnecessary superfluousness that doesn’t contribute locally. Why invoke a God when our semiotic understanding is almost closed?

Or do you disagree?

Jake Tarragon

Semiotics though, ‘objectifies’ the continuous world by assigning discreet properties (such as cell wall) to much more complex phenomenon. — MikeL

If you look at the "design" of living things through embryology, the blueprints are rather digital. There are genes that effectively represent numbers such as two and five and concepts such as symmetry, and recursion. There are strongly defined "types" as well. The "continuous world" is a doubtful concept, I suggest.

MikeL

↪Jake Tarragon

Thanks for your reply.

I'm not sure of your argument here Jake. Are you saying that because we are able to understand a lot of embryology locally through semiotics there is no need to invoke global references? - Because that falls into line with my argument that it doesn't happen.

Or are you suggesting that because we can understand a lot of embryology through semiotics, there is no continuous world? That the level of embryo is the lowest level from which an explanation be derived?

What about if we re-wrote embryology as a chemist, in terms of atomic interactions and chemical gradients. Is it possible to derive a deeper understanding or appreciation of what is happening? For example I know that gravity has been implicated in the process of embryogenesis. Can such an effect be described equally in terms of semiotics at the cellular level as well as semiotics at the molecular or even atomic level?

Jake Tarragon

↪MikeL

Atoms and their chemical properties are the medium through which a discrete digital embryological design is implemented. I don't think that smaller means deeper however. The properties of atoms are simply being harnessed in the round ... there will be a "random" fuzziness to the outcome because atoms have peculiarities of behavior that lie outside the scope of control of DNA etc. Such fuzziness is not part of the "design" but neither could it be said to add anything specific other than noise.

MikeL

The properties of atoms are simply being harnessed — Jake Tarragon

By what?

Such fuzziness is not part of the "design" but neither could it be said to add anything specific other than noise. — Jake Tarragon

So how is it that the result is a screaming baby pops out? Fuzzy noise seems to create a whole bunch of interesting stuff and the more we run from a 'design' element the more elaborate the explanations for something that should be quite simple to explain, become.

TimeLine

Semiotics is needed though for the volume of information is staggering when we enter complex arrangements, and semiotics lets us hold the important information in mind. Semiotics is a necessary cognitive shorthand. Imagine trying to explain neuronal signalling by explaining the energy state changes in atoms – and yet it could be done. — MikeL

Que pasa?

MikeL

↪TimeLine

Sorry TimeLine, my Spanish is a little rusty and Google tells me you said 'What's up.'

The sky?

TimeLine

↪MikeL

Yeah, some tumbleweed just rolled right past you.

Anyhoot, I fear you know very little on the subject of semiotics as your post makes no sense. For instance:

Due to the local understanding we derive through semiotics, we might marvel at the sentient nature of energy fields as atoms bind with other atoms, and at the sentient nature of ourselves, but we can’t link them and can’t tie them to a greater concept. — MikeL

And then:

Rather than understanding a continuous flow of energy densities into atoms into molecules and seeing the wall as the arrangement of these energy densities, semiotics creates discreet worlds separated from the ones below and above it. — MikeL

Perhaps some clarity of what you are attempting to question?

MikeL

↪TimeLine

Now Japanese is something I can deal with.

There is no conflict here that I can see.

Semiotics allows us to understand local phenomenon. Because we have a local understanding the phenomenon become discreet. It is a world of cell membranes and ion channels, not glycoproteins and phospholipid bilayers. There is a different semiotic language.

You are right that my use of the term semiotics is based on the idea that complex molecules etc can be represented simply by describing function. If someone else wants to define it another way, that's okay.

Semiotics as I define it here describes function over design. A biomechanic or exercise physiologist doesn't need to understand chemistry to do their job. On their level, the heart is a pump to circulate blood by creating a pressure system. That is all they need to know about it.

Of course there is a lot of form and function that goes on to create this circulatory system. A physician might look at the body one way and a chemist another.

Each layer is discreet. When we focus strongly on one layer we try to understand that layer completely, in terms of the semiotic variables in that system. To not be able to explain it fully this way seems wrong. This creates a tunnel vision that isolates ones thinking. We easily overlook the massive complexity beneath our simple understanding. We forget we are standing on an emergent layer of a much more complex playground. We don't really understand what we are looking at in its truest form.

Wakarimasu ka?

antinatalautist

Semiotics is great for local explanations of occurrences. By local I mean explanations at the level of examination- So, if we are talking about cells, then semiotics would be talking in terms of plasma membranes, cell walls and transport molecules. If we’re talking about atoms then we would be talking about electrons and protons. Any level beneath the local level could be considered a global level. We don’t talk about cell function in terms of up and down quarks as this more global semiotic language doesn’t fit. —

If I am understanding correctly, the closer something is examined, the more global the level is? Quarks are the local level for the physicists gaze and talk, whereas it's experience for the phenomenologist, but what's the reasoning behind placing these at the ends of a 'scale of examination' (where the closer one examines the world the more 'global' the talk is)?

Why is it not the reverse, where the closer we get to phenomenology the more global the explanation?

Why do disparate types of explanations and modes of examination sit upon a sort of objective scale? Don't you only think this way because you assume a sort of metaphysics of emergence from the smallest quarks to the largest objects (where does consciousness fit - being that which examines both the quarks and the widest scales in the first place, including itself when doing phenomenology)? Isn't this assumption about the nature of the world in-itself a local examination (it's you, examining and explaining the world in a particular way or mode) - just another way of talking about the world?

MikeL

If I am understanding correctly, the closer something is examined, the more global the level is? — antinatalautist

Not necessarily. Global implies not local. It is what we see when we back out of our local knowledge and reconsider everything that is happening beyond our semiotic understanding. It could just as easily be top down as bottom up.

I like the idea that things are bottom up. As life grows more complex emergent phenomenon are assigned symbols. Soon we have an array of such symbols that interact with each other, seemingly independent of what is happening in the symbols on the level below them.

I see emergent patterns due to an excess of something in the system that is breaking constraint. When an isolated system suddenly begins to interact with another system to form a more complex system, the interaction happened because there was a capacity or tolerance in the system that allowed this indulgence. I haven't given it a great deal of thought, but I would probably define consciousness as an emergent phenomenon from an excess in the nervous system. As a crude example, we are able to process sight without actually seeing. Seeing is an emergent phenomenon.

Isn't this assumption about the nature of the world in-itself a local examination (it's you, examining and explaining the world in a particular way or mode) - just another way of talking about the world? — antinatalautist

Yes. I'm not saying semiotic explanations are not good, only restrictive in the way we see the world. Our language uses nouns to define objects. Semiotics is hard to escape.

antinatalautist

I see emergent patterns due to an excess of something in the system that is breaking constraint. When an isolated system suddenly begins to interact with another system to form a more complex system, the interaction happened because there was a capacity or tolerance in the system that allowed this indulgence — MikeL

So is this just a development over time in the way we speak? Or rather, is this language over time better corresponding itself to a world? Is language itself the system, or is language itself couched within a wider (material?) system? Is semiotics itself an emergent phenomenon? If so, what did it emerge from? Can this question coherently be answered?

(I have no idea).

MikeL

↪antinatalautist

Hey, no problem, let me try and be clearer.

When we describe something, anything, there are different ways we may choose to describe it. I may say there is a cup in front of me. I have isolated the object 'cup' with my language.

I could also say there is a yellow patterned fired clay cylinder closed on one end and open on the other, with a curved hollow protuberance (the handle).

In the first instance I summed up that information with one word cup, because that was all that was needed to communicate the idea. There was also information loss. I did not say the cup was yellow, that it had a handle, that it was fired nor that it was patterned.

Local Level 1: Cup - a function
Local Level 2: The description of the cup

I could also look at the arrangement of the atoms. What type of atoms they are, how they are bonded, what conformation they take inside the cup. I could become very specific with my description of the atoms and the angles the bond configurations take as the cup takes form. Lots and lots of information.

At the level of the cup there are other objects about, such as myself and the desk. These also can be described at different local levels. When we say the man picked up the cup off the desk and we describe this in terms of atomic configurations and relative movements through the atoms in the air, the electrostatic bonds with my hand etc it is extremely complicated. It is best to use semiotics (the man lifted the cup off the desk).

It seems almost absurd to describe the action in terms of atoms, and yet, there is nothing else there. It is all atoms. Everything else is semiotic description. (OK even atoms are and we can keep regressing).

When we realise this, a Holy Cow moment comes over us - or me at least. What guided that? How did the atoms coalesce to create this complex phenomenon. In this example I have used things made by man rather than life or natural inanimate object interactions, and so it may seem a bit mundane, but the point I hope is clear:

When we back out of our local level and look at what is truly going on we find the security of semiotic understanding is removed. We begin to search for the fundamental driver of the action.

mcdoodle

When we back out of our local level and look at what is truly going on we find the security of semiotic understanding is removed. We begin to search for the fundamental driver of the action. — MikeL

Where is apokrisis when we need him?

In apo's absence...we look like sign-making creatures to me. How do we get to 'what is truly going on'? Isn't that, like, with signs? I certainly don't find semiotic understanding that secure, but maybe I missed the reassuring memo. Understanding looks like semiotics all the way down to me. How did you glimpse the noumenon?

MikeL

↪mcdoodle

We lose the driver - it becomes unreachable when we back out of our current layer. The simple question of 'What's causing that to happen?" has no answer. We are strung out on a continuum of infinite regress and egress.

Wayfarer

Semiotics (describing things in terms of function rather than design) has been getting a great rap lately – maybe too great. It may be the reason so many scientists and even lay-people attack the idea of a god. What do you think? — MikeL

I'm sorry but I think this is totally off the mark.

The 'science vs religion conflict' is a fascinating topic and one of the themes I am always interested in, but I don't think semiotics in particular has anything much to do with it. The Science V Religion conflict, such as it is, is rooted in certain currents of thought arising from the European Enlightenment, such as historical positivism (see The Conflict Thesis for a handy summary.)

I haven't studied semiotics in depth, but I do know is the discipline of signs and representation. That is where Peirce is significant, but from what I have read, a couple of later theorists, particularly Ferdinand Sauserre, greatly expanded the scope and applicability of semiotics beyond Peirce's original work. It has subsequently been found to be highly applicable in biology. My reading is, this because of the 'language-like' nature of living organisms. The metaphor of signs and languages is much more effective at depicting the processes of living organisms, than the metaphor of machines and mechanical processes. That is the background to 'bio-semiotics'.

There is now an additional move - towards 'pan-semiosis', which is to understand the entire universe in semiotic terms. I think that is highly speculative, not that I understand it very well. But I think bio-semiosis works perfectly well regardless of whether pansemiosis holds water or not.

But in any case, in this post, you're basically accusing semiotics of the very thing that it supposed to remedy, namely, scientific reductionism. That, I don't think, is characteristic of semiotics, as such, which is consciously anti-reductionist.

It's good you've developed an interest in these ideas and themes from Philosophy Forum, but I think you would benefit some further background reading on history of ideas, philosophy, semiotics and the 'culture wars' surrounding evolutionary theory. They're all very big, and controversial, topics, that take a lot of reading to get a handle on, but well worth the effort of study.

Also - have a look at this particular website - http://www.biosemiosis.org . It seems, in my inexpert opinion, to summarise the subject very well, but from a conscientiously non-materialist point of view.

Janus

Understanding looks like semiotics all the way down to me. How did you glimpse the noumenon? — mcdoodle

That seems to be an eliminativist standpoint. The question is 'who is manipulating the signs in order to do the understanding, and where does the semiotics come from '?

Janus

Semiotics (describing things in terms of function rather than design) has been getting a great rap lately – maybe too great. It may be the reason so many scientists and even lay-people attack the idea of a god. What do you think? — MikeL

I think you need to distinguish between semiotics as being the notion that describes all processes of human (and perhaps animal) understanding via signs and manipulation of signs, and the self-conscious valorization of semiotics (as systems or information science) as potentially being 'the answer'. The latter may certainly reflect an anti-theistic and totally anti-mystical, anti-transcendental, stance.

MikeL

But in any case, in this post, you're basically accusing semiotics of the very thing that it supposed to remedy, namely, scientific reductionism. That, I don't think, is characteristic of semiotics, as such, which is consciously anti-reductionist. — Wayfarer

You're right, my reading on so many topics is behind, and I would benefit from further background reading, but I also like to try and rely on what is logical- not just what other people think. When you look at a coiled protein and say that is a channel, then surely you have reduced the configuration of the protein to a symbol.

Scientific reductionism is by definition: Scientific reductionism is the idea of reducing complex interactions and entities to the sum of their constituent parts, in order to make them easier to study.

Whether the definition exactly fits the definition as defined by someone else though is not to the point. When using symbols to describe our landscape, when those symbols form a closed loop - all is explained, there is no need for further invokation of forces. It is only when we back out of the symbology- providing a local level understanding, that we see we really know very little at all.

Janus

But in any case, in this post, you're basically accusing semiotics of the very thing that it supposed to remedy, namely, scientific reductionism. That, I don't think, is characteristic of semiotics, as such, which is consciously anti-reductionist. — Wayfarer

Personally, I think semiotics is reductive. All symbolic understanding is reductive, and I think that is the OP's point. I would say there is scientific reduction, (in order to know we reduce) "reductionism" is another, properly philosophical, matter. It says that there is "nothing but" what our reductive explanations tell us, and that reality is thus comprehensively explicable in those terms, with no mysterious 'leftovers'. Semiotics, if treated in such a way, can be equally as reductionist as materialism, idealism or any other "ism".

MikeL

↪Janus

I think you need to distinguish between semiotics as being the notion that describes all processes of human (and perhaps animal) understanding via signs and manipulation of signs, and the self-conscious valorization of semiotics (as systems or information science) as potentially being 'the answer'. The latter may certainly reflect an anti-theistic and totally anti-mystical, anti-transcendental, stance. — Janus

By semiotics as a human understanding via signs and manipulation of signs, I assume you mean communication? In this case a distinction could be made between communication and using symbols to understand the world around us.

It says that there is "nothing but" what our reductive explanations tell us, and that reality is thus comprehensively explicable in those terms, with no mysterious 'leftovers'. — Janus

Yes. In a nutshell.

It is only by backing out of the local layer we see how limited our knowledge really is - how every conclusion we reached about our system was predicated on much deeper assumptions/semiotics. It is at this point we begin to look for a driver of it all.

Wayfarer

Scientific reductionism is the idea of reducing complex interactions and entities to the sum of their constituent parts, in order to make them easier to study. — MikeL

But it has nearly always been understood in terms of those 'constituent parts' being physical entities. For centuries, that was 'materialism' or 'atomism'; now the PC term is 'physicalism', because (unfortunately for materialists) physics itself seems to have dissolved atoms.

The point about reductionism is to say that something - like human experience, or the world - is 'nothing but' - 'nothing but' atoms in motion, humans are 'nothing but' another species, the intellect is 'nothing but' the aggregation of neurons. There is recent canonical statement by Francis Crick, who, after all, was one of the discoverers of DNA, and surely germane to this debate, to whit:

“A person's mental activities are entirely due to the behavior of nerve cells, glial cells, and the atoms, ions, and molecules that make them up and influence them.”

So there's your classical reductionist statement (which incidentally several thousand philosophers have comprehensively shredded.)

But to say that something is 'a symbol or a sign' is NOT 'reductionist' in the sense that physical reductionism is. That is why it is said that semiotics allows for 'top-down causation' - the notion that meaning itself can have causal powers. No materialist could ever allow for that. So, I don't agree that semiotics is reductionist in that sense, you will find in any textbook on the subject, plenty of criticisms of reductionism.

I think the problem you're sensing, is of a different nature - it is basically about the scope of science, rather than semiotics, in particular.

Janus

But to say that something is 'a symbol or a sign' is NOT 'reductionist' in the sense that physical reductionism is. That is why it is said that semiotics allows for 'top-down causation' - the notion that meaning itself can have causal powers. No materialist could ever allow for that. So, I don't agree that semiotics is reductionist in that sense, you will find in any textbook on the subject, plenty of criticisms of reductionism. — Wayfarer

For semiotics, there is no meaning 'beyond' the signs; no meaning 'out there' or 'in here' in some transcendent sense. So, it is reductionist, just as surely as materialism or physicalism is. Reality is reducible to a system of signs instead of to a system of energetic interactions; or rather the two are the two faces of one coin, beyond which there is simply nothing else.

MikeL

But to say that something is 'a symbol or a sign' is NOT 'reductionist' in the sense that physical reductionism is. — Wayfarer

I take your point that semiotics is not boiling down the facts to support some conclusion, but I also agree with Janus that the symbol is a reduction of information - a loss of information about the property of an object. I may have a complex set of wires, transistors and capacitors and then put them all in a box and call it a radio. To my mind, identifying the radio without having to understand the wires is an example of semiotics.

At the level we use the radio it is fine not to understand the workings of it. We can make assumptions and conclusions about the radio. We can say it 'picks up' radio waves that we can 'tune into' by turning this knob. We can claim to understand at this local level all there is to know about the functioning of the radio, but we do not understand the wiring and components.

By assuming a complete knowledge, based on our semiotic understanding, we no longer look for deeper truths.

Janus

By semiotics as a human understanding via signs and manipulation of signs, I assume you mean communication? In this case a distinction could be made between communication and using symbols to understand the world around us. — MikeL

Yes, I think a distinction can be made between communication and understanding. There is probably much that we, along with other animals, understand via signs, that we cannot effectively communicate. I would say that visual arts and music are also semiotic, but they embody the more indeterminable dimension of signs. This in-finity of signs is just what points beyond them. The horizon shrinks when the focus is fixated by the determinable.

MikeL

I would say that visual arts and music are also semiotic, but they embody the more indeterminable dimension of signs. — Janus

I was reading (watching on YouTube) about a philosopher the other day who said the appeal of art to people is the fact that it captures a truth about ourselves or the world and therefore we can relate to the experience. And so it would by reason be semiotic.

The horizon shrinks when the focus is fixated by the determinable. — Janus

Yes, the search for answers comes to a stop and trying to introduce other ideas such as a creative force become superfluous nonsense. It is only by backing out of the semiotic layer we are using that we find a place for such a thing.

Janus

Yes, the search for answers comes to a stop and trying to introduce other ideas such as a creative force become superfluous nonsense. — MikeL

Yes, indeed, the deliverances of the human imagination must be eliminated at all costs, or we may, woe betide us, be duped into some illusory understanding of ourselves and of reality itself! What dire results could be the consequence of such a cosmic mistake?

Srap Tasmaner

↪Πετροκότσυφας

I'll throw in Paul Grice too as someone with a theory of meaning that connects "natural meaning"-- what Eco calls "symptoms" in your quote, clouds meaning rain, that sort of thing-- and "non-natural meaning", that is, what we do when me mean something by a sound we make, etc., etc.

Wayfarer

For semiotics, there is no meaning 'beyond' the signs; no meaning 'out there' or 'in here' in some transcendent sense. So, it is reductionist, just as surely as materialism or physicalism is. — Janus

If you could support that with a citation or example, it would be useful. I would say there are some who appeal to semiotics who would say that, but others who would not. I don't see it as being particularly associated with semiotics.

By assuming a complete knowledge, based on our semiotic understanding, we no longer look for deeper truths. — MikeL

What we're actually discussing here is not semiotics but scientism, that being:

'to describe the dogmatic endorsement of scientific methodology and the reduction of all knowledge to only that which is measured or confirmatory' (wikipedia).

Scientism is a pejorative term - it implies a deficient or prejudiced understanding, so it is generally rejected by those who are accused of it, but I agree it is very widespread in contemporary culture.

MikeL

What we're actually discussing here is not semiotics but scientism, — Wayfarer

Interesting. Yes we are discussing scientism by this definition - a scientism whose fallacious belief arises from semiotics.

It is my contention that this fallacy is what has procluded Creative Forces from scientific discussion and rendered it homeless. It is only by backing out of the current semiotic model that we see there are really no substantial answer at all to the 'but why' question.

Wayfarer

It is my contention that this fallacy is what has procluded Creative Forces from scientific discussion and rendered it homeless. It is only by backing out of the current semiotic model that we see there are really no substantial answer at all to the 'but why' question. — MikeL

Totally with you Mike. But it's not simply confined to semiotics.

I think what's happened is that the debates on the forum about the 'origin of life' have really crystallised some feelings for you, which are basically religious or spiritual in origin. They concern big questions and they generate a lot of passion.

There's a really interesting and worthwhile current US academic philosopher, by the name of Thomas Nagel. If you were to read any of the current philosophers as a consequence of your time on the Forum, I would hope he would be among them. Nagel himself professes to be an atheist, but he is also extremely sceptical of what he calls 'neo-Darwinian materialism', which is the mainstream philosophical attitude in the 'Secular west'. It is what most purportedly intelligent and educated people take for granted nowadays.

Nagel says in one of his essays that what he thinks drives a lot of the debate, is actually a deep-seated and unacknowledged fear of religion.

I believe that this is one manifestation of a fear of religion which has large and often pernicious consequences for modern intellectual life.

In speaking of the fear of religion, I don’t mean to refer to the entirely reasonable hostility toward certain established religions and religious institutions, in virtue of their objectionable moral doctrines, social policies, and political influence. Nor am I referring to the association of many religious beliefs with superstition and the acceptance of evident empirical falsehoods. I am talking about something much deeper—namely, the fear of religion itself. I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and wellinformed people I know are religious believers. It isn’t just that I don’t believe in God and, naturally, hope that I’m right in my belief. It’s that I hope there is no God! I don’t want there to be a God; I don’t want the universe to be like that.

My guess is that this cosmic authority problem is not a rare condition and that it is responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time. One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous overuse of evolutionary biology to explain everything about life, including everything about the human mind. Darwin enabled modern secular culture to heave a great collective sigh of relief, by apparently providing a way to eliminate purpose, meaning, and design as fundamental features of the world.

from Evolutionary Naturalism and the Fear of Religion, in The Last Word

In my view, many people have made up their minds about the whole God business - they've closed the door, nailed it shut, and don't want it to be opened again. That drives a lot of debate around this point.

Semiotics Killed the Cat

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