Legal theory and semiotics
semiotics, theory and practice of law
pp. 99-125
in: , Lawyers making meaning II, Berlin, Springer, 2013Abstract
Structuralism appears to remain one of the basic philosophies that come nearest to the semiotic understanding of reality and the many movements of the human psyche. Already Paracelsus mentioned how the signatura is an expression for a scientific approach to order what is hidden as the constitutive secret of things, denotes the science of understanding the markers of reality, and expresses the very act of marking itself.He viewed the act of understanding of how things are signed, what signator exists, and how signs are taken into consideration.That is a truly early program for semiotics, showing how structuralism and semiotics are tied together.Genetics is an example: there exists a common metaphor in the concept of a Text, or a Book that is written along the lines of the Grammar of Language.Variations in sequences, which define and sustain our understanding of their interaction and their circuitry, are modern expressions for old ideas, as is conceivable in the works of De Saussure as in many other semioticians. Is indeed the Book of Nature written in Circles, Triangles, Pyramids, Cones and Squares?