Семиология, семиосфера, семиозис

The roots of semiotic thinking go back to the first civilizations of the Fertile Crescent and Ancient Greece. The recent history of concepts such as sign, sign-action and sign systems, is dominated by two traditions: the semiology of Ferdinand de Saussure and the semeiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce. In this article we are going to examine Saussure's dyadic model of the linguistic sign, Yuri Lotman's ideas on primary and secondary modeling systems and his concept of semiosphere, as well as Peirce's triadic sing doctrine. Finally, we are going to examine Peirce's understanding of the process of sign-action or semiosis. I argue that through that concept we are able to transcend the boundaries of physics, linguistics and culture.