Alin Olteanu
Learning as modelling: a biosemiotic proposal for digital humanities
Abstract
Drawing on recent research in semiotics I construe learning as modelling (pragmatization of the environment). From this perspective, learning, as sought for in educational settings, is not contrasted to the phenomenon of adaption. For instance, Charles Peirce considered that reasoning is not a peculiarity of humans, but a continuous phenomenon of signification that started in the geologically distant past. This implies a non-logocentric understanding of humanity and a non-anthropocentric understanding of learning.
I argue that semiotic scholarship in several semiotic schools confirms Marshall McLuhan’s anticipation (in The Gutenberg Galaxy) that the “electronic age” will resemble pre-alphabetic societies more than the age of modernity, which was dominated by “alphabetic technology”. I make use of theoretical concepts from biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, edusemiotics, semiotic research on multimodality and the recent semiotic approach to digital humanities. My argument is rooted in the observation that a theory of semiotic modelling is adequate for digital humanities because such a theory retains the general mechanisms of modelling found in life in general. This was mentioned in recent scholarship on digital humanities modelling (Ciula and Marras 2016) and it opens up the possibility for investigating McLuhan’s claim about the digital age in a fully semiotic and wholistic perspective. At its core, biosemiotics is a theory of organisms’ modelling of their phenomenal environments.
Scholarship along these lines of research can help develop a comprehensive concept of modelling that encompasses both natural adaptation and cultural learning, avoiding a dichotomised construal of animal and human learning. This rather ecological perspective to learning and education contributes to the academic debate on digital literacies and its consequences for teaching practices.
Bionote
Alin Olteanu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Semiotics Institute and an Associate Professor (part time) in the Department for Modern Languages and Intercultural Communication, of the Kaunas University of Technology. His postdoctoral work focuses on semiotic approaches to multiculturalism. He holds a PhD in Philosophy of Education from the University of Roehampton. His book Philosophy of Education in the Semiotics of Charles Peirce: a Cosmology of Learning and Loving, constitutes a first fully Peircean approach to education. His research interests are situated at the encounter of educational philosophy and theory, semiotics, natural sciences and scientific modelling.
Abstract
Drawing on recent research in semiotics I construe learning as modelling (pragmatization of the environment). From this perspective, learning, as sought for in educational settings, is not contrasted to the phenomenon of adaption. For instance, Charles Peirce considered that reasoning is not a peculiarity of humans, but a continuous phenomenon of signification that started in the geologically distant past. This implies a non-logocentric understanding of humanity and a non-anthropocentric understanding of learning.
I argue that semiotic scholarship in several semiotic schools confirms Marshall McLuhan’s anticipation (in The Gutenberg Galaxy) that the “electronic age” will resemble pre-alphabetic societies more than the age of modernity, which was dominated by “alphabetic technology”. I make use of theoretical concepts from biosemiotics, ecosemiotics, edusemiotics, semiotic research on multimodality and the recent semiotic approach to digital humanities. My argument is rooted in the observation that a theory of semiotic modelling is adequate for digital humanities because such a theory retains the general mechanisms of modelling found in life in general. This was mentioned in recent scholarship on digital humanities modelling (Ciula and Marras 2016) and it opens up the possibility for investigating McLuhan’s claim about the digital age in a fully semiotic and wholistic perspective. At its core, biosemiotics is a theory of organisms’ modelling of their phenomenal environments.
Scholarship along these lines of research can help develop a comprehensive concept of modelling that encompasses both natural adaptation and cultural learning, avoiding a dichotomised construal of animal and human learning. This rather ecological perspective to learning and education contributes to the academic debate on digital literacies and its consequences for teaching practices.
Bionote
Alin Olteanu is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the International Semiotics Institute and an Associate Professor (part time) in the Department for Modern Languages and Intercultural Communication, of the Kaunas University of Technology. His postdoctoral work focuses on semiotic approaches to multiculturalism. He holds a PhD in Philosophy of Education from the University of Roehampton. His book Philosophy of Education in the Semiotics of Charles Peirce: a Cosmology of Learning and Loving, constitutes a first fully Peircean approach to education. His research interests are situated at the encounter of educational philosophy and theory, semiotics, natural sciences and scientific modelling.