DOI: 10.24308/iass-2014-035

Faculdade Cásper Líbero, São Paulo, Brazil

prof.arcf@uol.com.br

Faculdade Cásper Líbero, São Paulo, Brazil

digo.morais@gmail.com

Abstract

This paper proposes a brief discussion about the terms tradition, innovation and their relation with time. Contemporary languages require some adjustments to our lifestyles that involve perceiving things of everyday life in order to adapt to the idea that we have the time. We will use the concept of semiosis, from Charles Sanders Peirce’s semiotic and philosophic theories, and the concept of language proposed by Lev Semenovitch Vygotsky to try to understand the process of interpretants of the time.

“The symbolic order characteristic of the human species, of which language is inseparable, paved the way for the creation of a new kingdom in the biosphere, the realm signs and culture.[1]”

Lucia Santaella

We start this paper discarding all that nostalgia that can somehow transpire or tangent the text.

We will discuss terms that are in our everyday; things that we speak and use on a regular basis, even why we are constructed by language and the verbal language is the one that most will try to mediate our thinking and our action. We will try to start a discussion about the terms Tradition and Innovation. We think that the great link between these two terms is characterized by the notion of time. And time, a preoccupation that comes since philosophy is philosophy, is an issue that is gaining more followers for its thoughtfulness. To speak about tradition and innovation it is necessary that we put the following question: does technology change the time?  If we think about time – as Charles Sanders Peirce taught us – as inseparable from language, and language as signs, these are loaded by time. Therefore, the action of the sign, or semiosis, is “…coextensive with the notion of thought, mind, learning and continuity[2]” (Santaella, 2013, p.11). Then it is a pregnancy of the time in all actions. Time is continuous and leaves traces, tips for what lies ahead. Understanding tradition as the transfer of values, beliefs and practices to every generation, and innovation as something that is apparently new, which brings news, information and “improvements” in some systems, maybe we will not be able to read these terms as independents from each other. Innovation comes from a tradition. Comes from a need that is already contained in the universe of the experience of who proposes that, the newness, the freshness of an idea, in fact, already contains signs that are constantly reevaluated. It is this current that we intend henceforth take our discussion, to understand this semiosis as “…synonymous of intelligence, continuity, growth and life.[3]” (Santaella et Nöth, 2004, p.157). How important, then, the Charles Sanders Peirce theory of signs is for the understanding of time? It is necessary, here, resorting to his phaneroscopia or phenomenology, that Lucia Santaella (2004, p.2), very clearly defines as:

... a quasi-science that investigates the ways we apprehend anything that comes to our mind, anything of any type, something as simple as smell, a formation of clouds in the sky, the sound of rain, a picture in a magazine, etc., or something more complex like a more abstract concept, the memory of a time lived, etc., in short, everything that presents itself to the mind.[4]

For Peirce, there are three and only three formal elements that constitute any phenomenon. He called them Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.

Firstness appears in everything related with chance, possibility, quality, feeling, originality, freedom, and monad. Secondness is linked to ideas of dependency, determination, duality, action and reaction, here and now, conflict, surprise, doubt. Thirdness concerns the generality, continuity, growth, and intelligence. The simplest form of Thirdness, according to Peirce, manifests itself in the sign, since the sign is a first (something that presents itself to the mind), linking a second (what the sign indicates, refers or represents) to a third (the effect that the sign will provoke in a possible interpreter).^[5] (Santaella, 2004, p.7)

But what does it all have to do with time? If, as mentioned above, time for Peirce is continuity, semiosis, or action of the sign, to form an interpretive signic network must necessarily be connected to the previous signs which produce interpretants that enable the “formation” of other signs that produce interpretants again and so on, ad infinitum, in a continuous current in direction not necessarily linear, however, focused on a future pregnant with the past, an undefined future, but that carries a tendency to continuity. The present will be expressed in a discontinuous singular moment, in a hic et nunc, but a present that is no longer a present, because it must be embodied in something to exist, that is, the unique time that a Firstness element finds matter (moment of Secondness), offers its qualities and find there a body, shifts in a time and space to make possible in a intellectual synthesis (Thirdness) an encounter in a cognitive act made by an interpreting mind according to its interpretative competence, in a logical thought, then becoming Thirdness, largely responsible for all continuity and the action that the sign will carry on its interpreter. So, semiosis occurs in time and is constituted by time. Signs that come from past are loaded by numerous possibilities for multiple meanings that “match” to the future the power to determinate new sign elements that will draw, for example, the communication processes, without which life would have no chance of walking, growing, multiplying, existing. We may not forget, however, that Thirdness only happens in function of Secondness and Firstness, fundamental categories for the dynamics of semiosis itself.

Backing to the terms tradition and innovation, it is possible to perceive that time is involved in all of it, because when we appeal to tradition to see ourselves on it or to extract parameters to innovation, we are actually trying to work with signs that are there and that will offer us new directions insofar as from them it is possible to indicate the necessary paths to another way of acquiring skills whether facilitating or making practical. In the field of communication this is no different. Contemporary communication technologies are here to witness the way that this field has been touring and the consequences arising from this movement; for us today, so fast and almost imperceptible.

Imagine, for example, the time that used to take the famous letters that Peirce sent from United States, via sea, to Lady Victoria Welby[6], to reach the European continent where she lived. Also the time took by the answers by Lady Welby for Peirce. However, this was not a hindrance so they could communicate and exchange their experience. They were, this time, using languages and technological resources of that time, better explaining, they were using signic and technological resources available so far. And when we talk about signic resources we want to think any and all modes of action of translated languages that are available to us and which of them we are made up. “Language is not in us. It is us who are in the language[7]” (Peirce apud Santaella, 2004, p.63), used to say Peirce. When we are born we find languages ready, it behooves us to assimilate then and contribute to their growth. And what languages are we talking about? We are talking about all signical forms we can establish to be possible for us to communicate, to be possible to learn things and understand others, to be possible act our thoughts.

In the fourth edition of the work Thought and Language (2011) from Vigotsky, a Soviet psychologist (1896–1934), Jerome Bruner in his introduction of this edition (p.IX) leaves us a very important passage that is worth quoting it:

…Vigotsky elaborates in what sense he believes that dominating nature we can master ourselves. Because it is the internalization of the manifested action that makes the thought and, particularly, it is the internalization of the exterior dialogue that takes the powerful tool of language to influence the flow of thought. The man, so to speak, is modeled by instruments and tools used, and neither the mind nor the hand alone can accomplish much.^[8]

In fact, we are not isolated beings and we could not live in this state of isolation. I only exist because the other exists and allow me to exist. We expand our interpretative skills as we live and share our experiences. To acquire interpretative competence means increasing our signic repertoire for our action to aim, every more, a more harmonious coexistence, more salutary and more egalitarian. Unfortunately it is not always like this, but if we not aim the summon bonun what sense would have life?

Societies are increasingly connected by communication networks and, consequently, increasingly complex. In order to understand all these fast transformations, science – which can be defined as a combination of inter-subject areas (interdisciplinarity) – develops an essential role. To science focus lies in understanding the changes and make use of it, the most ethical possible.

The digital era is showing us the plot and the great complexity of relations in all sectors of knowledge and our everyday lives. A complexity that makes us think our world even more guided by technological advances. Technology implies change, what today gain a speed almost unreachable. To understand the changes is to reinterpret languages, it is to understand its access channels, it is to be adapted to the understanding of what time represents. It is to try to understand that new languages produce new forms of action. These new forms of action – that feed on the signs of the past – implies in new types of knowledge that are proposed to us and that it behooves us to improve them, work them, understand them and disseminate them. This is the role of all.

Discussions are many; interests, maybe bigger, but it is impossible to deny that the ways that are presented us everyday represent a challenge of trying to understand what life is offering us. To innovate is to make contemporary technologies our theory tools and utilities for a world more equal. Nothing on it is new. The role of technologies has being always this. However, it is not worth, in the name of it, to make use for ulterior and inhuman purposes. Repeating, to understand contemporary languages, the new technologies, is to try to understand life, life in its lato sensu.

But time? “Composer of fate, drum of all rhythms…”[9]

St. Augustine’s time, Kant’s time, Peirce’s time, Foucault’s time, Einstein’s time. What is this time we search and live? It is the same time of always. The time of the things in the things of the time. A time that is shown us the one we (re)interpret. A time that with the use of contemporary technological resources we can even “short” it, also shorting our distances. Always questioning it, but never obtaining complete answers. Answers that only depend on us. Only depend on our interpretation of things.

References

SANTAELLA, Lucia. Time in C. S. Peirce’s philosophy and semiotics. Caderno do Centro Internacional de Estudos Peirceanos, n.15, pg.11, ago.2012.

SANTAELLA, Lúcia. General theory of sign: how languages signify things. São Paulo: Editora Pioneira, 2004.

SANTAELLA, L. & NÖTH, W. Communication and semiotics. São Paulo: Hacker editores, 2004.

VIGOTSKI, L.S. Thought and language. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011.