This book is designed to usher the reader into the realm of semiotic studies. It analyzes the most important approaches to semiotics as they have developed over the last hundred years out of philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and biology. As a science of sign processes, semiotics investigates all types of com munication and information exchange among human beings, animals, plants, internal systems of organisms, and machines. Thus it encompasses most of the subject areas of the arts and the social sciences, as well as those of biology and medicine. Semiotic inquiry into the conditions, functions, and structures of sign processes is older than anyone scientific discipline. As a result, it is able to make the underlying unity of these disciplines apparent once again without impairing their function as specializations. Semiotics is, above all, research into the theoretical foundations of sign oriented disciplines: that is, it is General Semiotics. Under the name of Zei chenlehre, it has been pursued in the German-speaking countries since the age of the Enlightenment. During the nineteenth century, the systematic inquiry into the functioning of signs was superseded by historical investigations into the origins of signs. This opposition was overcome in the first half of the twentieth century by American Semiotic as well as by various directions of European structuralism working in the tradition of Semiology. Present-day General Semiot ics builds on all these developments."

This book is designed to usher the reader into the realm of semiotic studies. It analyzes the most important approaches to semiotics as they have developed over the last hundred years out of philosophy, linguistics, psychology, and biology. As a science of sign processes, semiotics investigates all types of com munication and information exchange among human beings, animals, plants, internal systems of organisms, and machines. Thus it encompasses most of the subject areas of the arts and the social sciences, as well as those of biology and medicine. Semiotic inquiry into the conditions, functions, and structures of sign processes is older than anyone scientific discipline. As a result, it is able to make the underlying unity of these disciplines apparent once again without impairing their function as specializations. Semiotics is, above all, research into the theoretical foundations of sign oriented disciplines: that is, it is General Semiotics. Under the name of Zei chenlehre, it has been pursued in the German-speaking countries since the age of the Enlightenment. During the nineteenth century, the systematic inquiry into the functioning of signs was superseded by historical investigations into the origins of signs. This opposition was overcome in the first half of the twentieth century by American Semiotic as well as by various directions of European structuralism working in the tradition of Semiology. Present-day General Semiot ics builds on all these developments."

Der Versuch des Aristoteles, die Gesamtheit der Erscheinungen begrifflich zu fassen, geht von einem genial einfachen Ansatz aus: Indem er die moglichen Typen von Aussagen uber die Erscheinungen voneinander unterscheidet, erhalt er zugleich eine Typologie der Erscheinungen selbst. Er findet sie in Substanz und Quantitat, Qualitat und Relation, Ort und Zeit, Lage und Zustand, aktivem Handeln und passivem Erleiden. Daneben behandelt Aristoteles alle Arten von Gegensatzen, die sechs Erscheinungsformen der Bewegung und die Moglichkeit qualitativer Veranderung."

In diesem Band wird erstmals der Versuch unternommen, das fur die europaische Rezeption der amerikanischen Philosophie des Pragmatismus bis heute einflussreichste Werk dem Leser durch eine auf dieses Werk konzentrierte Sammlung von kommentierenden Beitragen unter den philosophischen Bedingungen unserer Zeit naherzubringen. Das Werk, das hier im Mittelpunkt steht, ist Pragmatism. A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking. Es besteht aus acht Vorlesungen, die sein Verfasser, William James, 1906/07 in Cambridge und Boston gehalten und kurz danach publiziert hat. William James konfrontiert darin seit langem bestehende Richtungen in der Philosophie mit der pragmatischen Methode, indem er fordert, dass philosophische Gedanken nach ihrer Beziehung zum Leben und nach ihren Wirkungen in der Welt der Erfahrung zu beurteilen seien. James' Argumente haben auf das Denken einen tiefgreifenden Einfluss gehabt, das Buch Pragmatism zahlt seit seinem Erscheinen zu den grossen Buchern der Philosophie."