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⚘ The Deely method: an archaeological stroll across biosemiotics and cybernetics | Sara Cannizzaro

On 3 December 2022 at 10am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Sara Cannizzaro will present on “The Deely Method: an archaeological stroll across biosemiotics and cybernetics”.

Sara Cannizzaro is a post-doc researcher on EUMEPLAT – European media platforms: assessing positive and negative externalities for European culture at Libera Università di Lingue e Comunicazione IULM (Italy). She is also Research Fellow for TechEthos – Ethics of new and emerging technologies with high socio-economic impact at De Montfort University (UK), as well as Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Computer Science at the University of Warwick (UK). There she has worked on PETRAS Cyber Security of the Internet of Things (Privacy, Ethics, Trust, Reliability, Adoption, Security of the IoT), on FAIR-SPACE (Future Artificial Intelligence and Robotics for Space Hub) and on i-Trace (IoT Transport Assured for Critical Environments). Prior to this, Sara taught media and communications, digital media and research methods courses at several British universities.

Her research interests include analysis of media and digital media systems, biosemiotics and systems thinking, adoption of the internet of things, ethics of emerging technologies.

Selected publications include “The End of Sebeok’s Century Meets 21st Century Pandemic: Modeling through and beyond Sebeok’s systems, semiotics, science”, Chinese Semiotics Studies (2021); “Trust in the Smart Home: findings from a nationally representative survey in the UK”, PLoS One (2020); “The Devil is Not in the Detail: Representational Absence and Stereotyping in the ‘Trojan Horse’ News Story”, Race Ethnicity and Education (2018).

Commentary will be provided by Paul Cobley, Professor in Language and Media and Deputy Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange) in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries at Middlesex University.

Join the Live Q&A here.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

⚘ Songbirds of the Primate World | Baranna Baker and Sofia Berstein

On 15 October 2022 at 11am ET (see event times around the world here and join the live Q&A here), Baranna Baker and Sofia Berstein will present on “Songbirds of the Primate World”.

Baranna Baker is an independent scholar who explores semiotics through the lenses of quantum physics and literature. She studied philosophy under the acclaimed semiotician, John Deely, at the University of St. Thomas, Houston. In her current work, she applies semiotic principles to literature, especially as concerns the acts of writing and reading fiction. She also plays with the way the quantum world affects our perceived reality and how that reality can be explained by the interplay of semiotics and quantum physics, via the action of signs. She has been published in Semiotica, Chinese Semiotic Studies, The American Journal of Semiotics, and Semiotics, the yearbook of the Semiotic Society of America. She is the associate editor of the latter two works and has in addition edited numerous papers, articles, and books relating to the field of semiotics, including proofreading John Deely’s book “On the Path of the Sign: Medieval Philosophy Redefined as the Latin Age” (read her review).

After receiving the M.Sc. degree in Primate Behavior and Ecology from Central Washington University in 2012, Sofia Bernstein pursued her doctorate in the Departments of Ecology and Social Behavior and Cognition and Learning at the PRI – Primate Research Institute of Kyoto University, Japan. While at the PRI, Bernstein was also a member of the Leading Graduate Program in PWS – Primatology and Wildlife Science, a highly selective program for graduate students at Kyoto University, funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Sofia’s dissertation, which was supervised by Drs. Michael Huffman and Hiroki Koda, was entitled “The Vocal Repertoire of Tibetan Macaques in Mt. Huangshan, China: A Quantitative Analysis, Congeneric Comparisons, and Species-Specific Derived Calls”. Bernstein has taught a wide array of courses including biostatistics, introductory courses in biology and anthropology, research methods and research design for anthropology students, and primatology specific courses at the undergraduate and graduate level. In 2017 Sofia was awarded a special appointment position that enabled her to supervise graduate students.

Commentary will be provided by Susan Mancino (Assistant Professor at Saint Mary’s College) and Amelia Lewis (Royal Society of Biology, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, and the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour)

Join the Live Q&A here.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

⚘ John Deely’s Contributions to Biosemiotics | by Donald Favareau, Paul Cobley, and Kalevi Kull

This event is part of the activities of the 2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics: a Tribute to John Deely on the Fifth Anniversary of His Passing, cooperatively organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies, the International Center for Semiotics and Intercultural Dialogue, Moscow State Academic University for the Humanities and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Donald Favareau is an Associate Professor in the University Scholars Programme (USP) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He received his degrees in Philosophy and Applied Linguistics, with a particular interests in Philosophy of Mind and the Neurobiology of Language, from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).

He became involved with the interdisciplinary research project of Biosemiotics in 2001 and has been an active researcher and organiser of the field ever since. (…) He also has served as Vice-President of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies since its founding in 2005.

Besides collating and authoring the Essential Readings in Biosemiotics: Anthology and Commentary (2010) and co-editing with Paul Cobley and Kalevi Kull A More Developed Sign: Interpreting the Work of Jesper Hoffmeyer (2012), Favareau has been publishing in leading scholarly journals like SEED, Semiotica, Journal of Progress in Biophysics and Molecular Biology, and Biosemiotics.

Paul Cobley is Professor in Language and Media and Deputy Dean (Research and Knowledge Exchange) in the Faculty of Arts and Creative Industries at Middlesex University. (…) He is co-series editor (with Kalevi Kull) of Semiotics, Communication and Cognition (de Gruyter Mouton), co-editor (with Peter J. Schulz) of the multi-volume Handbooks of Communication Sciences (de Gruyter), co-edits the journal Social Semiotics, and is associate editor of Cybernetics and Human Knowing. Among his edited volumes are The Routledge Companion to Semiotics (2009), Theories and Models of Communication (2013, with Peter Schulz), Semiotics and Its Masters Vol. 1 (2017, with Kristian Bankov), Realism for the 21st Century: A John Deely Reader (2009) and The Communication Theory Reader (1996). He is the 9th Thomas A. Sebeok Fellow of the Semiotic Society of America, President of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (elected in 2014) and is secretary (since 2012) of the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies.

Kalevi Kull is Professor of Biosemiotics in the University of Tartu, Estonia. His research focuses on intersections of biology and semiotics. He studied biology and worked in theoretical biology and field ecology, while in last decades in semiotics. His mission is to foster an ecological culture. His work includes: Jakob von Uexküll: A Paradigm for Biology and Semiotics (2001), Towards a Semiotic Biology: Life is the action of Signs (2011), as well as On Theoretical Biology: Life Science between Mathematics and Semiotics (2019, in Estonian).

Anton Markoš is a theoretical biologist and associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science of the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. In his writings, he focuses on cell and evolutionary biology and biosemiotics from the hermeneutical, historical and philosophical point of view. Among his many scientific and popular books and articles are Epigenetic Processes and the Evolution of Life (w/ Jana Švorcová; CRC Press 2019), Readers of the Book of Life (Oxford University Press 2002), or Life as its own Designer: Darwin´s Origin and Western Thought (w/ Filip Grygar, László Hajnal, Karel Kleisner, Zdenek Kratochvíl, Zdenek Neubauer; Springer 2009).

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Signs of Meaning: The Need for Semiotics

In this first public Colloquium hosted by the Lyceum Institute, we ask: why is semiotics important? Why do we need it?

Recording of the Live Q&A available to Lyceum Institute Members
Thursday 7 July 2022 6:00pm ET
Lecture Below

“Allow me to begin with a prefatory comment: it is difficult to give a presentation on semiotics for two reasons. The first, and perhaps more obvious reason, is that few people know what it really is. It is an unusual word—a word that may sound somehow exciting, but also mysterious. The second, very much related to the first, is that semiotics is at once a relatively new doctrine and yet it subsumes and incorporates and even elevates disciplines very ancient. Its explicit recognition has been rare, but its implicit influence ubiquitous in time and place. Moreover, semiotics brings us face to face with something unknown and yet nevertheless deeply familiar; and perhaps, even, unknown because it is so familiar: namely, signs.

“And so, although the temptation in a presentation such as this—this presentation serving as a certain kind of introduction to semiotics—the temptation is to pass a considerable amount of time traversing the meandering inquiry of what semiotics is—wending through the particularities of its doctrines, its terminologies, its histories—despite this temptation, I will spend relatively little time re-treading those already well-worn steps. There are many books, papers, and presentations already extant which cover the doctrinal, terminological, and historical grounds. Despite these introductions, semiotics remains somewhat mysterious to many. And so I wish today to head in a different direction, and I hope that you all will walk this perhaps even-more meandering path alongside me, for I believe it will give a kind of circumspective view of that well-tread ground, and thereby dispel some of the enigma.”


Brian Kemple holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of St. Thomas, in Houston TX, where he wrote his dissertation under the inimitable John Deely. He is the Founder and Executive Director of the Lyceum Institute. He has published two scholarly books—Ens Primum Cognitum in Thomas Aquinas and the Tradition (Brill: 2017) and The Intersections of Semiotics and Phenomenology: Peirce and Heidegger in Dialogue (De Gruyter: 2019), as well as a number of scholarly articles, popular articles, and his own Introduction to Philosophical Principles: Logic, Physics, and the Human Person (2019) and the forthcoming Linguistic Signification: A Classical Course in Grammar and Composition (2021).

IO2S Deely – Life Sciences and the Humanities

On 23 April at 12pm ET (check event times around the world here), Anton Markoš will present on “Life Sciences and the Humanities”. Prof. Markoš is a theoretical biologist and associate professor at the Department of Philosophy and History of Science of the Faculty of Science, Charles University in Prague. In his writings, he focuses on cell and evolutionary biology and biosemiotics from the hermeneutical, historical and philosophical point of view. Among his many scientific and popular books and articles are Epigenetic Processes and the Evolution of Life (w/ Jana Švorcová; CRC Press 2019), Readers of the Book of Life (Oxford University Press 2002), or Life as its own Designer: Darwin´s Origin and Western Thought (w/ Filip Grygar, László Hajnal, Karel Kleisner, Zdenek Kratochvíl, Zdenek Neubauer; Springer 2009).

Join the Zoom Meeting to participate in the Q&A.

2022 International Open Seminar on Semiotics (IO2S) | Website

This collaborative international open scientific initiative and celebration is jointly organized by the Institute for Philosophical Studies of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the University of Coimbra, the Lyceum Institute, the Deely Project, Saint Vincent College, the Iranian Society for Phenomenology at the Iranian Political Science Association, the International Association for Semiotics of Space and Time, the Institute for Scientific Information on Social Sciences of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Semiotic Society of America, the American Maritain Association, the International Association for Semiotic Studies, the International Society for Biosemiotic Studies and the Mansarda Acesa with the support of the FCT – Foundation for Science and Technology, I.P., of the Ministry of Science, Technology and Higher Education of the Government of Portugal under the UID/FIL/00010/2020 project.

Lyceum Schedule [8/8-8/14]

Weekly Schedule of Events

8/9 Monday

  • Exercitium Linguae Latinae (2:00-2:30pm ET). Legemus ex Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata ut melioremus nostrum locutionem et augeamus familiaritatem vocabulis.
  • Ex Sancto Thoma Legimus (6:00-6:30pm ET).  Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!  Testing out varied times for practice!

8/10 Tuesday

  • Ex Sancto Thoma Legimus (9:30-10:o0am ET).  Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!
  • Philosophical Happy Hour (5:30-7:00pm ET). Join us for drinks, conversation, lively debates, and get to know the Lyceum Institute and its members!  Open to the public: use the “Send Us a Message” form here (write “Happy Hour” in the message box) and we’ll see you on Teams!

8/11 Wednesday

  • Exercitium Linguae Latinae (2:00-2:30pm ET). Legemus ex Lingua Latina Per Se Illustrata ut melioremus nostrum locutionem et augeamus familiaritatem vocabulis.
  • Ex Sancto Thoma Legimus (6:00-6:30pm ET).  Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!  Testing out varied times for practice!

8/12 Thursday

  • Ex Sancto Thoma Legimus (9:30-10:00am ET).  Legemus ex Sancto Thoma et convertit in linguam Anglicam; practicum bonum et utile est!
  • Elementary Latin Class (6:00-7:00pm ET).  Discimus de familiam Iulii et Aemiliae, etiam villam et hortum!  Legimus et convertimus ex capitulo V!

8/13 Friday

  • Open Chat (9:30-10:15am ET). Our regular Friday-morning open chat, allowing conversation between those in the West and those in the East–bridging the international community of the Lyceum Institute.
  • Exercitium in Lingua Latina (11pm-12am ET).  Etiam exercitium in Lingua Latina!  Ista hora conveniens Orientalibus est (11am Manila time).

8/14 Saturday

  • Latin Class(10-11am ET).  “Quis est ille dominus tuus cui mare et venti oboedire videntur?” Medus inquit Lydiam.  Et ea instruit eum miraculos Iesu.  Legemus et convertemus ex capitulo XVIII!

UPCOMING

8/21 Saturday – A Colloquium Discussion on Immediate or Delayed Hominization.

9/1 Wednesday – Two sessions for the Quaestiones Disputatae, open for Inquirere or Defensio.  Morning (for Eastern members) and Evening (for Western members).  Anyone is welcome at either or both sessions.

Fall seminars will begin the first week of October!  Dr. Kirk Kanzelberger will be teaching on Evil, Dr. Matthew Minerd on Art, Aesthetics, and Thomism, and Dr. Kemple on the Metaphysics of God.  Keep your eyes open for more!

Trivium – stay tuned for updates!