This paper suggests that Peirce’s pragmatism might be a more suitable underpinning of educational research than the currently prevailing constructivism, in particular with respect to science and mathematics education. Using examples from the educational literature, a case is made for a notion of “truth”, a pragmatist scientific method, Peirce’s doubt-belief cycle and his semiotics and logic in ...

yuri lotmn (1993-1922) is the founder of the moscow-tartu school. he has a distinguished role in introducing and developing the “theory of intercultural semiotics”. in lotman’s opinion, cultural semiotics considers each text as a cultural totality. the existing signs in the text could indicate the way in which the significances are produced to achieve a certain specific meanings in a culture. h...

Due to the increasing sophistication of the Internet, the role of computers as mediators becomes more apparent through their interfaces. Despite being a symbolic machine, only in the last decade Semiotics has attracted the attention of researchers in studying interfaces and human-computer interaction. This paper summarises some of the main contributions in the field of Semiotics and Interfaces,...

Cybersemiotics, in forging a new philosophy of science, addresses the failure of all disciplines to recognize and adequately account for qualia and motivation, interrogates the status of ̳knowing‘ contra the computational information-processing paradigm, and explores the role of the observer in knowing. The present article discusses these key features of cybersemiotics and, in particular, their...

Erkki Kilpinen studied sociology, philosophy and semiotics at the University of Helsinki, where he currently works as University Researcher. He has published internationally in those fields and about the methodology of social sciences. His recent articles include 'Memetics: A Critique'

In this debate paper we follow up on the argumentation given by Boris Wyssusek, who criticizes the use of the BWW-ontology as a foundation of conceptual modelling. In addition, we mention some other possible foundations for conceptual modelling. We have over many years looked at the area of semiotics, given our social constructivistic view of modelling, and we give a brief overview of how semio...