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Theory & Psychology
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Converging Parallels

Semiotics and Psychology in Evolutionary Perspective

Paul Bouissac

University of Toronto, paul.bouissac{at}utoronto.ca

This paper examines the interface between semiotics and psychology, first from the historical point of view of their parallel developments originating in late 18th-century philosophy, then from the theoretical perspective of contemporary evolutionary thinking. Undifferentiated within the speculations of the French `Idéologues', such as Destutt de Tracy (1754-1836), semiotics and psychology progressively acquired distinct epistemological and institutional status with minimal mutual interactions. However, the emergence of cognitive psychology during the second half of the 20th century provided new theoretical grounds for a potential dialogue. As the Darwinian revolution eventually recast many problems common to both semiotics and psychology in evolutionary terms, it is argued that these two parallel approaches to the study of mind, symbolic behaviour and meaning are bound to merge in the foreseeable future. The example of a recent work by Terrence Deacon (1997) is cited in the conclusion of the paper as a symptom of this epistemological restructuration that is currently taking shape.

Key Words: cognitive psychology • evolutionary psychology • meme • semiotics • sign

Theory & Psychology, Vol. 8, No. 6, 731-753 (1998)
DOI: 10.1177/0959354398086002
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