Scheme, model, work, project (analysis of semiotic and epistemic distinctions and connections)

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction

When dealing with a specific text, it is difficult to understand what it is from a semiotic point of view. For example, when entering the subway, we read on the wall the "Moscow metro scheme". The question is how to understand this and why, for example, this is not a model, because following this scheme, we can predict and calculate our behavior in the subway (if we follow the image of routes, we will arrive where we are scheduled, if, comparing two routes, we go along the one with fewer stations, then we will arrive faster and other)? Or why is it not knowledge, do we receive information about our movement? Or a complex sign consisting of simpler signs, the meaning of which needs to be mastered (circles ‒ stations, colored lines ‒ different routes, curved arrows ‒ transfers, etc.). But maybe the schematic representation of the Moscow metro is not only a diagram, but at the same time knowledge of both the sign and the model? In short, I have outlined a problem that requires analysis ‒ distinguishing and establishing relationships between the semiotic concepts indicated in the title. Naturally, the question arises how to do this, figuratively speaking, the need for methodological navigation to solve this problem.

The author's experience of semiotic research shows that it involves at least three levels of descriptions (reconstructions): structural (for example, the concept of a sign is defined as a structure containing the actual "sign", its "meaning" and "meaning", "denotation"; moreover, in different semiotic concepts, the structure of the sign is different), communicative (participants in communications, created, transmitted and understood text), modal in relation to a certain reality of being (linguistic, conditional, virtual, like a simulacrum or, conversely, real world events). For example, at the first level, the author defined the concept of a scheme in the form of the following structure: "a problematic situation" (for example, for the aborigines, "an eclipse of the sun"), a narrative scheme ("the jaguar ate the sun") that solves this problem (the sun disappears because it is eaten by the jaguar), an understanding of what is happening and a condition for practical action (driving the jaguar away from the sun) ^{[3, pp. 20-21; 57-64]}. "In the language of Tupi," writes E. Taylor, ‒a solar eclipse is expressed in the words: "the jaguar ate the sun." The full meaning of this phrase is still revealed by some tribes by the fact that they shoot burning arrows to drive a ferocious beast away from its prey. On the northern mainland, some savages also believed in a huge sun-devouring dog, while others shot arrows into the sky to protect their luminaries from imaginary enemies attacking them. But next to these prevailing concepts, there are others. The Caribs, for example, imagined the eclipsed moon to be hungry, sick, or dying... The Hurons considered the moon to be sick and performed their usual sharivari with shooting and howling dogs to heal her" ^{[9, p. 228]}.

At the second level, the scheme is defined by different types of communication. In this example, the leader of the tribe and all the other members of it; in Plato's works, Socrates and his listeners are most often in his works; in art, the artist (writer, composer) and his audience (readers, listeners). At the third level, we are talking about understanding the reality of schemas (for aborigines, these are real events; Plato has dialectical arguments that allow us to recall ideas that souls contemplated before their birth; in art, conditional events that nevertheless relate to life).

In order to understand how the concepts listed in the title are related, we will implement the approach described here by using as text for analysis an excerpt from Mark Twain's novel "Yankees at King Arthur's Court" (as an operator we will call it "MT text"). Perhaps the reader remembers that the hero of this work, after a head injury, ended up at the turn of the 5th‒6th centuries AD at the court of King Arthur. The Yankees decide to burn at the stake as a sorcerer on the advice of the magician Merlin. Remembering that there should be a solar eclipse on this day, the Yankee declares himself a great sorcerer and magician who can extinguish even the sun itself. Already at the stake, the Yankee orders the sun to go out and, suppressing the will of those present, stops the eclipse in exchange for the rank of a powerful minister.

"I (the Yankee, the hero of the text of Mt. – V.R.) was silent for a minute to fully grasp the meaning of these words, then asked:

– What year do you think it is now?

"Five hundred and twenty–eighth, June nineteenth."

My heart ached, and I muttered:

"I'll never see my friends again, never, never." They are destined to be born in more than thirteen hundred years.

For some reason, I believed that the boy was telling me the truth, but I don't know why. I believed him with my heart, but my mind refused to believe. My mind rebelled, and quite naturally. I didn't know how to deal with my own mind; the evidence of other people couldn't help me–my mind would have declared these people insane and ignored their arguments. And suddenly, on a hunch, a wonderful idea came to my mind. I knew that the only total solar eclipse in the first half of the sixth century occurred on June 21, 528, and it began at exactly three minutes after noon.…

When the soldiers led me through the courtyard, it was so quiet that if I had been blindfolded, I could have imagined that there was a silent desert around me, and not a crowd of four thousand people. All this huge crowd of people was motionless; people with pale faces froze like stone statues; there was horror in their eyes. This silence lasted while I was being chained to a stake; it lasted while they were lining my ankles, my knees, my hips, my torso with brushwood. And it became even deeper, this silence, when a man with a flaming torch in his hand bent at my feet; the crowd, peering, leaned forward; everyone involuntarily rose from their benches; the monk stretched his arms over my head, raised his eyes to the blue sky and muttered something in Latin; he muttered for quite a long time. and suddenly he stopped. I waited for a few moments, then looked at him; the monk was petrified. The entire crowd, seized by one impulse, rose to their feet and looked up at the sky. I also looked up at the sky: damn it, the eclipse is starting! I have perked up, I have come to life! The black rim sank deeper into the sun's disk, and my heart beat harder and harder; the crowd and the priest, frozen, did not take their eyes off the sky. I knew they would all look at me now. And when they looked at me, I was ready. I made my posture stately and raised my hand to the sun. The effect was amazing! A wave of trembling ran through the entire crowd. And then two voices sounded, one right after the other.:

– Light up!

– I forbid you to light it!

The first voice was Merlin's, the second was the king's. Merlin jumped up from his seat, probably wanting to light the fire himself. I said:

"Don't move!" Whoever moves without my permission, even if he is the king himself, I will strike with thunder and incinerate with lightning!

As I expected, the entire crowd submissively sank onto the benches. Merlin alone hesitated for a few moments; I watched him with trepidation. But finally he sat down, and I breathed a sigh of relief – now I was the master of the situation."^[2]

MT text as a diagram

A problematic situation for a Yankee in trouble is a natural desire to avoid death. To do this, he, realizing who he is dealing with, comes up with a move (scenario C) ‒ to appear to the public of King Arthur as a great magician, and to be believed, use a solar eclipse (MTS text). Thus, the Yankee acts by reproducing (imitating) the communication of the Middle Ages. The addressees of his message are the medieval audience of King Arthur's court (we will call its representatives, following Harry Potter, "Muggles": the Yankee is a great magician, his addressees are Muggles). The reality of the plan and the realized scenario is twofold: for the Yankees, it is a deception to save their own lives, for the public of King Arthur, it is a reality that cannot be disbelieved, because the Yankee promised to extinguish the sun, and now it goes out, and at the very moment when the Yankees were going to burn at the stake. If we accept such a reconstruction, then the MT text can be interpreted as a scheme.

Table 1

MT text as knowledge and sign

Perhaps the first medieval semiotic study belongs to St. Augustine. "Now that I begin to study signs," Augustine writes, "I say the opposite: let no one in them pay attention to what they are, but only to what they are signs, that is, what they mean. For a sign is a thing that affects the senses, in addition to species, causing something else to come to mind.… And we have only one reason to designate, that is, to give a sign – to take out and transfer into the soul of another that which produces in the soul that which creates a sign" ^{[1, pp. 66-67]}. What is "something else" here? In modern semiotics, this expression can be assigned a denotation. At the same time, the expression "to take out and transfer into the soul of another" as an indication of communication. But two questions can be asked: the first, how do we "take it out and transfer it", with what, and the second, for whom do we transfer it?

The following answer is given to the first one in semiotics: we transfer with the help of signs (as things), but we return what is taken out at the expense of meaning. The answer to the second question is this: we transfer it for the reader who already knows what is being transferred (not this particular one, but as a class), i.e. in this case we are no longer dealing with a sign, but with knowledge. A sign is a kind of tool with which communication is carried out, and with the help of knowledge, a phenomenon given by a meaning is recreated in it (i.e., there is a doubling: one time a phenomenon exists as a thing independent of knowledge, the other as a sign and knowledge). It turns out that sign and knowledge are complementary, and their difference as concepts becomes clearer if the corresponding different functions in communication are indicated. Let's return to our text.

The MT text is a complex sign and knowledge. To clarify, let's simplify the situation and take just one word "sun". Mark Twain uses this word to inform the reader about the sun as the object of his story, it also points to the sun as the object of the Muggle deception scenario, and the same word points Muggles to the sun. In other words, the word sun is these three different signs. If we now ask what this word indicates, then naturally we will answer: the sun. But the word sun is not the sun itself, therefore, all three subjects (Mark Twain, Yankees and Muggles) should have already known what the sun is. In this usage, the word sun is knowledge about the sun.

Table 2

MT text as a model

Let's now highlight the part of the MT text (MTS) in which the Yankee conceived the scenario of declaring himself a great magician and using the solar eclipse for this purpose. The knowledge used for this purpose, that the eclipse will take place on June 21, 528, is a model, it was obtained within the framework of natural science on a mathematical model. Unlike a scheme that defines its own object (a jaguar attacking the sun; the sun, hungry or dying), obtaining model knowledge is based on the object being modeled (in this case, it is an arrangement in the space of planets that does not allow you to see the light coming from one of them). The second difference is that the model allows not only to act in a new way, but also to simulate (calculate) the behavior of the modeled object. Thus, for Yankees, knowledge about the eclipse is of a completely different nature than for Muggles. By the way, the metro scheme can indeed be used both as a scheme and as a model. If, for example, a person finds himself on the subway for the first time and needs to navigate there correctly, then he uses the subway scheme precisely as a scheme (it sets the metro object for him as a means of transport and helps him to act correctly ‒ enter and exit at certain stations, choose a route, make transfers). But if he needs to predict getting to the right station or determine which route is shorter, then this scheme is used as a model. A schema and a model define different objects and are used in different ways by a person, although, as a rule, he does not understand this.

The MT text as a work of art

The MT text is a fragment of a work of fiction that Mark Twain addresses to the reader. Unlike the problematic situations that Yankees and Muggles solve, Mark Twain strives to write a good story, entertain the reader, initiate certain thoughts and experiences, including realizing some of his desires and aspirations. That's his problem situation. For comparison, I will provide an explanation in an interview with Lehaim magazine by the famous Israeli writer Meir Shalev about the reaction of some readers to his novel "Three Bears Came Out of the Forest." "Tell an interesting story. It's good to write it. I'm a craftsman: that's how you want to write a good article, a photographer wants to take a good picture, that's how I wanted to write a good story. A strong one. And I see that after people have read the book, they cannot forget it. I am very happy about this, it means that I have penetrated their soul after all and they have nowhere to escape from me. Readers say that the book, on the one hand, caused them suffering while reading, and on the other hand, they could not put it down. It's a great compliment to me. I also felt this while working on the novel. It was very difficult for me to write it, I left it and then came back again, it became a special experience for me, more serious than other books. <...> I am very interested in revenge as a literary idea. It's exciting. The desire for revenge, in my eyes, is much stronger than jealousy or any religious feelings. Its consequences are tragic. There are three murders in the novel... this angered some of my Israeli readers, they said: it is immoral to write that murder has a therapeutic effect, murder cannot cure! Well, you say, “impossible.” But the fact is that it is possible for certain people, as it happened in my novel" ^[10].

To resolve a problematic situation, Mark Twain creates, with the help of words, diagrams and "expressive means of art" (metaphors, images, themes, drama, etc.), an "artistic reality" that, on the one hand, would allow him to realize his desires and aspirations, and on the other hand, the reader to enter the world of events that they are interesting, entertaining, initiate certain experiences and thoughts, and so on.

Table 3

A scientist, gaining knowledge by building a theory, also generates a special reality ("scientific"), but this is the reality of ideal objects that allow them to obtain consistent knowledge, solve problems (modeling for natural sciences, understanding for the humanities), and describe (comprehend) empirical objects from the right angle ^{[4, p. 84]}. The events of artistic reality can be contradictory, correlate with specific phenomena, set the objects themselves, the main thing, as noted, is another thing ‒ the opportunity for the artist (writer, composer) to express his and the audience's desires, initiate certain experiences and thoughts ^{[5; 6]}.

The MT text as an analogue of the project

Let's return to the Yankee's plan to impersonate a great magician, but let's stop it before it even happens. What is the modality of the idea? If we consider that it has only just been formulated (it arose in the mind of the Yankees), that the latter is considering its implementation and comes up with the idea of using a solar eclipse, that then the Yankees manage to realize this idea, then we have an analog of the project. Of course, Mark Twain hardly created the MTS text with design in mind, but we are engaged in reconstruction and, comparing the logic of the design and its implementation, can bring the modality of this construction under the concept of design. Indeed, the project, as I show, presupposes an idea, its embodiment in sketches (why not in the MTS text?), an installation for implementation, thinking over the structure of the design object (imputing the above scenario to Muggles), the implementation of the idea and the project developed on its basis [pp. 61-62].

The conditionality of the formation of concepts by time and culture

Mark Twain's talent brought the concepts we are interested in together within the framework of artistic reality; it seems that all of them, including works of art, may well coexist simultaneously. But an analysis of cultural history shows that the concepts we are interested in did not arise simultaneously and in different cultures. The very first signs and "attributive knowledge" (denoting objects, actions, situations, properties), date back to ancient times. Then schemes appeared in archaic culture, and they continue to accompany the entire history of mankind. Scientists learned to build scientific knowledge and models only in ancient culture (Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolemy, etc.). The design took shape only at the beginning of the twentieth century. The same analysis allows us to assert that the necessary conditions for the formation of these concepts were, firstly, a certain level of cultural development, and secondly, often the very nature (type) of this culture. For example, signs, knowledge, and schemes could not have appeared before the formation of primary social collectives (family groups, tribes) and the development of imagination among ancient people (after all, in order to use a sign to denote, a person must imagine a non-existent object, for example, a jaguar eating the sun) ^{[8, p. 97]}. The construction of models and works of art already presupposed a rather complex consciousness and thinking, in which it was possible to distinguish between the modeled object and its semiotic representation (imitated phenomenon and imitating it, Aristotle's "Poetics"), at least two relations (correspondences and inconsistencies), the ability to construct objects in these relations, etc. ^{[8, p. 119]}. The conditions for the formation of design were even more complex things ‒ engineering, models used in the construction of buildings and machines, the division of labor between designers and manufacturers, the ability to model a future object on paper and in semiotics, the development of the practice of implementing these models, etc. ^{[7, pp. 16-32]}.

Considering these conditions, which also include the nature of European culture and its development, one involuntarily comes to the hypothesis that the socio-cultural context of the ideas we analyze in history is inseparable from their essence, that when it is eliminated, these concepts are reduced to the level of semiotic technology, which Mark Twain used. Moreover, he conducted a social experiment in an artistic form to see what would happen if the future invaded the past, forcing it to develop by leaps and bounds, ignoring the traditions and capabilities of people. It seems that at first the future wins and reshapes all life (for example, a Yankee defeats the color of English knighthood and begins a technological revolution), but sooner or later the pendulum begins to move in the other direction, demolishing all innovations. At the end of the novel, the knights and the church unite and besiege the Yankee, who has taken refuge in Merlin's cave with half a hundred of his followers. And although the Yankee destroys a large group of knights with dynamite and artillery, he still loses the battle. In the end, Merlin enchants him, and the Yankee sleeps for thirteen centuries, restoring a normal connection between the past and the present. When Mark Twain wrote, it was as if he foresaw the beginning of our century and Trump proclaiming the interpretation of the future as the past (and it really looks like the pendulum is starting to go back).

To solve certain problems, such as those that worried Mark Twain, it is probably normal and even effective to work with semiotic technology, combining different concepts in one reality (scientific, artistic or practical). But for others, it's hardly right. For example, historical and humanitarian research and reconstruction involve not only the use of the concepts of sign, knowledge, scheme, model, work, project, but also the analysis of their socio-cultural contexts. Here is one example ‒ Carl Jung's story about how, as a teenager, he was frightened by a fantasy that came to mind.

"The world is beautiful and the church is beautiful," he recalls, "and the God who created all this is sitting far, far away in the blue sky on a golden throne... Here my thoughts stopped and I felt suffocated. I was numb and remembered only one thing: Not to think now! Something terrible is coming.

(Three days later, Jung gave himself a chance to think about what he saw.)

I gathered all my courage, as if I had suddenly decided to immediately jump into the flames of hell, and gave the thought a chance to appear. I saw the cathedral in front of me, the blue sky. God sits on his golden throne, high above the world – and from under the throne a piece of feces falls on the sparkling new roof of the cathedral, breaks through it, everything collapses, the walls of the cathedral break into pieces" ^{[11, pp. 45, 50]}.

Amazingly, instead of fear, Jung experienced an extraordinary uplift.: "That's it! I felt incredibly relieved. Instead of the expected curse, grace descended upon me, and with it an unspeakable bliss that I had never known... I understood a lot that I didn't understand before, I understood what my father never understood, the will of God... My father accepted the biblical commandments as a guide, he believed in God, as prescribed by the Bible and as his father taught him. But he did not know the living God, who stands free and omnipotent, standing above the Bible and above the Church, who calls people to become equally free. God, for the sake of fulfilling his Will, can force the father to abandon all his views and beliefs. Testing human courage, God forces us to abandon traditions, no matter how sacred they may be" [ibid., 45, 50].

The given narrative can be interpreted as a scheme. The fact is that before the incident described, Jung talked about the problems that worried him and probably needed to be solved (i.e. it was a real problem situation). Jung had a serious conflict with his father, a hereditary pastor, and with the church (both of whom he suspected of inconsistency and misconceptions). Solving these problems, Jung creates in three days a scheme in which God looks like a revolutionary, giving Jung the sanction to break with the church and the father. "In this religion," he writes, "I no longer found God. I knew that I would never be able to take part in this ceremony again. The church is a place where I won't go anymore. Everything is dead there, there is no life there. I felt sorry for my father. I realized the tragedy of his profession and life. He was struggling with death, an existence he could not accept. A chasm opened up between him and me, it was boundless, and I did not see the possibility of ever overcoming it" [Ibid., 64].

Table 4

In this case, it is impossible to understand fantasy and scheme without knowing the life context that led to Jung's invention of the scheme. And in many other cases, when it comes to humanitarian research and practice, reconstruction of the socio-cultural context is absolutely necessary.

Conclusion

Thus, we have tried to characterize the concepts of sign, knowledge, scheme, model, work, project, showing their difference and the possibility of sharing if they are considered at the level of semiotic technology. In humanitarian and historical research, the use of these concepts involves the reconstruction of their socio-cultural and life contexts.