Wandering Signs: Beyond Linearity to Synthesis

Dynamic semiosis is inherently bound to time. As time flows from indefinite past to equally indefinite future, its role in the present is to be the basis for meaning construction—signs emerge in that flow of time and function in their role of organizers of experience within that flow. The flow of human experience is felt as non-linear—as it is based on the affective relating to the world. So is all nature—our biological world consists of an infinite number of non-linear forms. But is the flow of irreversible time linear? It flows from infinite past toward equally infinite future, and the only point of determining its ontological status is the infinite present moment. Hence the question cannot be answered—as the infinitely small time point of the present has no structure of itself. Neither can it reflect the future as it is not yet happened, nor the past—as the latter is based on imaginative reconstruction. And in that reconstruction, we are hostages to the tradition of assuming the linearity of time—in analogy with that of space. We look at how the human mind operates at different levels of meaning oppositions—from binary relations to dialectical synthesis.