Greimas’s semiotic square and Greek and Roman astrology

Catastrophes in semantic space: Signs of universality

“…As has been pointed out earlier (Douglas 1997a;Hendricks 1989: 114), one of the glaring inconsistencies is that the relations of homology between the pairs of terms on the left and right sides of the semiotic square (the deixes as Greimas calls them) are inverted with respect to the correct logical relations. The inversion is acknowledged by Greimas as part of the structuring process (Greimas 1970: 167), without commenting on the logical problems this entails.…”

“…Given the associations established in earlier work between logical ratios and Greimas's actants in terms of traditional astrological and color symbolism (Douglas 1997a) it is interesting to re-examine these conclusions in relation to CT. Since the Cusp has a two-dimensional control space it is natural to ask whether it has any correspondence with the twodimensional figures illustrating planetary symbols in correspondence with the color circle (Douglas 1997a: 5-8;1997b: 265).…”

“…I would now like to return to the planetary symbolism discussed earlier (see Douglas 1997aDouglas , 1997b, because the structure of the planetary actants as a system imposes constraints on over-enthusiastic use of CT models, in the same way as we have seen in the case of color terms discussed above. The relevance of planetary archetypes to color symbolism has been justified elsewhere (Douglas 1997b: 279-284), and the frequent association of planets or elements to cosmological and ritual space (Tuan 1977: 85-100) suggests a direct relevance for the localistic analysis offered by CT (Petitot 1989a: 180-185).…”

“…If there are recognizable similarities to the features of Thorn's CT semantic archetypes then it will be reasonable to propose that the CT treatment of semantics can be enriched by the empirical data obtained by the Osgood school. In this section I will draw on earlier work (see Douglas 1990) to suggest that such homologies can indeed be traced across analytic schemes not only in the social sciences and humanities but even in the physical sciences. Potentially the most interesting possibility in the present context is that the patterns identified by Thorn and Petitot can be followed into the field of semiotics, given that Peirce's perspective on signs was both logical and evolutionary (Feibleman 1957: 272).…”

“…2) Comparison of semantic interpretations of the elementary catastrophes (ECs) and the three dimensions of Semantic Space derived by Osgood. 3) The possibility of using CT or other theories of dynamic selforganization to elaborate a model of dialogic semiosis, based on Johansen's (1993) work, and some ideas on iconicity due to Robertson (1991Robertson ( ,1994. 4) To use insights derived from earlier work on astrological symbolism (Douglas 1997a(Douglas , 1997b to extend the CT-evolutionary perspective suggested by Petitot for the semiotic square, to encompass also Greimas's system of six Actants.…”