Lotman’s theories can appear, as they did to Julia Kristeva in her 1994 essay in PMLA, as culturally “subversive”. (Kristeva 1994:
375). The metaphor o f the fall o f the Berlin wall, used by Kristeva to stress the impact o f Lotman’s dynamic historical semiotics on the static philological attitude o f classic structuralism, can still be valid today. A semiotic study, no longer o f the text itself, but o f its sociology as well, has not yet been tried, although as early as in 1977 Fokkema and Kunne-Ibsch defined in this sense Lotman’s theories as a potential “Copemican revolution” in humanistic studies. (Fokkema-Kunne-Ibsch 1977: 45, quoted in Sorensen 1987: 309). Ten years later D olf Sorensen analyzed Lotman’s thought in his Theory Formation and the Study o f Literature (Sorensen, op. cit. 281-319) as capable o f a far-reaching renewal in textual interpretation: which must be based on both micro- and macro-analysis, a “completeness” for the sake o f which Sorensen even suggested a fusion o f Lotman’s theories (more open to macro-analysis) with those (more inclined to micro-analysis) o f Algirdas Greimas.
As an hermeneutic tool, Lotman’s model allows for utmost
“comprehensiveness”, as it offers a possibility to recognize the composite nature o f semiosis, in cultures as in texts, and to map their hierarchical organization. At the same time it does not sacrifice an overall understanding and theoretical explanation o f the diversified data compounding a text or producing a cultural outlook, as well as a dialogue o f cultures.
What is striking about Lotman’s theory is its double move towards simplification and complication in the constitution o f a text. A model o f only four code types explains the basic characte
ristics o f four historical periods, from the Middle Ages to Roman
ticism. Surprisingly, the general logical assets o f these different periods are made to stand forth cogently, as Lotman’s essay shows, through a procedure typical o f simplifying and non-reductive scientific generalization.
At the same time each text appears composite, and its inter
pretation more complex. This now consists in the encounter o f virtually contrasting sets o f code combinations, both the set that gave rise to the text and the set belonging to the reader or listener.
An enormous gap opens on the hermeneutic front, since the pro
bability o f total coincidence between the two sets is low: this of
fers a semiotic justification for the infinite openness o f inter-The Enlightenment Code in Yuri Loman’s inter-Theory of Culture 35
5*
pretation. Interpretation becomes in fact a form o f partial inter
section, or rather the series o f possible intersections.
If to the plurality o f each text and its readings we add Lotman’s dynamic view o f the text described in О Semiosfere (1984) — a work deeply influenced by biologist Ivan Vernadsky — we begin to appreciate a double profound affinity. On the one hand, with the general principles o f Bakhtin’s dialogism, which are in Lotman transposed from the domain o f genre to the domain o f semantics and o f its dynamics. On the other hand, with the play o f inter
ference, counteraction and combination, typical o f the new scien
tific paradigm common today to physics as well as artificial intelli
gence, biology, immunology, or the neurosciences.
It has been observed in fact (see Tagliagambe 1997) that the quantum theory, Gödel’s and Church-Turing’s theorems, have all brought to an end the idea o f objects as independent from the observer, as separable, localized and representable. Traditional epistemology, extending from Leibniz to Frege and Hilbert, which even Einstein still tried to defend in 1948 (Einstein-Born 1973:
201), is no longer viable today. Scientific research suggests a different outlook: reality is not “representable” but “explicable”
through models. Object configurations can be described from the border area separating/connecting them with the outside, as it is in this area that relations with the observer and with the ambience are reciprocally determined and can be known. Vernadsky’s concept o f co-evolution, o f “biosphere” (based on the interaction o f orga
nisms and ambience) and “noosphere” (based on the interaction o f human culture and ambience) stand at the same time at the source o f Lotman’s models and concept o f “semiosphere”, as at the root o f the contemporary scientific outlook. Conceptual convergence is not therefore casual: Lotman’s intersectionism and its implied
“epistemology o f contact” can appear as the semiotic equivalent o f the new epistemologic paradigm emerging in the fields o f science.
The Enlightenment Code in Yuri Loman’s Theory o f Culture 37
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