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THREE SEASONS IN THE HISTORY OF CULTURE

If we look at the history of Western culture in a panoramic way, even schematically and simply, we can

recognize three fundamental seasons. It is useless to say that links, overlaps and fuzzy zones make a clear,

chronological division impossible.

However, even if this schematization is unavoidably reductive and must be read with much reserve, it can

be useful to grasp fundamental aspects that could be lost, confused among many other factors of history.

These phases are characterized by the global conception that has been adopted in the construction of

knowledge, in a conscious or unconscious way.

We must consider not only the strict contents of knowledge, but also its near and far implications.

Now we will look at these three phases. We will try to label each one: the first ontological, the second

subjectivity and method and the third language and communication.

1. ONTOLOGICAL SEASON

2. SEASON OF SUBJECTIVITY AND OF METHOD

3. SEASON OF LANGUAGE AND OF COMMUNICATION

4. SUMMARIZING THE QUESTION

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1. ONTOLOGICAL SEASON

Starting from the Ancient Age, through the Middle Ages and until early Modernity, attention has been paid

to the entity itself. First Nature (physis), then Man (anthropos) dominated the cultural landscape of the

Ancient Age, thanks to the Socratic breakthrough first and then to the Christian God, even if through

different events.

Ancient thought, while starting from the consideration of Nature and the World (see Ionic philosophy), over

time also created a wide space for idealism, of primacy of ideas, of the abstract and the objective and

began to contain tangible reality. The Ancient culture has coherently moved on the Heuristic plan with this

position.

Such idealism is not in contrast with a strong ontological vision: the “ontos” is the object and the content

of ideas.

Plato’s world of ideas is a wide and articulated one, that is rooted in Western culture and it path has been

decided over the centuries.

Hierarchy is decided, with the primacy of ideas, on the concrete world. Plato turns the obvious and the

evident upside down: give maximum credibility to things that are perceived concretely. Credibility,

instead, is granted to that which does not have such evidence, but is accessible by ways and means that do

without the support of the senses, the body, the substance of the world. Not to have hard evidence,

precisely not having it, is to not have the guarantee of truth. The Ontological approach is not erased; it has

only been turned upside down. The ontology of the idea overcomes the ontology of concrete things.

Aristotle, although recognized as the philosopher of concreteness and of Nature, offers a thinking

instrument of exquisite abstraction that is his syllogistic logics: an act of confidence in the rigor and

autonomy of thought itself.

The syllogistic tradition will last many centuries with the scholastic philosophy, proving itself to be among

the most powerful conceptual machines ever realized, despite the limits we know.

However, in the Ancient Period, the statute of thought is still something in its own right, as if it was a

thought without thinking, an object without the subject. The world of thought is, in a certain sense, out

there as the concrete world, and exists regardless of whether there is an “I” here to start the reflection, and

return to the source that generates it, an agent capable of producing it.

Albeit with the attitude of wonder with which the man of antiquity was placed in front of nature for

cognitive purposes, the pivot of the relationship with reality was placed on the side of nature and the forms

of thought and knowledge, but the latter still outside the subjective and personal sense.

Indeed we find subjectivist instances in the Judeo-Christian world, in which man is understood as a single

that stands before God, and before Him assumes moral responsibility. Sin is imputable to the individual,

without derogations. Everybody is fully responsible for his own good or bad behavior, exactly “in first

person”. However, the reference of this individuality is not the self, but God. He is the term to define value

and goodness (or the absence of these qualities) of actions. Humanity of Man is established by God, not by

man himself.

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2. SEASON OF SUBJECTIVITY AND OF METHOD

In the Middle Ages, God and soul were the new protagonists, until the Renaissance, when the focus was

placed on the triad God-Man-Nature.

Never before, as in the late Renaissance, had there been or will there be such a narrow and deep

connection between body and soul, the body was once again registered on the slopes of materiality, aloof

and opposed to what was recognized as the center of subjectivity, namely the soul. Saying "I" was

especially the psyche, which is distinct from everything that was material and placed in the position of

objectification.

The body, made of matter, closely resembles the world whose entities is opaque and corruptible, whiles

the soul, immaterial and bodiless, and is on the side of the absolute, of God, of that which material

accidents cannot touch.

So Man as entity has been split by the line that establishes these two poles. The divergence between these

two poles has become wider and wider. The separation has been marked with more and more precision.

This process resembles the action of the surgeon’s blade. As with the sharp blade of a knife, it makes its

way and undertakes that everything it touches stays on one side or the other. More and more we try to

assign a valued judgment, of course, just as dual and antithetical: the good on one side, that of the soul,

and the bad on the other, that of the body.

There are very few exceptions in which we have tried to overturn this breakdown of the value judgment

almost by the spirit of subversion or love of contradiction. These were short periods, as the ones of

Materialism, of Sensualism, of exaltation of concreteness. But these periods ended quickly, to allow the

previous “order” to prevail once again, as it was the “natural” condition of things…

It was destiny: the body could not stably and effectively steal the scene. When it was in the foreground, it

was never accompanied by intelligence, by logos, by soul but, at most, the thrill of emotion, always

bordering or contaminated with the irrational, the instinctive, the dark, the animal.

This is a bit because to demonstrate that the body could cope with its own forces (and those of the ratio or

logos have never been among them) was not wanted and a bit because they were not allowed to

appropriate what had to remain outside its domain. So the body’s destiny was marked. The Body was short

of breath, without fecund perspectives or promise.

At most, the commingling concerned the juxtapositions of Cartesian memory of the two "res" that, despite

the exception of the incurable asymmetries and hierarchs, were soon re-established between mind and

body, in spite of the initial intentions of the author.

If we look at physiognomy, in which the body seems to be the main protagonist, we see the body is only a

symptom or a window: it is crossed by the watcher’s eye. As soon as we find what we are searching for

(the soul or the mind) the body can be forgotten. Therefore, body is an entity, but this entity is the object

as much as other objects of the world, material things among material things or, in other words, “dust to

dust…”

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It is only during the modern age that Man begins to say “I” in a proper sense. The humanism of the

Renaissance can be so named since it relates to self-reference. Man, as mankind, but overall as individual,

also emerges from theological anthropology that had dominated until that period.

It is not man without God, but one who finds god starting from himself. The affinities with nature have a

strong echo within and without him. He widens his gaze toward the small and the big, toward the micro-

and macro-cosmos. This makes him sure and raises his consciousness about his centrality: “homo copula

mundi”. Man perceives his own being with enthusiasm and judges it as a source to be employed in nature

and in the world. Natural (or white) magic defines ways, purpose and the sense of this operative approach,

of this potentiality of active role. But as much as this humanism does not erase God (it only finds a new

way to relate oneself with Him), it does the same thing with Nature: promethean work is never in

disaccord with Natural laws. Although sophisticated, Technics (Techne) never loses its link to Nature

(Physis).

It is the miracle of the Renaissance when we have a unique moment in Western history which

harmoniously combines several instances which, in other periods were antithetic or forcibly juxtaposed.

These include, for example, God and Man, the Body and Soul, the Divine and the Natural, the Artifice and

Spontaneity, Grace and Pleasure.

A new genre in art is born: portraiture and self-portraits which must be understood not only by the

subject’s physiognomy but also through his interior subjectivity, according to physiognomic and

pathognomic ways. Parallel trends were found in literary and other fields.

The subjectivity which has emerged, meant in terms of “homo gratia hominis” (even if neither God nor

Nature are denied) does not stop here. It brings the Body to the forefront, involving it directly and fully.

The body plays the role of a non-substitutable source. Its anatomy is rediscovered in a naturalistic way and

this pushes artists to take examples and models from classic repertories without reserve. Results are

beautiful, but this is not due to a mere rediscovering of forgotten ancient models.

Even if unconsciously, artists introduce important novelties. A paradigmatic example: Michelangelo’s

David proposes the Polycleitus’ ponderatio (balance) again. No doubt the artist is very clever, but in spite

of this, it is neither a casual repetition nor a complacent imitation. Michelangelo’s David is so natural in its

anatomic plasticity. The artist’s great technical skill is expressed with no uncertainness, but it is very far

from Polycleitus’ masterpiece. This latter sculpture seems to have been there forever; his face is perfect

and far from the concrete world, his expression is not touched by emotion or by contingent factors. He

looks away; nothing detracts from its perfection, his perfect balance.

Michelangelo’s David is witness and image of an exact canon, of exquisite mathematical-geometrical

perfection, whose value is universal. David is stopped in time, as he assumes the doryphoros’ position by

chance. He is ready for the battle, he is studying the situation, his gaze is intense and vivid, and he has a

furrowed brow.

Not only does this young hero turn his gaze on the outside, but its representation includes and involves

being watched: the slight deformations of perspective create an anamorphic compensation for those who

look at the sculpture from below. This is normal for such a large piece of art work.

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The doryphoros is “the” doryphoros, while David is a protagonist of Jewish history. He had to face the giant

brute Goliath, and risked his life fighting him. He is aware of his own limits, conscious of the vicissitudes he

will face. Sight and visuality are more and more in the foreground. Supported by curiosity and the will to

discover, the gaze inquires, observes, explores, focuses, lingers. It applies its will in the world, uses

attention and other cognitive and relational resources.

The gaze as function and the act of seeing as behavior become central, protagonists of life experiences and

presence in the world, until this becomes a real and proper way of knowing it and of exercising our own

power on it. The focus has been replaced by viewed and viewable things to the act of looking or, more

exactly, to the subject that is protagonist of this act. Watching is the moment and the way in which the

subject receives in privacy the images from the outside, with all their implications of meaning, of content,

of sense.

Images are now able to transmit all this, to be the owner of a wide, articulated and profound textual

nature. It is no longer the decoration of verbal text or its embellishment of maidservant. It is autonomous

which begins with the development of illustration during the XIII century. To watch is to gain, to make

something that up until a moment before was not there. Looking reconfigures the geography of us and the

world, gives a different sense to the boundaries that separate.

I look and I gain: Vesalius says, “To see is to know”; it is the main pillar of modern anatomy.

Nowadays anatomy is still considered a visual science, even if the meaning of this definition has changed.

Due to this we must consider the historical moment of this turning point of anatomy as obviously placed in

the period of “visuality renaissance”.

With Vesalius this visual paradigm is established as a double (vision of reality and vision of icon), including a

dense network of connections that bonds these two planes.

Reality is the source and the origin of knowledge, for he who is capable of watching and seeing it. This

knowledge is formalized and communicated by realizing the picture, but the picture leads us to reality and

compares itself with reality, converses with reality, even if it allows itself to be replaced.

However, we can consider this relation as definable within an ingénue representational frame.

The peculiarity of iconic communication forms and of related communicative acts, the statute of visual

communication codes and protocols are still far from their actuation.

This inquiring eye is producer and vehicle of knowledge during the later Modernity, with the Scientific

Revolution, when the natural eye will no longer be enough.

There are instruments that allow it to go beyond its natural limits. Although known in the western world,

lenses probably arrived here from the Arab world during the early Middle Ages. During Modernity, this

optical device assumes a new role that is no longer a bare curiosity or help for a far-sighted eye. Lenses

push the eye beyond the boundaries of smallness and of farness that had always constituted the Heracles’

Columns of visual power on both sides.

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So new worlds are opened, highly unsuspected. During the XVII century, pioneers of microscopy and

telescoping give an account of reality that will change the course of culture.

The system eye + instrument is not simply a little more powerful and capable eye: it is something different

from the eye itself. Natural devices (eyes) always gained our trust, because we were sure they offered the

ultimate evidence of reality, of truth (“seeing is believing”) they were the source that allowed us to explore

all that is viewable, that is to say, the existing. Now we discover this natural device does not always tell all

nor tell the truth. Aiming to know all (or more), we must use artifacts; flesh must connect to devices of

promethean artifices; we must have continuity in order to reach never before reached goals. A point of no

return has been exceeded. This is the sense and this is the importance of astronomic Galilean observation

and of the microscopic ones that characterize the Scientific Revolution.

We cannot place the focus of the Scientific Revolution in direct observations, disregarding the instrumental

aspect, whose importance is qualitative before quantitative.

No doubt Sensualism plays its role, but we cannot think that an ingénue Sensualism is the basis of Modern

Science. It would be a misleading vision…

Neither a “natural” Sensualism, nor speculative thinking (with a beginning and an end in itself) is capable of

marking the turning point of scientific knowledge during the XVI. The decisive factor was this new form of

instrumental observation. It is the third way that marks the way to horizons new and far.

The man that says “I” is a man that watches and is conscious of being watched. Watching has now a

subjective dimension and implies a point of view. Starting from this we structure the perspective and it

gains meaning and sense. Rules of its construction were known since ancient Greece, but they were never

applied before Modernity. Before, the subjective eye was missing. Only it could say “I watch” and “I see”,

and more still, “I watch and I see here and now”. The Random nature and unrepeatability of each since

case are the opposite of the transcendence of eternal or of absolute that disregard whoever can catch

them. The space of the scene is inhabited, by the spectator before the protagonist.

A new semantic content is attributed to space. So it gains a different sense. It is a different space, to be

inhabited. Above all, it is a space that has a center, starting from which it can e seen, used, walked through.

It is not longer isotropic, indifferent to whoever says “I am here”, “ I see starting from this point of view”.

The space questions the subject and the subject questions the space. They imply one another, contaminate

one another, and challenge one another.

For some time, the gaze has had the role of a double thread between the subject and the world: while it

allows to conquer the world, to make it become part of the subject that knows it (homologating the world

to himself, including the world within himself), the gaze also allows the opposite movement: the subject

goes out from himself, expands himself, shows himself because, in a perfectly reciprocal play, the subject

offers himself to others’ gazes. It is both a centripetal and centrifugal movement. In modern

physiognomy, as much as in later pathognomica, nothing is more meaningful than the gaze aiming to reveal

the soul’s depth. Since Romanticism of the XIX century, it becomes an obsession. The root of this trend

goes far back in history: since the first centuries of the second millennium, the gaze has played the role of a

medium, thanks to the more and more intense and always changing social relations. Society itself is

changing, production processes, commercial and cultural transactions arise again and invade more and

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more contexts and social strata. Occasions for watching and being watched become more and more

numerous and gain importance.

The watching subject also becomes an object (of others’ gazes) and vice versa. These two aspects do not

show antithetic positions or, at least, distinction. They activate particular synergies, as is clearly

demonstrated in pictures from the XVII-XVIII centuries. The far-reaching implications of this trend will

arrive to extreme consequences, for example, the Panoptical by Bentham or the pervasive media of “Big

Brother” during the XX Century.

The gaze as protagonist has a neurophysiologic correlate: Mirror Neurons. The subject becomes more and

more a protagonist and this supports not only the use of sight, but also other senses. Smell and taste are

related moreover to food and to drinks. But gastronomy is not the only field where we find a strong

development. The perfume industry has a decisive evolution as well.

Perfume is not a viewable effluvium: to be perceived it must enter the body, it must penetrate into the

internal organs, into the deepest parts. It seems capable of making the fibers of our most secret emotions

vibrate, to make unforgotten emotions arise, to give life to unexpected sensations and desires. It has a

mysterious and irresistible affinity with Eros and with sensuality. Do to all these reasons, that now have a

new and different relevance, Perfume conquers center stage.

Also touch is more esteemed: cloth, utensils (of choice, but also for everyday use), many kinds of surfaces

are realized carefully and in different ways. Tactile sensations have also received the attention of visuality

and of painting, since the Renaissance. Just to cite only a few famous names, Raffaello, Tintoretto, and

Caravaggio allude to the carnality of their art, to the sensuality of the contact with skin nude, smooth and

soft. Their reference is often clear and explicit.

The nude is freed from biblical or mythological alibis and, traversed by such interest and attention, is no

longer able to be contained within well-balanced positions of classic canons, it is impossible for it to

conform to classic proportions.

Even if the Apollonian and cosmic beauty and the moral dignity risk being lost, bodies abandon balanced

grace, allowing themselves to be invaded by a fully Dionysian jolt, disregarding if it is expressed as a

whisper or emphasized. When we look at “Io and Jupiter” by Tintoretto, the position of the female body

expresses a full abandonment of the senses of pleasure, it is overwhelmed by erotic passion. The embrace

is already coitus. Along the same lines, we find another example in Saint Therese by Bernini. The saint

appears to be living a mystic rapture where the beatitude of contemplation of God seems to be mixed with

orgasmic pleasure, causing scandal.

Allusions in figurative arts are not limited to sensuality; they also imply other kinds of perceptive

experiences such as taste. A new genre is established: the still life. In many examples, food is shown

suggesting tastes, flavors, even warmness or any sensations that the lips and palate may experience.

This higher attention to and deeper consciousness of sensorial reception is strictly related to the centrality

of the subject and it causes another meaningful trend: the erotic dimension emerges. Early on, it is hidden

and implicit, later it becomes more and more evident. Just after the Renaissance, in the artistic field, classic

and canonic body positions were soon changed according to this new proposal, until they disappear

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completely. Nudity no longer needs religious or mythological alibis and is often portrayed with clearly

erotic references.

The web that bonds the Gaze and Eros is the main pillar of many paintings, with several meaningful

examples moreover in the XVIII Century (Fragonard).

During the following century, Realism grasps other topics and although we do not lose contact with Eros, it

loses poetry as other “degenerated” aspects of it are involved. Between the end of the XIX and the XX

centuries, Eros is pushed to pornographic extremes and also toward the “paradox” of the search for anti-

aesthetic taste. Evolution of the sensorial sphere cannot be separated from the cognitive one.

A paradigmatic element can be seen in the passage of logic from a sort of grammar (thanks to which it

functions as a conceptual machine) to a new technique, that is theorized by Port Royal’s definition “the art

of well leading one’s own reasoning…” and reasoning is an activity (even if an internal activity) of each

individual subject. Guide lines arrive from the outside world. The single subject interprets them according

to which he undertakes this activity. He is the author and the protagonist of it.

We can find another meaningful turning point in the methodological and behavioral novelties of Descartes.

He is considered the father of the “cogito”, including all its implications. Thinking is self-referential,

introspective. It is the mark of one’s own subjectivity (I am, as subject, due to the fact that I am an entity

that is capable to think) and, at the same time, it is used to have awareness of itself (I am conscious of

thinking thanks to the fact I think, I think myself as thinking).

(Subjective) thinking becomes the object of itself. The circle is complete and closed without the need for

the external world.

With Descartes, we notice that the ancients’ wonder is replaced by doubt, systematic doubt that is

extended to all questions of consciousness. This is not aimed to have opportunity to control consciousness

itself “a posteriori”, but to exert a constant concomitant meta-cognitive supervision. We cannot avoid it.

This must not be confused with the critical position of the Illuminist way of thinking. This is an analytical

and aware examination that is aimed to warrant correctness of thinking itself. This is a more “internal

(meant as more inherent) and more “formal” kind of control. This control remains on an individual level,

but nevertheless transforms the concept of responsibility. Somehow it makes responsibility more laic.

Responsibility changes from moral to civil and social. Man facing God is replaced by the Citizen facing the

Law.

This progressive and continuous focus on subjectivity involves the experience of time flow that is strictly

connected to the stream of consciousness which becomes explicit in literature of the XX century.

But time and transience conquer both Nature and human history. History gains a fully new and different

sense during Modernity.

Contemporarily, also the dimension of a time without Man begins to extend itself. Galileo defines time as a

decisive factor in the Cosmos. Celestial bodies are under the effect of time and of transformation

processes. If compared with the perfect and never mutable spheres of previous models, the difference is

decisive. During the XVII-XIX Centuries, the abysses of geological times become evident. It is an historical

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time, during which events happen according to a chronological order. Catastrophists and Uniformitarians

share the idea of a transformed and transforming Earth.

New models are shaped: not only about geological transformations, but also about biological ones. These

are fully expressed in the Darwinian Theory. It is a wonderful “finish line”, as much as “starting line” for

further developments.

During the XIX century, Thermodynamics offered the physical side to arguments about time and changing.

Subjectivity implies the idea of doing and of willing, of knowing and of thinking, of choosing and of deciding.

Man, even (and moreover) meant as a single subject, becomes more and more a protagonist, more and

more active.

The problem of “how” he does, thinks and says comes up together with “how” to exercise these activities.

In later Modernity, the central question of this second “season” of culture emerges: the method, meant as

a system of rules, norms, laws and protocols, aimed at building or regulating the doing, the saying, the

thinking. Creating and using prescriptions is not fully new, but now it assumes a particular value and a

particular function.

During the XVII century, we find the “methodological” turning point. Strictly speaking: the method

becomes an object. During the Scientific Revolution, the ratio that objectifies all, now more than ever,

places something over the studied reality: the method that studies it, that is to say the processes and the

logics that allow us to hold realty. The paradigm of Port Royal is the reference point of this moment. The

Descartes’ method is on the same line. Galileo’s goes in this direction, too. The combination of “sure

reasoning and sensate experiences” indicates the duplicity of knowledge’s way. These two components are

related to one another, they are synergic, so we can neither speak about schizophrenia between ratio and

materiality, nor to speak about syncretism, about juxtaposition between things that remain extraneous to

one another.

We can notice the curious combination between apparently contrasting aspects. In fact they are

contrasting, but not excluding one another. On the contrary, they need one another, they are

complementary: subjectivity is not subjectivity if it does not have an object on which one can execute its

knowledge capacity, and object does not exist as object if there is not a subjectivity to know it. But the

different roles of subject and object are always more and more distinct and definite.

Above the reality there is a man who thinks this reality, who knows it, so the distance between thinking

subjectivity and object thought grows. Man’s sight turns towards himself (becoming self-conscious) and,

at the same time, toward the outside (the rigor of experimental method, of number and of measurements

does not allow, at least in intention, subjectivity and man’s organic nature to fluctuate and be fuzzy or

nuanced).

According to this perspective, the body participates in building knowledge, but it always has the role of

instrument (that is to say, it is useful for….) or of condition (if we do not use body we cannot…) as it

happens in Sensualism, in Empiricism, in the experimental method, in Positivism.

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3. SEASON OF LANGUAGE AD OF COMMUNICATION

Even if subjectivity (that characterizes Modernity so deeply) continues its course until today, a decisive

novelty emerges between the end of the XIX and beginning of the XX centuries: the attention for formal

systems that express knowledge, that represent concrete things, that replace them with something else

that can be managed without managing them directly. Another passage is actuated: after the one from

the object to the thinking about object, now the focus moves from thinking (including its rules) to shared

formalization. It needs a conscious and rigorous selection of instruments and ways to be effectively

realized.

What is happening? On the long wave of the affirmation of subjectivity and the act of communication

becoming protagonist, the importance of communication itself emerges more and more as an unavoidable

consequence of this fact.

Communication breaks the short circuit that connects the subject to it and moves it to a different

dimension. From “cogito ergo sum” to “commuicamus ergo sumus” there is continuity, but also a long

distance… to say (meant in a broad sense, not only in a strictly verbal one) shows a sort of autonomy from

subjects that actuate it.

Inter-subjectivity is outlined against the background of subjectivity; it emerges from this and is an

important feedback for this. Going beyond the self-referred model is passing a point of no return:

subjectivity does not cease to exist, but it is no longer the same. This fact becomes very evident especially

starting from the end of the XIX century.

Even if events like the formalization of the Algebra of Boole seem to disregard these cultural changes. The

mathematization of logic (if we agree with this definition), allows a more effective and more “warranted”

use of logics itself. Its grammar, its lexicon, its protocols have exact and rigorous references.

So sharing is warranted against arbitrary drifts and random accidents. Somehow this allows us to conquer

a sort of warranty of the extra-subjectivity that was typical of the conceptual machine and of the grammars

of thought of the Ancient Age, like the syllogism. But modern subjectivity holds centuries of subjectivism in

its past, so it is something else. History never repeats itself during any time scale.

Logical positivism, compared to the old nineteenth-century positivism of memory, also marks a step in this

direction. The shape is not the mere container enclosing a strange and indifferent content. The form is a

constituent of the content and vice versa. The semiotic game of participation and sharing includes the

formal adopted system as an essential part. The reports of this system with the enunciated subject, with

the context, but especially with the reality to which the sentences refer, tell us that the subject itself is not

an entity isolated; a beginning and an end in itself.

The focus of the issue becomes the expression of the knowledge of reality, or rather, the formal systems

that allow knowledge to be viewed and shared. A line seems to be outlined from the object to knowledge

about the object, to the expression of knowledge about the object.

In this perspective, languages are the object of particular and somehow new attention. Rigorous languages

and computational modality have widely invaded the field that once belonged only to the verbal/discursive

one. Nowadays, Boole’s Algebra (or the Boolean Algebra, which is not exactly the same thing) is a

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consolidated reality. By now objectivity is not longer of objects but of the signs that signify them.

Subjectivity underlies alternate destinies.

From semiotics and linguistics, in which the enunciated subject is always the center, author, spectator and

protagonist of so particular an object, is the sign which bears the inescapable anthropicity brand upon

itself, which draws its very life and reason from man; this may be gradual or sudden. Autonomous signs are

typical of memetic theory and, earlier, of functionalism. Its contents disregard subjects and material and

contingent supports.

More properly, signs stop being signs, semeion, charged with meaning by a subject and caught by another

subject according to its significant nature to become information. The intention, will, subjectivity are no

longer necessary. Information has been deprived of its “soul”, casualty and Natural laws are enough to let

it reproduce itself, split itself in different versions, transform, transmit… if we receive the Darwinian lesson

in its truest and deepest implication, random dominion, absence of any finality or plan seem to be the only

key to building an “honest” model of Nature, including life and culture itself.

There is a wonderful and charming “limbo” that has recently been rediscovered, suspended between the

deterministic rigor of the Newtonian Universe and the seething matter that lies under the unavoidable and

unstoppable entropic destiny. Exactly in this limbo a space, as unexpected as surprising, opens up; one of

complexity and of self-organization. There, wonderfully organized phenomena and structures emerge.

Always following the times and transformations, these phenomena and structures can be explained

without intelligence or planners. More exactly, this absence allows the explanation to be effective.

Homo faber, Homo cogitans had always thought of a Nature and/or a God faber and cogitans as well.

Nature and/or God were directly or indirectly interring, aiming to warrant legality and order all over the

Universe. Now we see these reassuring presences “expelled”. As a sort of counter-balancing, during the

1980s, we see a new conception emerging. It places knowledge not only inside the subject, but inside a

subject that is a subject-body, more than a body-subject.

The theory of EEC (Embodied Embedded Cognition) states that knowledge cannot disregard the entity that

produces it, including its material, bodily dimension. That is to say, we do not recognize the world not

imaging it inside our thinking mind that becomes more and more agile and capable of understanding if it

becomes ascetic and detaches itself from the materiality of the body. Instead, we know the world starting

from (and remaining in) our body, because the body is the knowing subject, the body says “I”, because

subject simply “is” body, always, however inescapably. Not only is the materiality, the corporeality of the

subject so central, but also that of the world with which our body is contiguous, continuous,

homogeneous… Centuries, thousands of years of effort to purify ourselves from what is accidental,

marginal, meaningless, dirty; a period in which we have drawn knowledge as something elevated, to be

conquered progressively ascending continuously, expelling what we thought was extraneous, eccentric,

purifying knowledge from what encrusts it, makes I turbid, polluted, contaminated. All this long and

patient work was erased by the search for what had been denied until now. The world’s resistance against

our efforts, difficulties met by our actions, by our living, the noises that confuse us, and so on, are

conditions for knowledge. As much as dualities matter—information, concrete—abstract vanish, also the

object/subject, I-world ones vanish. The subject expands, extends into the world, the world goes into the

subject according to a chiasm as it is properly meant in Phenomenology.

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4. SUMMARIZING THE QUESTION

Here is a chart of the three seasons or phases.

Age →

Historicperiod →

Features

↓

Onthological

Ancient Age, Middle

Age, Renaissance

Of method and of

subjectivity

Modernity

Of language

Since the late XIX

Century

Focus

Natural and/or human

reality

Knowledge of reality:

processes and methods

Formalization and

semiotic plays in

communication of

knowledge of reality

Conception of time Time is measurable

order of movement

Time is the intuited

movement

Time is the structure of

possibilities

Foreground

World

Things

Man

Soul

God, Man & world

Thinking subject

Object that is thought

and objectived also by

instruments & measures

Subject & object, that

are placed on the two

sides of this duality, that

face one another, but

without symmetry and

without possibility of

exchange

Contents that become

more and more

autonomous, as sign and

as information

Subjectivity and

objectivation, with a

different valence now

Reciprocal implication of

subject and object

Body

Body is an entity, has its

status, even if often it is

negative or however

minor

During Renaissance

body gains relevance

due to the fact that it is

expression and viewable

sign of soul

Body is tool or

instrument, it is vehicle.

Before it is observed

with interest (even in an

erotic sense), but later it

shifts far from the

center of subjectivity

At least in some cases,

body becomes subject

of enunciation.

This process reaches the

possibility of exchanging

subject and object

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AND THE BODY?...

During the first of these periods the body is an entity. It has its status, even if it is often negative or, in any

case, minor.

During the Renaissance, the body acquires importance as an expression and tangible sign of the soul.

The body is a tool or instrument; it is a vehicle.

At least in some cases, the body becomes subject of enunciation.

Feeling and sensing are widely articulated since the XIII-XIV centuries…

The realization of this potentiality lasts during following centuries.

Feelings are not only referred to our senses, they are also what we live in our inner lives. Emotional

“colors”, interior atmospheres, emotional vibrations, feelings, turmoil, and passions receive a new

attention and are recognized as the centre of our own existence. Literature of “courtly love” represents

this new way of conceiving the inner feelings.

This continuous and dense comer between internal and external gives value to the external, directly

involving it in the internal processes of the subject , so that he expands until he includes what has

previously external. Other scholars say that it is the external that leans towards our inner side, invading us.

Maybe both these things happen; they do not exclude one another. This is the vision of Externalism.

Speaking about the reciprocal crossing between internal and external, we neither seize one nor the other,

but what emerges on a transcending level.

During the XX century, we have had a decisive technological evolution of the media, mainly thanks to

electronics and IT, including all that they imply. This has caused us to lose any claims of direct and

ingenuous representation through them. The leap of virtualization seemed minimal in photography or film

when they appeared, but during the following period it showed its importance and it made us understand

that media has potentialities that gives them features and an autonomous vis.

Nevertheless, representational and referentially functions are not extinguished. However, this function is

not directly immediate, nor warranted by related realities. The margin or arbitrariness and autonomy of

the media cannot be cancelled nor ignored. With evolution of photography, film and phonic registration,

this appears evident, due to the fact that possibilities of manipulation emerge. These are largely different

and beyond one way automatism, according to which reality is “impressed” on technological support with

full and absolute fidelity, with global and detailed correspondence. Synthetic images and synthetic sounds

make this question explode in a definitive way. The boundary between true a false looks contorted, fuzzy

even dissolved. The media has its statute that is strongly evident and autonomous if compared with

reality’s statute.

Therefore, all processes, forms, acts of representation are lying under dialectics between reality and media.

And more: no process, form or act of representation can avoid this dialectic; it is the only way, the only

place where reality is given to Man and for Man. Direct, immediate experience is animal; immersion in

reality with no media deferment is not human.

14

For man, reality does not cease to exist, is not absent, is not an illusion; but Man must enter it, must relate

to it and must immerge himself in it in this condition, of passing through the media.

These particularities of media become evident in the age of electronics and of IT, but it becomes

“retroactive” and extends to other media, even less technologically sophisticated, like simple graphic

writing or the painted illustration. These are also equally capable of causing the virtualization leap,

distinguishing themselves from reality and opening the space where arbitrary play can emerge,

disregarding our consciousness about this. This arbitrary play must not be meant as groundless queerness

or as chaotic anarchy or as amorphous equipotent opportunities of any eventuality.

If we push this to its extreme (and perhaps provocatively) consequences, it made Dawkins theorize entities

like “Memes”. The empowerment of communication elements corresponds to their behavior, that is

independent from the disregards the content and the referent.

A “Meme-centric” communication, like a “gene-centric” biology (in which the organism is only the shuttle

that at the moment carries DNA, the real protagonist of the history of life) is the two sides of the same coin.

The enunciator of human communication or the genetic information package live its own life, self-centered.

The life of the enunciator subject or biological individual conforms to it.

Enunciators and genomes are neither the product nor the neutral and docile instrument of the subject nor,

respectively, of the body: these have distanced themselves, have reached (we could say emerged) an

unpredictable self.

Wittgenstein says “words are stones”, underlining their ontological consistence, or their causative power

on extra-linguistic reality.

Broadly speaking, we mean that appearance is the whole of both proper and non-proper communication

forms, that is, everything the subject perceives and therefore shares with other subjects, being included in

semiotic play.

Even if we disregard extreme visions such as the memetic or gene-centric ones, the used forms, aimed at

generating a semiotic game, share the fact of existing and recapture causality on the subject, affect its

characteristic, its destiny, in a word, make the subject. The direct consequence is that there is no

opposition between them but, tout-court, “appearance” is realty.

Modern subjectivism has a long history that began together with Modernity but, only starting from the XX

Century, has it shaped as a “first person narrator”, but this enunciatory form remains there, as a middle

ground.

Even if it arises from the telling subject, it neither belongs to him exclusively, nor to the interlocutor (nor

the reader, or another interacting subject). The “first person narrator” remains there, as a connective zone,

as an interface between the two parts, but it has its own centrality. So the intimacy, the introspection

cease to be “untold”, something omitted, removed from sharing. The statute of intimacy and of

introspection change, they are no longer unreachable nor fully private.