Alfred North Whitehead, Pragmaticism and Semiotics

In this article I examine some convergences between Alfred North Whitehead’s philosophy of organism and contemporary semiotics, with particular reference to the Umberto Eco’s theory of general semiotics, rooted philosophically in Charles Sanders Peirce’s normative theory of inquiry, pragmaticism. I shall first discuss how a few central themes in Plato’s and Aristotle’s metaphysics colour Peirce and Whitehead’s work, especially their treatments of notions such as continuity and teleology, matter and mind, structure and process. I shall then consider how similar themes also colour Eco’s philosophical approach, serving to qualify general semiotics as a mature philosophy of language capable of understanding all types of meaning negotiation in terms of inferentially based communication and signification processes.