Publications

Publication details [#7876]

Merrell, Floyd. 2006. Creation: Algorithmic, organicist, or emergent metaphorical process? Semiótica 161 (1-4) : 119–146. 28 pp.

Abstract

We are all to a greater or lesser degree creative, and metaphor making is one of the most common channels along which the creative process flows. Three general theories of metaphor - comparison, substitution, and interaction - and three theories of creativity - mechanicism, organicism, and contextualism or holism - surface in the following pages. Peirce's categories delineating the semiosic process, his concept of signs incessantly becoming other signs, and his insight regarding abduction, are brought to bear on these theories of metaphor and creativity, leading to the conclusion that both theories are a matter of overdetermined Firstness becoming under-determined Thirdness through nonlinear, emergent interdependent, interrelated interaction between signs and their makers and takers. (Adapted from the source document) (LLBA, (c) CSA [2007]. All rights reserved.)