Iconic Imagination in Modeling: A Semiotic Approach to Scientific Inquiry
I propose a semiotic contribution to philosophy of science in regard to imagination.
Often associated with the discovery of novel order and creativity, the imagination has been traditionally overlooked in philosophy of science. As recent cognitive sciences are placing imagination (Brandt 2020; Paolucci 2021) at the centre of all mind work, as capacity to meaningfully organize mental representations, philosophical reflection on scientific inquiry has also begun to pay attention to it (Frigg 2010; Levy & Godfrey-Smith 2020).
I reflect on the role of imagination in scientific inquiry by adopting three connected theories:
(1) Charles S. Peirce’s semiotics (CP 7.206–217; 7.366),
(2) cognitive semantics, and
(3) cognitive semiotics.
My argument is that while imagination is at work at every step of scientific inquiry, it particularly consists in abductive inferences, the incipient stage of hypothesizing (CP 1.46; 5.181). Proposing a hypothesis requires imagining it.
On this view, I construe the work of imagination in the context of (scientific) modeling as icon (signifying similarities, CP 3.362) manipulation. I argue that scientific inquiry unfolds within media affordances that at the same time make discovery possible and constrain it. From this perspective, understanding scientific inquiry requires considering situatedness (Massimi 2022), both cognitive and technological.
I explain that this semiotic conceptualization can shed light on the expansion of human imagination through emerging technologies, among which, most prominent, electronic computers. To develop my argument, I explicate some anecdotes of scientific discovery as icon manipulation, with a consideration of the heuristics stemming from modeling as transmedial.
Keywords: icon; modeling; imagination; simulation; scientific inquiry.
References
Brandt, P. A. (2020). Cognitive semiotics: Signs, mind and meaning. Bloomsbury.
Frigg, R. (2010). Models and fiction. Synthese, 172, 251–268.
Levy, A., & Godfrey-Smith, P. (Eds.). (2020). The scientific imagination: Philosophical and psychological perspectives. Oxford University Press.
Massimi, M. (2022). Perspectival realism. Oxford University Press.
Paolucci, C. (2021). Cognitive semiotics: Integrating signs, minds, meaning and cognition. Springer.
Peirce, C. S. (1958). The collected papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (Vols. 1–8, C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, & A. W. Burks, Eds.). Harvard University Press.
