Vol. 8 No. 2 (2024)
Research Articles

An Exercise of Applied Epistemology: Peirce’s Semiosis Implemented in the Representation of Protein Molecules

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  • Elena Ghibaudi
Elena Ghibaudi
Department of Chemistry, University of Torino, Torino, Italy
Bio
DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-2558

Published 2024-05-31

Keywords

  • semiosis,
  • protein models,
  • iconographic communication,
  • Peirce,
  • Eco

How to Cite

Ghibaudi, E. (2024). An Exercise of Applied Epistemology: Peirce’s Semiosis Implemented in the Representation of Protein Molecules. Substantia, 8(2), 45–56. https://doi.org/10.36253/Substantia-2558

Copyright (c) 2024 Elena Ghibaudi

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Abstract

In their disciplinary communication chemists make a broad use of iconographic means. In this paper, some aspects of the iconographic communication are discussed, with specific reference to the representation of protein molecules in the light of Peirce's and Eco’s semiotics. As far as Pierce’s thought is concerned, I discuss two triads (representamen, interpretant, and object) and (icon, index, symbol). Eco’s distinction between s-codes and codes is equally applied to the analysis of protein icons. The symbolic and iconic aspects of proteins’ representations are discussed, in the light of various conventions that regulate the use of shapes, lines, shadows, colors in the building up of images. The iconic aspect turns out to be the most surprising, not just because it makes 'visible' what is inherently invisible, but also because of its heuristic potential. I argue that the construction of protein images and their use in research qualify their epistemic status as that of conjectures.

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References

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