Semiootika koht modelleerivate süsteemide reas: eelmärkmeid loomingulisest ja mängulisest modelleerimisest humanitaarteadustes
The place of semiotics among modelling systems: notes towards the creative and play-type modelling in human sciences

Summary/Abstract: The issue of modelling has been extensively studied in the context of natural sciences yet considerably less so in human sciences. The current article presents an attempt to do so with the help of the Tartu–Moscow School’s modelling systems theory. One of the motivations behind the article was an observation made while reading Lotman’s article „The place of art among other modeling systems” that there is certain similarity between his conception of artistic modelling and certain practices and ways of thinking in contemporary human sciences. To make some preliminary observations about the type of modelling in the human sciences, I study Lotman’s grounds for differentiating between scientific, play-type and artistic modelling. For that aim, I give first an overview of Lotman’s and the Tartu–Moscow School’s view on modelling systems, to bring forth features I consider to be central: understanding modelling systems in a cognitive and activity theoretical framework, the agency of modelling systems, the pragmatics of modelling activity, modelling as translation, attitude toward the conditionality of modelling as well as the multi-layeredness of modelling. Approaching modelling as translation opens up a perspective to elaborate on the nature of the creative modelling central to art. The attitude towards the conditionality of modelling, in turn, differentiates between scientific and play-type modelling. If we analyse Lotman’s distinction between two layers of semiotics – cultural and metasemiotics – from that perspective, his views on the role of scientific modelling in semiotics (and the human sciences more generally) can be inferred, more specifically the acknowledged need for another type of modelling besides scientific. On these grounds, I build the hypothesis that the modelling specific to the human sciences is a unique combination of scientific, creative and play-type modelling. While the issues of scientific modelling and creative modelling in the sciences have already found some attention, Lotman’s approach offers perspective for the study of play-type modelling in the human sciences.

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