Acceso usuarios
Fernando Andacht
The paper aims at revisiting the notion of the materialized sign of likeness in Peirce’s semiotic, namely, the hypoicon. To understand what is involved in the instantiation of the purely possible qualitative sign of resemblance or icon, the socalled ‘epistemic function of iconic signs’ (Ransdell), is considered in the light of the working of the human imagination. A central though not too often discussed aspect of sign action or semiosis, teleology or the working out of final causes in the growth of signs, is also included in this reflection on embodied images. A short story by Argentinean writer J. L. Borges and a pictorial analysis by iconographer E. Panofsky serve as examples to illustrate the teleological development of a material image that has fascinated Western civilization for over twenty centuries.
