“In this book, James Williams develops his own approach to, and understanding of, what constitutes process and how this can be dealt with philosophically. All of this unfolds within a very careful and insightful reconfiguring of the status of signs.”
“Williams makes it clear that the full sense of both his process philosophy and his account of signs will only appear gradually, becoming clearer and richer as his arguments and analyses develop. As a result, it is only though the discussion of different, even opposed, theories of the sign that his own stance will come to the fore.”
“Some of the different or opposed accounts of the sign that Williams uses to build his argument are those of Wittgenstein, biology, structuralism, semiology, Deleuze and Whitehead. I will not explore all these elements in detail; instead, I want to highlight some of the key elements of this engaged and engaging book.”
“his definition of a sign as “a selection of a set” (p. 2). The positing of a set represents the formal element of the definition.”
“The notion of selection, in a broad sense, shorn of its reliance upon human agency, represents the process aspect. Despite its apparent “formality”, the set of a sign is not fixed or limited. It comes into effect through its selection.”
“Williams argues that the best way of understanding such selections, and their relation to the elements of a set, is though the notion of “diagram”. His use of this term is indebted to Deleuze, as is his stress upon the notion of “intensity”. This is not, however, a mere rehearsal or borrowing of terms. Williams provides his own slant, and does so, as I have already said, through a discussion of other writers.”
“In this instance, the next chapter deals with biology, animals and their signs through a re-reading of Jakob von Uexküll.”
“This includes the important point that while it is crucial for a philosophy of signs to be able to account for their status in relation to the realms of life considered by biology, signs themselves are not natural, in that they are not an object which is subject to discovery by science per se. This discussion of biology, in turn, raises more general questions about the relation of process in philosophy and process in biology, which are the topic of the next chapter, comprising an analysis of Eric Bapteste and John Dupré.”
“Interestingly, the next chapter, which is situated at the middle of the book, is one which might have been expected to be placed at the start. It is titled “The Sign” and sets out the core of Williams’ philosophical approach. Having this chapter at the centre of the book works well. It acts as a fulcrum. The earlier chapters have engaged with a range of different approaches to the sign, as has been seen. At this stage, we are now in a position to revisit the minimal definitions offered in the Introduction and to establish a fuller understanding of a process philosophical approach to the sign as itself a process.”
“Crucially, this does not deny the roles of signification or reference which are so important to competing theories of the sign. It does, however, deny that they are sufficient in themselves to account for the complexity of signs and their operations, in relation to a changing environment.”
“Hence: ‘the process version draws the signifier and signified into a much wider web of changing intensities of relations represented by a suite of diagrams without which the process sign will be incomplete’ (p. 81).”
“It is in light of this that Williams turns to structuralism, semiology and, most particularly, the work of Roland Barthes. This reading emphasizes how process is already present in Barthes’ account but needs broadening and re-situating.”
“The key target of Williams’ critique is semiology and structuralism’s reduction of signs to ‘specific languages and forms of speech, to external matter and social use’ (p. 107). In contrast, Williams wants to extend the limits of, the argument and this widening of scope constitutes the metaphysical aspect of his argument, as is made explicit in the subsequent chapter on Deleuze and Whitehead.”