*1.1. Paradigms and Horizons*

To describe the complex development of human knowledge, it has become customary to talk in terms of paradigms. Common examples are the scientific paradigm; the linguistic paradigm, the computational paradigm, the holistic paradigm, etc. With these are associated, more or less loosely and more or less well-defined, corresponding ontologies, e.g., digital ontology, and philosophical turns: the linguistic turn, the ontological turn and most recently the informational turn. Changes in paradigm are described as evolutionary or revolutionary.

A concept similar to paradigm is that of 'horizon'. Husserl uses the term intentional horizon to characterize the locus of the 'end' of the experience of self-awareness: "the horizon-structure of our singular empirical thought". Derrida has also called attention to its dualistic character as an opening and a limit, and Heidegger in the sense of what limits or encloses and in doing so discloses or makes available. It has also been proposed by Rafael Capurro to describe the bounds within which any existential thought or system of thought, such as our current thesis, can be made at a given time. This term has the advantage of avoiding the academic associations of paradigm, but both can be considered as applicable to our thesis, of which such dualities, and their evolution, is a key component.

Three disciplines address the forms and rules of human thought and reasoning in the generation of knowledge: logic, which has been available since antiquity; dialectics as a broader conception of logic, considered as the 'science' of correct reasoning; and semiotics which focuses on the epistemological properties of reality—the extant domain. Semiosis is the cognitive process of 'doing' semiotics.

The difficulty with both the paradigmatic-historical model of knowledge on the one hand, and the logical-semiotic model of thought on the other has been that both tend to emphasize the separation and differences between the respective domains. As discussed elsewhere below, we see this as a consequence of the retention of the basic premises of bivalent, linguistic logic separated from an adequate, physically grounded realism. Even the current holistic paradigm, as holistic science, apart from its discussion of medicine which will not concern us here, uses classical conceptions of, e.g., parts and wholes and their relation.
