Evolution of Semantic Systems

Bernd-Olaf Kuppers is a professor emeritus of Natural Philosophy at the University of Jena. From 2008-2012 he was also the founding director of the Frege Centre for Structural Sciences at the same university. Prior to this he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Gottingen (1971-1993). His scientific interests cover a wide range of problems that are centred on the fundamental question of the origin and evolution of life. Udo Hahn is a professor of Computational Linguistics at the University of Jena and since October 2012 he is the director of the Frege Centre for Structural Sciences. His research interests include natural language processing (NLP), text analytics, information retrieval, knowledge representation, machine learning for NLP, and ontology design and engineering. Stefan Artmann, a philosopher of science and technology, is currently working as Senior Scientific Coordinator at the Presidential Office, German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. He is teaching at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Jena, and is an associate member of the Frege Centre for Structural Sciences.

• The Emergence of Reference.- Pragmatism and the Evolution of Semantic Systems.- System Surfaces - There Is Never Just Only One Structure.- Elements of a Semantic Code.- Talking about Structures.- Toward a Theory of Information Structure.- Mechanics and Mental Change.- Semantic Technologies: A Computational Paradigm for Making Sense of Informal Meaning Structures.- What are Ontologies good for?.- Taxonomic Change as a Reflection of Progress in a Scientific Discipline.- Crystallization as a Form of Scientific Semantic Change: The Case of Thermodynamics.