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Of all living things we can say that they are semiosic creatures, creatures
which grow and develop through the manipulation of sign-vehicles and the
involvement in sign-processes, semiosis. What distinguishes the human being
among the animals is quite simple, yet was never fully grasped before modern
times had reached the state of Latin times in the age of Galileo. Every animal of
necessity makes use of signs, yet signs themselves consist in relations, and
every relation (real or unreal as such) is invisible to sense and can be
understood in its difference from related objects or things but never perceived
as such. What distinguishes the human being from the other animals is that
only human animals come to realize that there are signs distinct from and
superordinate to every particular thing that serves to constitute an individual in
its distinctness from its surroundings.
Such an animal, capable of coming to know that there are signs as well as
of using signs to hunt and fish and find its way through the surroundings, is
generically semiosic but specifically semiotic, the only animal capable of
knowing that there are signs to be studied as well as made use of to more
“practical” ends. So a definition of the human being as “semiotic animal” is not
modern. In the modern understanding of the philosophers, ens reale went under