8 This explains why Metz (1968b: 11511) was immediately prepared to accept my criticisms regarding an idea of the hypoicon as analogon and to take another look at its cultural components.
9 With regard to this line of thought, I like to cite the most recent contribution: Jean Fisette 1995.
10 It should be said that, rather than a surgical operation, this was a matter of preventive medicine, because it was carried out well before the appearance of a theory of rigid designation.
11 For a tempered view of the positions, see Bettetini 1971 and 1975.
12 For an English translation, see «Articulations of the Cinematic Code,» in Bill Nichols, ed., Movies and Methods, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976, 590-607).
13 Some today might propose defining likeness as a dyadic relation between something and itself, and similarity as a relation that is in any case triadic (see Goodman 1970): A is similar to B from the point of view C, and perhaps similarity is what has been defined as a «multiplace predicate» (see Medin and Goldstone 1995). However, see in 3.7. the discussion on the difference between recognizing an individual as the same individual and recognizing it as similar to others of its species. Given that the recognition of basic categories (such as a dog or a chair) is rooted in the perceptual process, in these cases too shouldn’t we be talking about likeness rather than established similarity?
14 «The abrupt changes in intensity in the image reveal outlines and hence the shapes of objects in the visual world» (Vaina 1983: 11).
15 Once more the need prevailed to connect the hypoicon immediately to a meaning, to a cognitive type, and therefore I maintained that from the hypoiconic experience one immediately arrives at the «abstract representation of the hand.» In other words, the problem was that of the (individual) Dynamical Object as the (ideal) terminus ad quern of a cognitive process, of which one could control only the (general) Immediate Object. And therefore one always risked not taking into consideration the object as a terminus a quo, i.e., the fact that in order to constitute any abstract representation of the hand, we (or whoever had transmitted the type to us) had still started off from a perceptual experience.
16 I owe these observations to Paolo Fabbri, who was moreover referring to some discussions with Ruggero Pierantoni. Fabbri suggests that therefore a semiotics of perception should recover the concept of «enunciation,» which implies the point of view of the subject. I find the suggestion a fecund source of developments, as I think I have mentioned in these essays. Fabbri’s advice is to make the concept of enunciation central to all the paragraphs that follow, like the one on prostheses and the one on mirrors and imprints. I feel that the presence of the subject and his point of view is central—even though not expressed in terms of «enunciation»—to the other parts of this chapter, and in particular to the piece on mirrors.
17 If the answer is yes, it is not yet sure that the stimulus is natural: we could be faced with a hologram. I suspect that the question of holograms should be approached from the point of view of my further discussion on mirrors and TV images (see 6.10 ff).
18 He did not see it even though he lived in a culture that was by that time dominated by the pictorial theory of perspective. A curious phenomenon that seems to clash with two opposed positions, that perspectival relationships are given to us by the object and that they are imposed as an interpretative schema of cultural origins. Let’s say then that, however things may be, the object did not supply him with a sufficient trace with which to grasp the perspective, and the culture had not yet supplied sufficient schemata with which to see it.
19 Except that there the type contemplated four stages: (i) stimuli (what I am presently calling the Moon-in-Itself); (ii) transformation (the labor carried out by drawing); (iii) perceptual model; (iv) semantic model. In the light of what has been said in this book, the cognitive type would now come to fulfill the dual function of the two «models,» perceptual and semantic.
20 Valentina Pisanty (in a puzzled personal communication) asked me what I would see were I to point my index finger toward my eyes (the ones in my head). It would seem difficult to handle two images at the same time; perhaps it would be necessary to close the two normal eyes when the third is in use, but I’m not sure this would be enough. The most reasonable conclusion is that the innovation would make it necessary to redesign our brain. Perhaps it is because of this difficulty that no one has ever tried to graft a third eye onto the tip of the index finger. But the problem is not of my competence.
21 On the other hand, I would reserve the term tool for devices such as knives, scissors, flints, and hammers, which not only do what the body could never do but also, with regard to the prostheses that simply help us to interact better with what is there, produce something that was not there before. They crush, subdivide, and modify forms. An improvement on the tool is the machine. Machines work, but without any need to be guided by the organ whose possibilities they magnify. Once started, they work by themselves. But one might ask whether locomotive machines such as the bicycle and even the motorcar, which still require the direct collaboration (together with the strength) of the hand and foot, are not at the same time magnifying prostheses (at their peak); and in such a case an early airplane would be a machine and a magnifying prosthesis at the same time, while a jumbo jet is pure machine, as much as the mechanical loom. But substitutive, extensive, and intrusive prostheses, tools and machines are abstract types to which the various objects can be variably related according to the use made of them and their degree of sophistication.
22 In the eighties I wrote an essay on mirrors (now in Eco 1985). In it, I developed some observations made in A Theory of Semiotics, but the thrust of the piece was directed at a profound revision of the concepts of icon and hypoicon, which is why I am reproducing the fundamental aspects here.
23 What is the meaning of «virtual,» which seems opposed to «real»? Maltese (1976) «picked up on» an expression of mine (1975: 256), where I say that a virtual image is not a material expression (by which I obviously meant that it is not a drawing or a painting, and that it disappears when the mirrored object moves away) and accused me of idealist antimaterialism—never mind, the rhetoric of the time was like that. The distinction between real and virtual images is not mine, it comes from optics, according to which shadow-theater and cinematographic images (and even the images formed in concave mirrors, which can be collected on a screen) are real, while specular images are virtual (see Gibson 1966: 227). The virtual image of the mirror is so called, because the spectator perceives it as if it were inside the mirror, while the mirror has no «inside.»
24 It is surprising to find a scientist remarkably familiar with the eye (Gregory 1986) who continues to wonder at this phenomenon (and on the fact that mirrors do not invert the up-down dimension). Gregory realizes that this must be a cognitive matter (we imagine ourselves, as I was saying, inside the mirror) but seems dissatisfied with the answer, maintaining that if things were really like this, we would have to have an «extraordinary» mental skill, as if we did not already possess others that seem even more extraordinary. Gregory also quotes Gardner (1964), who had also made the obvious observation that mirrors do not reverse anything at all. But not even this is enough for Gregory, and he adds another reason for surprise: that mirrors also reverse depth, and that is to say, if we walk away from a mirror, say, toward the north, the image moves away from us toward the south, and it gets smaller (I would add that it’s hardly likely to come running straight at us). But, Gregory says, mirrors do not reverse concave and convex. All you have to do is think of the mirror as a prosthesis, or an eye on the index finger, and it will let me see what I would see if someone were standing in front of me: if that some one moves away, his image gets smaller, but if he has a potbelly, then it will stay that way, nor will the pit of his stomach contract toward the inside.
25 Even if the «tail» had made identifying notches on Mr. X’s shoes, he would only have a very strong clue that those shoes are Mr. X’s. In point of fact, he would perceive only the imprint left by shoes (in general) that reveal the presence of notches (in general) similar to the ones he had made on a particular sole.
26 From a practical point of view, it
