Seeing the Past in the Future: the Place of Symbols, Semiotics, and Rhetoric in Shaping Human Perception of Reality

Humanity?s understanding of itself exists in complex constructs of reality shaped by social and cultural currents. A basic understanding of human construction of reality exists through humanity?s use of symbols in forming language and meaning, granting definition and depth to reality. Semiotics, the study of symbols and their meanings, examines those ways that symbols and signs and the interactive relationship drives the apprehension and conveying of ideas on the most basic socio-cultural level. The realm of fiction now serves, and has served humanity as the realm of the unknown where it reaches out to find itself within.