Frontmatter -- Contents -- Introduction -- Grounding figures and figuring grounds in semiotic modeling -- Part A. Issues of culture -- Structural differences in intentional action between humans and chimpanzees - and their implications for theories of handedness and bipedalism -- 'Venuses', turtles, and other hand-held cosmic models -- Toys in engineering history: The role of scale models and miniaturization techniques -- Maps, territories and mandalas: The spirit of place -- Notational systems: The interaction of model and content -- Part Β. Issues for science -- Code-duality and the semiotics of nature -- The use and misuse of metaphor in biology: Studies of the semantics of molecular evolution -- Kali theory -- The conduct of artificial life: A quest for artificial death? -- Worlds and signs: Explicate and implicate order -- Model, world, semiotic reality -- Semiotics and control systems: Toward a non-classical model of communication -- Part C. Issues in language and literature -- In what sense is language a 'primary modeling system'? -- On the semiotic status of written language -- (Re)modeling the letter: Literacy and literature at the intersection of semiotics and literary studies -- The logic of autobiography -- A semiotic model of conjecture -- Part D. Issues of semiosis -- A Peircean classification of models -- Diagrammatic thinking and the portraiture of thought -- Peirce, iconicity, and the geometry of logic -- 'A Sign of itself' -- Modeling anthroposemiosis -- Afterword -- Filling and emptying figures and grounds in art, craft, and science -- List of contributors -- Index -- Backmatter