This lecture will aim to present a metascientific outline of the opinions about the domain of semiotic objects while juxtaposing the language- and culture-centered conceptions of sign and meaning to the human-centered eco-semiotic systems of linguistically and semiotically interacting individuals who aggregate into discursive communities based on observable interpersonal and inferable intersubjective groupings to send and receive messages while processing and interpreting them according to semantic correspondences. The empirical objects of semiotic studies are equalized with species of signs ranked along with sign-producing activities of sign-producers. The domain of semiotic studies is interdisciplinary since it derives investigative principles and methodological tools from disciplines, which deal with the questions of natural and cultural signification in the life world of complex adaptive systems. Hence, the conceptual and methodological apparatus of semiotics is seen as encompassing such terminological distinctions as the semiotic object set against the semiotic subject, on the one hand, the semiotic product contrasted with the semiotic process, on the other. Combining the linguistic, philosophical, logical, and anthropological inquiries into the sign- and meaning-related questions, the author merges the interest spheres of biological and cultural studies into the epistemological paradigms of linguistic semiotics, showing at the same time the investigative turns of their points of attraction. Constitutive data and aspectual constructs of a semiotic scaffold used to be considered within the framework of paradigm shifts. Paradigms are regarded as temporary shared epistemological convictions of researchers possessing ontologically commensurable and gnoseologically comparable knowledge and awareness of the world. The occurrence of paradigm shifts determined by changes in the point of interest or research conducts, the trajectory of attention, or cynosures of attraction are specified in investigative turns. Parallelly to the distinction of paradigms, the lecture will point out such shifts of interest in global semiotics as, among other things, linguistic, biological, discursive, cognitive, phenomenological, transmedial, or cosmological turns. The subject matter of semiotic cosmology is drawn as constituted, firstly, by the world as a synthesis of universal phenomena or an antithesis of vanishing percepts and enduring concepts, pondered from the observer’s independent and dependent perspectives, and secondly, by the idea of worldhood in its phenomenal appearance, subjective or objective modes of existence, and acts of lived-through experiential textuality. Respectively, the worldview is interpreted here as collectively created, even if it results from uniquely individual perceptions of reality. Separate attention in the lecture, within the frame of investigative postulates, will be devoted to philosophical discussions about the human impact on the globe, including the interrelationships between the semiosphere and biosphere, or between the biosphere and noösphere, as well as the commonalities between the ranges of semiosphere and noösphere.

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