## Systems Of Interpretation • 9

Figure 2. An Elementary Sign Relation

It is above all important to understand that Peirce’s concept of a sign relation is defined at a higher order of abstraction than any notion of causal or temporal order.

A sign relation $L \subseteq O \times S \times I$ is a structure that can generate temporal sequences of signs that make up a semiotic process but there is no necessary temporal order associated with the relational domains $O, S, I$ nor with the roles of objects, signs, and interpretant signs in any triple of the form $(o, s, i) \in L.$

As it happens, generative relationships between a generating structure and a generated class of structures are very common throughout mathematics and hardly unique to semiotics.

### References

• Awbrey, J.L., and Awbrey, S.M. (Autumn 1995), “Interpretation as Action : The Risk of Inquiry”, Inquiry : Critical Thinking Across the Disciplines 15(1), pp. 40–52.  ArchiveJournalOnline.
• Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (September 1999), “Organizations of Learning or Learning Organizations : The Challenge of Creating Integrative Universities for the Next Century”, Second International Conference of the Journal ‘Organization’, Re-Organizing Knowledge, Trans-Forming Institutions : Knowing, Knowledge, and the University in the 21st Century, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, MA.  Online.
• Awbrey, S.M., and Awbrey, J.L. (May 2001), “Conceptual Barriers to Creating Integrative Universities”, Organization : The Interdisciplinary Journal of Organization, Theory, and Society 8(2), Sage Publications, London, UK, pp. 269–284.  Abstract.