Every human being uses signs and is involved in sign processes.
Every society has developed ideas on how signs enable humans to orient themselves in their environment and deal with each other. The established academic disciplines have long neglected the common properties of the various sign types on which their unified theoretical analysis could be based. The human and social sciences have studied the signs used in language, literature, art, music, law, and religion independently of each other, and consequently lost sight of their unitary character. The engineering and natural sciences have adopted a mechanistic approach to nature and life, and have thereby led the industrial and post-industrial societies into problems which they can no longer overcome with the means provided by these sciences. However, it is feasible to conceive of sign processes in all their variations as a unitary phenomenon connecting living nature with human culture and distinguishing them both from inanimate nature.