Charles Saunder Peirce (x-y), our greatest American philosopher, and our greatest 19th century mathematician, founded the field of SEMIOTICS (not to be confused with the work of the Frenchman, Sassure!) as "The Study of Signs". (Sadly, the impoverished Peirce -- he pronounced it "purse"-- died of malnutrition.)

I singled out four of Peirce's signs -- INDICATOR, SIGNAL, ICON, SYMBOL -- for my acronym, "ISIS". And I redefined the first two.

I redefine INDICATOR as AN ORDER PAIR OF SIGNS, [Oi, oI], where "Oi" denotes a highly observable sign of low information content, while "oI" enotes a lowly observable sign of high information content. The first leads us to the second.

To students, I gave the corny example. Bill Jenkins lives in the country and rarely comes to town. But, when he does, most folk want to talk to him, because he's wise and knowledgeable. This makes him difficult to find, because so many are after him and trying to "keep him to themsleves". But Bill always comes to town with his hound, "Old Blue", who likes to run around town, greeting everyone. So, if you wish to find Bill, you say, "Blue, go find Bill for me!" Recognize the form, [BLUE, BILL]?

A good example is [thunder-lightning, storm]. Also, [pink litmus paper in test-tube, acid]. Also, [symptom, disease]. (The term "semiosis" originally meant "symptom".)

I redefined SIGNAL as AN INDICATOR UNDER PHYSICAL AND LINGUISTIC CONTROL. Thus, the electicity implicit in the [thunder-lightning, storm] INDICATOR was put under the physical control of current-along-a-wire-with-switches; and the linguistic control of the Morse Code, giving us the telegraph.

This and other examples led me to the strategic declaration: "THE GOAL OF SCIENCE IS TO SEARCH FOR AND FIND INDICATORS AND TRY TO TURN THEM INTO SIGNALS.

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The other two components of ISIS -- namely, ICON and SYMBOL -- led to another strategic declaration, which requires preliminary explanation.

I met wife Esther in the office set up for Dr. Frank Laubach, literacy expert who worked with people speaking more than 250 languages. Laubach often took an artist with him to draw posters. One noteworthy poster conveyed the idea of the sound of the letter "o". The artist drew human lips shaping the "o-sound" and the letter "o" was "suggested" on those lips. The drawing was an ICON -- sign suggesting its reference -- used to teach a SYMBOL -- a sign that has an arbitrarily assigned reference.

Hence, I gleaned from this the following strategy: "THE GOAL OF EDUCATION IS TO USE THE ICON AS A BRIDGE TO THE SYMBOL."