In the predominant mentality, the role of subjective factors in exact and natural sciences is very poor. It was really poor until the end of the 19th century; when the belief in a sharp distinction between subject and object began to diminish in all fields. This fact involved a general attenuation of the contrasts between art and science. This thing is not enough known, if not totally ignored, because the dominant systems of education in the 20th century failed in this respect.
The emergence of signs, the development of sign processes need attention in all directions, they are not the exclusive privilege of arts and humanities. We will try to bridge this gap. Indeed, there is a gap between the internal life of science, the very nature of scientific creativity, on the one hand, and the dry way science is exposed at all levels, from general school till university, with accent on procedure and operations, rather than on ideas and imagination. The true life of the so-called heavy sciences remains hidden to the general public. We will take one by one some basic ideas of semiotics and show their real face in the field of heavy sciences. We will begin with the role of the subject (in its relation to the object), then we will discuss the nature of scientific creativity (versus the artistic creativity), the emergence of meaning in heavy sciences, the way science rises the problem of existence and infinity, the essential presence of transcendence, of the negation-affirmation interplay (Tarasti 2000)
As we will see, all these problems involve semiotic processes. [MORE]