Umberto Eco and Charles Peirce: A slow and respectful convergence

The aim of the essay is to link Eco’s theory of the Encyclopedia as regulative hypothesis with his theory of interpretation, by evidencing the intrinsic dynamic character of the encyclopedic model. Eco adopts Peirce’s view of semiosis as a flow of interpretants, but the notion of semantic model is not to be found in the work of the American. Eco is thus attracted by the challenge of combining the process-based model of interpretation and the formal model of semantic system. The attempt meets with some difficulties due to the difference between the two approaches. Yet, it is argued that this attempt opens a fascinating landscape to future research.