Towards a semiotic theory of historico-cultural cycles: The semiotic contours of Spengler's "prime symbols"

Oswald Spengler's theory of historico-cultural cycles is based on the notion of the "prime symbol," an abstract metaphor for space/extension manifested in the art, science, and religion of a given culture. This paper is a preliminary reconciliation of the Spenglerian semiotic anatomy of culture writ large with a few of the semiotic insights of Peirce. I propose that the developmental cycle of a given culture does not contain the Spenglerian Prime Symbol (Spengler's view) but is instead contained and conditioned by it. Inasmuch as a Culture in the aggregate is also a Symbol in the full Peircean sense of the word, I also propose that the development of each Culture is an effort of the Culture-Symbol to represent itself in terms of its Prime Symbol.