The Totem’s Metaphor of Technological Knowledge
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 17830645 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Maurício Cavalcante Rios (0000-0002-1652-9318, Universidade Federal da Bahia, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Volume | 9 |
| Issue | S1 |
| Pages | 566-574 |
| Publication date | 2026-03-14 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Human Arenas (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2522-5790 • E-ISSN: 2522-5804 |
| Publisher | Springer Science+Business Media (PUBLISHER • DE) |
| DOI | 10.1007/s42087-026-00562-w |
| OpenAlex | W7135403471 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
Current technological advancements have led humanity to profound changes in its ways of relating to the world, the body, and even the mind. In this work, we use, as a metaphor, the figure of the totem, which represents the ancestry of a collectivity. The totem is a symbol that carries the history, cults, and norms of a collectivity. Our totem is a semiotic construct: The Totem’s Metaphor of Technological Knowledge. For this, we employ a myth: Prometheus as the base of the totem. If the Totem’s Metaphor of Technological Knowledge expresses a semiotic construct of technological evolution, how is this construct elaborated? Our hypothesis is that if there is a social imaginary regarding the various forms of knowledge, this social imaginary can manifest in more sophisticated systems of semiotic constructs: scientific, and in our case, technological. Our goal is to interpret the totemic sign as a possible social imaginary of technological knowledge and relate it to technological evolution
Construct (python library) · Metaphor · Semiotics · Sign (mathematics) · The Imaginary · Totem · Cognitive Science and Education Research · Origins and Evolution of Life · Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |