ABSTRACT
This chapter exlpains the connection between hermeneutical dichotomy and several other metaphysical and epistemological dualisms that have long been abandoned by most participants in the Science and Religion (SR) dialogue. It shows how resources shed light on the significance of the encounter of the boundaries of human symbolization itself for interdisciplinary dialogue. Peircean semiotics also avoids the temptation to treat religious symbolism reductionistically, and so offers one example of a philosophical model that can facilitate dialogue across disciplines about questions of ultimate religious significance. The long-dismissed dualisms continue to support a bifurcation between 'symbol' and 'reality' has not been as widely recognized, even in the SR dialogue. Several developments in late modern philosophy have contributed to the demise of the dualisms just traced, but few have so directly contributed to the overcoming of the signum-res dichotomy as the retrieval and refiguring of the pragmatic semiotics of Charles Sanders Peirce.
