Merrell"s specific focus in this interdisciplinary study is the modernism/postmodernism dichotomy and Peirce"s precocious realization that the world does not lend itself to the simplistic binarism of modernist thought. In Merrell"s examination of postmodern phenomena, the reader is taken through various facets of the cognitive sciences, philosophy of science, mathematics, and literary theory. Throughout this work, Merrell. is scrupulously aware that we are participants within, not detached spectators of, our signs. We understand them while we interact with them, during which process we, and our signs as well, invariably undergo change.