some ideas worth to rethink: charles sanders peirce. steve peppers brings him in his text tao of topic maps in relation with semantic networks.

Semeiotic (sic!) and Logic Peirce’s settled opinion was that logic in the broadest sense is to be equated with semeiotic, and that logic in a much narrower sense (which he typically called "logical critic") is one of three major divisions or parts of semeiotic. Thus, in his later writings, he divided semeiotic into speculative grammar, logical critic, and speculative rhetoric (also called "methodeutic"). Peirce’s word "speculative" is his Latinate version of the Greek-derived word "theoretical," and should be understood to mean exactly the word "theoretical." Peirce’s tripartite division of semeiotic is not to be confused with Charles W. Morris’s division: syntax, semantics, and pragmatics (although there may be some commonalities in the two trichotomies).

logicians and computer scientists from former soviet union like or dmitri pospelov got interested in the theories of peirce some decades ago and tried to find out ways in which computer programs could generate peircean hypotheses in semeiotic contexts ... through their works the thoughts of the american philosopher were brought back to the states.

somehow it would be interesting to find out what kind and why some american thinkers attracted more the east than the west. (one can argue the same happened to <norbert wiener>)