10. Creating a sign. The sign’s function of indicating a world of meaning is clear when one makes something into a sign [Zeichenstiftung], for example, when a professor posts a sign on the door to indicate her office hours. That sign is
Earlier we said that a useful thing normally “holds itself in” rather than “standing out” (§16, ¶12). In the present example, however, the sign must stand out and be conspicuous if it is to be seen and understood.
11. Taking something as a sign. We create signs to indicate a world of meaning, but we can also take things as a sign of such a sphere [Zum-Zeichen-nehmen]. Farmers who know the wind patterns, might take the south wind as a sign that there will be rain tonight. They are not adding a disinterested thought to an objective meteorological fact. Rather, they are taking the wind as indicating something about the world of farming that they are involved in. The farmer’s fore-sight is what discovers the significance of that south wind, what it currently means in his or her lived world.
12. An objection and a response. Someone might argue that before I can take something as a sign, the thing has to be already present and understood. Well yes, it has to be “out there” so that I can encounter it. But the more important factor is how I take what is out there; and as we have often said, I do not encounter things primarily as neutral objects. I see them as available to be used, even if I do not yet know what I want to do with them. The principle is this: Even when I have not yet figured out how I will use something, I still do not encounter it as just stuff-out-there.
13. Signs as inherently conspicuous. For the most part, tools do not stand out as conspicuous. However, signs must be conspicuous in order to be useful—for example, the alarm I set on my clock to remind me of an appointment. Such signs can indicate just about anything in my daily life. I may be the only one who knows what the alarm is indicating, and in fact I may even forget what it is about. Nonetheless, it is still a sign: the alarm that is ringing indicates something, even if I have forgotten what that is. In that case the alarm stands out in a different sense: it bothers me, because I’ve forgotten what it is for. I may need a second sign (a back-up note on the fridge) to remind me what the first sign is about.
14. Signs in so-called “primitive” cultures. In cultures imbued with magic and fetishism, people are more immediately involved in their worlds of meaning and usually take things as signs without engaging in elaborate theories about it. Trying to interpret magic and