ABSTRACT

This comment, written to Lady Welby late in his life, illustrates the importance Peirce attached to his theory of signs-his semiotic. Many of the central ideas were developed during the 1860s, but he continued to write about signs throughout his life. Indeed, some of his most systematic treatments of such topics are found in the correspondence just alluded to, and were written well after 1900. There is no reason to doubt Ransdell’s claim that in excess of 90 per cent of his output is directly about semiotic (Ransdell, 1977, p. 158). We have met a number of doctrines about signs and representations in earlier chapters, and it is now time to draw them into some systematic order. Since there is so much material, it will be impossible to do justice to many of the details of Peirce’s claims, and I shall not say much about the development of his views. Rather, I shall paint in the most important themes with broad strokes, concentrating upon those which have a direct bearing upon the logical and epistemological topics that we have been discussing.1