ABSTRACT
This conclusion provides a brief synopsis of the historical development of Charles Sanders Peirce's “semeiotic” in order to situate it within the trends analyzed in the rest of Political Economy, Race, and the Image of Nature in the United States, 1825–1878, and to consider the alternatives his philosophy presented to the dominant models of truth and “Nature” at the time. Consideration is given to the longer-term influence Peirce's theories have had on artistic practice and to pragmatism's virtues as a theory of knowledge and semiological exchange.
