[Inquiry] Re: Kaina Stoicheia

[Jon Awbrey]

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KS.  Note 10

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| Language and all abstracted thinking, such as belongs
| to minds who think in words, is of the symbolic nature.
|
| Many words, though strictly symbols, are so far iconic that they are apt
| to determine iconic interpretants, or as we say, to call up lively images.
| Such, for example, are those that have a fancied resemblance to sounds
| associated with their objects;  that are 'onomatopoetic', as they say.
|
| There are words, which although symbols, act very much like indices.
| Such are personal, demonstrative, and relative pronouns, for which
| 'A', 'B', 'C', etc. are often substituted.
|
| A 'Proper Name', also, which denotes a single individual well known
| to exist by the utterer and interpreter, differs from an index only
| in that it is a conventional sign.
|
| Other words refer indirectly to indices.  Such is "yard"
| which refers to a certain bar in Westminster, and has no
| meaning unless the interpreter is, directly or indirectly,
| in physical reaction with that bar.
|
| Symbols are particularly remote from the Truth itself.  They are abstracted.
| They neither exhibit the very characters signified as icons do, nor assure us
| of the reality of their objects, as indices do.  Many proverbial sayings express
| a sense of this weakness;  as "Words prove nothing", and the like.  Nevertheless,
| they have a great power of which the degenerate signs are quite destitute.  They
| alone express laws.  Nor are they limited to this theoretical use.  They serve
| to bring about reasonableness and law.  The words 'justice' and 'truth', amid
| a world that habitually neglects these things and utterly derides the words,
| are nevertheless among the very greatest powers the world contains.  They
| create defenders and animate them with their strength.  This is not rhetoric
| or metaphor:  it is a great and solid fact of which it behooves a logician to
| take account.
|
| A symbol is the only kind of sign which can be an argumentation.*
|
|* I commonly call this an argument;  for nothing is more false historically
|  than to say that this word has not at all times been used in this sense.
|  Still, the longer word is a little more definite.
|
| C.S. Peirce, ["Kaina Stoicheia"], NEM 4, 243-244
|
| C.S. Peirce, ["Kaina Stoicheia"], MS 517 (1904), pp. 235-263 in:
| Carolyn Eisele (ed.), 'The New Elements of Mathematics by
| Charles S. Peirce, Volume 4, Mathematical Philosophy',
| Mouton, The Hague, 1976.
|
| Cf. "New Elements", pp. 300-324 in 'The Essential Peirce, Volume 2 (1893-1913)',
| Peirce Edition Project (eds.), Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1998.

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