I have said that I disagree that all three categorical modes are always present in a triadic Sign. My examples have been taken from the ten classes of signs provided by Peirce (2.254). Therefore, a sign with all three relations in a mode of Firstness or Secondness does exist.
Sung asked - how can there be anything without Form; he seems to be under the misapprehension that Thirdness provides the Form - and I reject such an assumption. First, I don't separate matter and form except intellectually. Matter cannot exist without form. But form is not Thirdness. Thirdness is the laws-of-habitual formation, which enables continuity of type. But matter can certainly exist without continuity - and when it does, for example, it can be in a mode of Firstness (a local, instantaneous formation of matter) or Secondness (a local current-time formation of matter that exists only in interaction with another form of matter). The laws of continuity (Thirdness) need not have any part in these two modes of organization. Indeed, the reality of these two modes provides the vital potentiality for chance, for innovation, for the development of novel biological species, for the testing of adaptations and so on. Thirdness, or the mode of habits and continuity, would prevent such freedoms. Edwina
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