John, Jon, Gary, all ...
I realize that iconolatry -- just one of many forms of dyadic reductionism --
runs too deep at present for most folks to appreciate this, but it happens
to be one of the consequences of Triadic Relation Irreducibility (TRI) that
symbols, signs that denote their objects solely by virtue of the fact that
they are interpreted to do so, are the genus of all signs, while icons and
indices are species under that genus. An icon is an icon only because it
is interpreted as an icon, by virtue of some property that is singled out
from all the possible properties that it may share with a denoted object.
Thus symbols are the fons et origo of all other signs --
they do not in the first instance grow from icons so
much as icons crystallize from the primordial matrix
of symbols.
TRI, TRI Again ...
Jon
On 3/28/2017 10:21 AM, [email protected] wrote:
Jon Alan, you asked:
[[ What I was really asking about is the notion that "every kind of sign begins with
an image (icon), and every sign constructed from other signs is a diagram." Does
this come from Peirce, or is it your own insight? ]]
I wonder if it might come indirectly (with the addition of John’s own insight)
from CP 2.302, c.1895:
[[[ Symbols grow. They come into being by development out of other signs,
particularly from icons, or from mixed signs partaking of the nature of icons
and symbols. We think only in signs. These mental signs are of mixed nature;
the symbol-parts of them are called concepts. If a man makes a new symbol, it
is by thoughts involving concepts. So it is only out of symbols that a new
symbol can grow. Omne symbolum de symbolo. A symbol, once in being, spreads
among the peoples. In use and in experience, its meaning grows. Such words as
force, law, wealth, marriage, bear for us very different meanings from those
they bore to our barbarous ancestors. The symbol may, with Emerson's sphynx,
say to man,
Of thine eye I am eyebeam. ]]]
This antedates Peirce’s detailed classification of sign types other than the
icon/index/symbol trichotomy, but I think there’s a strong connection between
what he refers to as “symbols” here and what John refers to as “diagrams.” Both
words are being used very broadly, and both grow (or ‘are constructed’) from
icons.
Gary f.
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