Conclusion of Lowell Lecture 1 (EP2:256-7):
The ultimate purpose of the logician is to make out the theory of how knowledge is advanced. Just as there is a chemical theory of dyeing which is not exactly the art of dyeing, and there is a theory of thermodynamics which is quite different from the art of constructing heat-engines; so Methodeutic, which is the last goal of logical study, is the theory of the advancement of knowledge of all kinds. But this theory is not possible until the logician has first examined all the different elementary modes of getting at truth and especially all the different classes of arguments, and has studied their properties so far as these properties concern [the] power of the arguments as leading to the truth. This part of logic is called Critic. But before it is possible to enter upon this business in any rational way, the first thing that is necessary is to examine thoroughly all the ways in which thought can be expressed. For since thought has no being except in so far as it will be embodied, and since the embodiment of thought is a sign, the business of logical critic cannot be undertaken until the whole structure of signs, especially of general signs, has been thoroughly investigated. This is substantially acknowledged by logicians of all schools. But the different schools conceive of the business quite differently. Many logicians conceive that the inquiry trenches largely upon psychology, depends upon what has been observed about the human mind, and would not necessarily be true for other minds. Much of what they say is unquestionably false of many races of mankind. But I, for my part, take little stock in a logic that is not valid for all minds, inasmuch as the logicality of a given argument, as I have said, does not depend on how we think that argument, but upon what the truth is. Other logicians endeavoring to steer clear of psychology, as far as possible, think that this first branch of logic must relate to the possibility of knowledge of the real world and upon the sense in which it is true that the real world can be known. This branch of philosophy, called epistemology, or Erkenntnislehre, is necessarily largely metaphysical. But I, for my part, cannot for an instant assent to the proposal to base logic upon metaphysics, inasmuch as I fully agree with Aristotle, Duns Scotus, Kant, and all the profoundest metaphysicians that metaphysics can, on the contrary, have no secure basis except that which the science of logic affords. I, therefore, take a position quite similar to that of the English logicians, beginning with Scotus himself, in regarding this introductory part of logic as nothing but an analysis of what kinds of signs are absolutely essential to the embodiment of thought. I call it, after Scotus, Speculative Grammar. I fully agree, however, with a portion of the English school,- a school I may observe which now has a large and most influential and scientific following in Germany,- I agree, I say, with a portion of this school without thereby coming into positive conflict with the others, in thinking that this Speculative Grammar ought not to confine its studies to those conventional signs of which language is composed, but that it will do well to widen its field of view so as to take into consideration also kinds of signs which, not being conventional, are not of the nature of language. In fact, as a point of theory, I am of opinion that we ought not to limit ourselves to signs but ought to take account of certain objects more or less analogous to signs. In practice, however, I have paid little attention to these quasi-signs. Thus there are, in my view of the subject, three branches of logic: Speculative Grammar, Critic, and Methodeutic. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903
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