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Peirce’s Logic
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Francesco Bellucci
Email: bellucci.francesco@gmail.com
Chair of Philosophy, Tallinn University of Technology

Ahti-Veikko Pietarinen
Email: ahti-veikko.pietarinen@ttu.ee
Chair of Philosophy, Tallinn University of Technology

Opening summary

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an accomplished scientist, philosopher, and

mathematician, who considered himself to be primarily a logician. His contributions to
the development of modern logic at the turn of the 20th century were colossal, original
and influential. Formal, or deductive, logic was just one of the branches in which he
exercized his logical and analytical talent. His work developed upon Boole’s algebra of
logic and De Morgan’s logic of relations. He worked on the algebra of relatives (1870-
1885), the theory of quantification (1883-1885), graphical or diagrammatic logic (1896-
1911), trivalent logic (1909), higher-order and modal logics. He also contributed
significantly to the theory and methodology of induction, and discovered a third kind of
reasoning, different from both deduction and induction, which he called abduction or
retroduction, and which he identified with the logic of scientific discovery.
Philosophically, logic became for Peirce a broad discipline with internal divisions
and external architectonic relations to other parts of scientific inquiry. Logic depends on
mathematics, phaneroscopy (= phenomenology), and ethics, while metaphysics and
psychology depend upon logic. One of the most important characters of Peirce’s late
logical thought is that logic becomes coextensive with semeiotic (his preferred spelling),
the theory of signs. Peirce divides logic, when conceived as semeiotic, into (i)
speculative grammar, the preliminary analysis, definition and classification of those
signs that can be used by a scientific intelligence; (ii) critical logic, the study of the
validity and justification of each kind of reasoning; and (iii) methodeutic or speculative
rhetoric, the theory of methods. Peirce’s logical investigations cover all these three
departments.

1. Logic among the sciences

2. Logic as semeiotic
a. Speculative grammar
b. Logical critics
i. From three types of inference to three stages of inquiry
ii. Abductive logic
iii. Deductive logic
iv. Inductive logic
c. Methodeutic
3. Peirce’s logic in a historical perspective
4. References and further reading.
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1. Logic among the sciences

Most often, when Peirce has to present his idea of logic, he begins by explaining its
collocation within the classification of the sciences. Peirce’s mature classification of the
sciences (CP 1.180-202, 1903; see Brent 1987) is a “ladder-like scheme” (MS 328, p.
20, c. 1905) in which each superordinate science gives its principles to the sciences
subordinated to it, thus providing a ladder of decreasing generality.
According to Peirce’s 1903 scheme, which he still considered satisfactory as
late as 1911 (MS 675), sciences are either sciences of discovery, sciences of review, or
practical sciences. Logic is a science of discovery. The sciences of discovery are
divided into mathematics, philosophy and idioscopy. Mathematics studies the necessary
consequences of purely hypothetical states of things. Philosophy, by contrast, is a
positive science, concerning matters of fact. Idioscopy embraces more special physical
and psychical sciences, and depends upon philosophy. Philosophy in turn divides into
phaneroscopy, normative sciences and metaphysics. Phaneroscopy is the investigation of
what Peirce calls the phaneron: whatever is present to the mind in any way. The
normative sciences (aesthetic, ethics, and logic) introduce dichotomies, in that they are,
in general, the investigation of what ought and what ought not to be. Metaphysics gives
an account of the universe in both its physical and psychical dimensions. Since every
science draws its principles from the ones above it in the classification, logic must draw
its principles from mathematics, phaneroscopy, aesthetics and ethics, while metaphysics,
and a fortiori psychology, draw their principles from logic (EP 2, pp. 258-262, 1903).
In sharp contrast to the logicist hypothesis, Peirce did not believe that mathematics
depends upon deductive logic. On the contrary, in a sense it is deductive logic that
depends upon mathematics. For Peirce, mathematics is the practice of deduction, logic
its description and analysis: Peirce’s father Benjamin Peirce had defined mathematics as
the science which draws necessary conclusions (B. Peirce 1870, p. 1). Hence deductive
logic for Charles became the science of drawing necessary conclusions (CP 4.239,
1902). Logic cannot furnish any justification of a piece of deductive reasoning:
deduction in general is in the first place mathematically, rather than logically, valid. And
deductive logic is at any rate only a part of logic: “logic is the theory of all reasoning,
while mathematics is the practice of a particular kind of reasoning” (MS 78, p. 4; see
Haack 1993 and Houser 1993). Logic rather draws its principles from phaneroscopy, as
the latter analyzes the structure of appearance but does not pronounce upon the veracity
of such appearance. Logic also draws its principles from the normative sciences of
ethics and esthetics (Peirce’s preferred spelling), which precede normative logic in the
ladder of generality. Ethics depends on esthetics because ethics draws from esthetics the
the principles involved in the idea of a summum bonum, the highest good. Since ethics is
the science that distinguishes good from bad conduct, it must be concerned with
deliberate, self-controlled, conduct, because only of deliberate conduct it is possible to
say whether it is good or bad. Logic treats of a special kind of deliberate conduct,
thought, and distinguishes good from bad thinking, that is, valid from invalid reasoning.
Since deliberate thought is a species of deliberate conduct, logic must draw its principles
form ethics (CP 5.120-50; EP 2, pp. 196-207, 1903)
Of the sciences down the ladder of generality, metaphysics and psychology come
out next. Peirce had learnt from Kant that metaphysical conceptions mirror those of
formal logic. Peirce’s criticism ever since the 1860s had been that Kant’s table of
categories was mistaken not because he based them upon formal logic but because the
formal logic that Kant had used was itself poor and ultimately wrong (see NEM 4, p.
162, 1898). The only way to arrive at a good metaphysics is to begin with a good logical
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theory (EP 2, pp. 30-31, 1898). Psychology, too, depends upon logic. According to
Peirce, different versions of logical psychologism characterized the logics of his time,
especially in Germany. Logic for Peirce considers not what or how we in fact think but
how we ought to think; logic is a normative, not a descriptive, science. The validity of
an argument consists in the fact that its conclusion is true, always or for the most part,
when its premises are true; it has nothing to do with a reference to a mind. Logical
necessity is a necessity of (non-empirical) facts, not a necessity of thinking. No appeal to
psychology is thereby of any aid in logic. On the contrary, it is psychology that stands in
the need of a science of logic (EP 2, pp. 242-257, 1903).

2. Logic as semeiotic
In the 1890s (MS 595, 787), Peirce divides logic into three branches: speculative
grammar (also called stechiology), logical critics (or just critics) and methodeutic (also
called speculative rhetoric). The division echoes the three sciences of the medieval
Trivium: grammar, dialectic and rhetoric.
Perhaps the most salient character of Peirce’s logic as a whole is that in his
later works (MS L 75, 1902; MS 478, 1903; MS 693, 1904; MS 640, 1909) logic
becomes identified with semeiotic, the science and philosophy of signs and
representations. Already in his early works on the theory of inference Peirce had
affirmed that logic is the branch of semeiotic that treats of one particular kind of
representations, symbols, in their reference to their objects (W1, p. 309, 1865). By the
beginning of the 20th-century, he had shifted from the idea of “logic-within-semeiotic”
to that of “logic-as-semeiotic”. He thus needed to distinguish between logic in the
narrow sense, which he now calls logical critics, and logic in the wide sense, which
latter is made coextensive with semeiotic. “Logic, in its general sense, is, as I believe I
have shown, only another name for semiotic (σηµειωτική), the quasi-necessary, or
formal, doctrine of signs” (CP 2.227, c.1897; cf. Fisch 1986, pp. 338-341).
According to Peirce’s mature views, an enlargement of logic to cover all
varieties of signs was a valuable methodological guidance to the building of an
objective, anti-psychological and formal logical theory: “The study of the provisional
table of the Divisions of Signs will, if I do not device myself, help a student to many a
lesson in logic” (MS S 46, 1906; cf. MS 283, c. 1905; MS 675-676, 1911; MS 12,
1912). Therefore, his logic contains, as a proper part of it, a study of its own scope and
expansions. In homage to the grammatica speculativa of Thomas of Erfurt, which at
Peirce’s times was misattributed to Duns Scotus, Peirce names this part of logic
“speculative grammar”.

a. Speculative grammar
In the 1890s Peirce regarded speculative grammar as an analysis of the nature of
assertion (MS 409-8, 1894; CP 3.432, 1896, MS 787, c. 1897). Starting with the
Syllabus of his 1903 Lowell Lectures (A Syllabus of Certain Topics of Logic, MS 478,
MS 540), speculative grammar becomes a classification of signs. In the Syllabus Peirce
defines a Sign or Representamen as “the first Correlate of a triadic relation, the second
Correlate being termed its Object, and the possible Third Correlate being termed its
Interpretant, by which triadic relation the possible Interpretant is determined to be the
first correlate of the same triadic relation to the same Object, and for some possible
Interpretant” (MS 540, CP 2.242; EP 2, p. 290). A sign for Peirce is something that
represents an independent object and which thereby brings another sign, called
interpretant, to represent that object as the sign does. According to a long tradition in the
history of logic, Peirce declares that the principal classes of signs logic is concerned
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with are terms, propositions, and arguments. But by 1903 these three elements become
parts of a larger taxonomic scheme.
Since the Syllabus and until at least 1909 Peirce continued experimenting
with principles and terminologies, without however settling on any definitive division.
In this section we present the main principles of the Syllabus classification.

Signs are divisible by three trichotomies; first, according as the sign in itself is a mere
quality, is an actual existent, or is a general law; secondly, according as the relation of the
sign to its Object consists in the sign’s having some character in itself, or in some
existential relation to that Object, or in its relation to an Interpretant; thirdly, according as
its Interpretant represents it as a sign of possibility, or as a sign of fact, or a sign of reason.
(CP 2.243, 1903)

The first trichotomy considers signs (i) as tones, when taken in their material qualities
(such as the blueness of the ink), (ii) as tokens (such as any instance of the word “the”),
and (iii) as general types (such as the word “the”). The second trichotomy is the best
known, namely that of (i) icons, or signs that bear similarity or resemblance to their
objects, (ii) indices, which have factual connections to their objects, and (iii) symbols,
which have rational connections to their objects. The third trichotomy divides signs into
terms, propositions, and arguments: (i) Through his work on the logic of relatives (see §
2.b.iii.), Peirce had come to consider the terms as rhemas, which are unsaturated
predicates with logical bonds or subject-positions, in some ways similar to Frege’s
Begriff and Russell’s propositional function. (ii) Propositions unify subject and
predicate and thus assert. In the Syllabus propositions are “dicisigns”, signs that tell.
Peirce’s theory of the proposition is articulated and highly original and has been
thoroughly investigated in Hilpinen 1982, 1992; Ferriani 1987; Chauviré 1994;
Stjernfelt 2014. (iii) Arguments embody the ultimate perfection and end of signs as a
representation of facts that are signs of other facts, such as the premises being the sign of
the conclusion.
There are cross-divisions of these three trichotomies across speculative grammar. A
term or rhema is a symbol which is represented by its interpretant as an icon of its
object, while a proposition or dicisign is a symbol which is represented by its
interpretant as an index of its object. Arguments themselves are considered as symbols
that represent their conclusion in three different ways: iconically in abduction,
indexically in deduction, and symbolically in induction (in an early cross-division
proposed in 1867 these last two were interchanged, see W2, p. 58). Other outcomes of
the classifications consisted in further divisions of objects and interpretants into various
subtypes (on Peirce’s classifications, see Weiss & Burks 1945; Short 2007, chs. 7-9;
Burch 2011).
Grammatical taxonomy shows that there are three kinds of arguments, each
manifesting a different semiotic principle. But it is up to the second branch of logic,
critics, to investigate the question of logical validity and justification of such arguments.
The analysis of the conditions of validity of these three kinds of reasoning is a critical,
not grammatical, question.

b. Logical critics

i. From three types of inference to three stages of scientific inquiry

Logical critics is the heart of Peirce’s logic. It cover what usually goes under the name
of logic proper, that is, the investigation of inference and arguments. Many 19th-century
logicians (e.g., John S. Mill, George Boole, John Venn and William Stanley Jevons)
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took the range of logic to include deductive as well as inductive logic. As appears from
the classification, the remarkable novelty of Peirce’s logical critics is that it embraces
three essentially distinct though not entirely unrelated types of inferences: deduction,
induction, and, as his own detection, abduction. Initially, Peirce had conceived
deductive logic as the logic of mathematics, and inductive and abductive logic as the
logic of science. Later in his life, however, he saw these as three different stages of
inquiry rather than different kinds of inference employed in different areas of scientific
inquiry.
Peirce formulated a definite theory of logical leading principles early in the late
1860s. His argument is roughly as follows. In any inference, we pass from some fact to
some other fact that follows logically from it. The former is the premise (for even in
cases where there is more than one they may be colligated into one copulative premise),
the latter is the conclusion.

P
∴C

The conclusion follows from the premise logically, that is, according to some leading
principle, L. As logic supposes inferences to be analyzed and criticized, as soon as the
logician asks what is it that warrants the passing from such premise to the conclusion
she is obliged to express the leading principle L in a proposition and to lay it down as an
additional premise:

P
L
∴C

This gives what Peirce calls a complete argument, in opposition to incomplete, rhetorical
or enthymematic arguments. This second argument has itself its own leading principle,
which may again be expressed in a proposition and laid down as a further premise:

P
L
L1
∴C

When L1 is not a substantially different leading principle than L, then L is said to be a

logical leading principle. In Peirce’s words:

This second argument has certainly itself a leading principle, although it is a far
more abstract one than the leading principle of the original argument. But you
might ask, why not express this new leading principle as a premise, and so obtain a
third argument having a leading principle still more abstract? If, however, you try
the experiment, you will find that the third argument so obtained has no more
abstract a leading principle than the second argument has. Its leading principle is
indeed precisely the same as that of the second argument. This leading principle has
therefore attained a maximum degree of abstractness; and a leading principle of
maximum abstractness may be termed a logical principle. (NEM 4, p.175, 1898)
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A logical leading principle is therefore a formal or logical proposition which, when

explicitly stated, adds nothing to the premises of the inference which it governs. The
central question of logical critics becomes that of determining different kinds of logical
leading principles.
Peirce’s initial strategy to prove that there are three and only three irreducible kinds
of reasoning was to use syllogism. He gave the demonstration that the second and the
third figure are reducible to the first only through the employment of the very figure that
is to be reduced. The principles involved in the three syllogistic figures cannot then be
reduced to a combination of other, more primitive principles, as they invariably enter as
parts into the reduction proof itself. From this Peirce drew the broader conclusion that
the three figures of syllogism correspond to the three kinds of inference in general:
deduction corresponds to the first figure, abduction to the second, and induction to the
third:

In Peirce 1878 and Peirce 1883, abduction and induction are described as inversions of a
deductive syllogism. If we call the major premise of a syllogism in the first figure Rule,
its minor premise Case, and its conclusion Result, then abduction may be said to be the
inference of a Case from a result and a Rule, while induction may be said to be the
inference of a Rule from a Case and a Result:

Later in 1903 Peirce had come to the conclusion that the three kinds of reasoning are in
fact three stages in scientific research. First comes abduction, now often also called
retroduction, by which a hypothesis or conjecture that explains some surprising fact is
set forth. Then comes deduction, which traces the necessary consequences of the
hypothesis. Lastly comes induction, which puts those consequences to test and
generalizes its conclusions.
Any inquiry is for Peirce bound to follow this pattern: abduction–deduction–
induction. Each kind of inference retains its validity and modus operandi and is logically
irreducible to either of the others; yet all three of them are necessary in any complete
process of inquiry. Of the three methods, Peirce took deduction to be the most secure
and the least fertile, while abduction is the most fertile and the least secure.
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All these three departments of critics epitomize the originality of Peirce’s

contributions. The following sections will deal with Peirce’s abductive, deductive, and
inductive logics, respectively.

ii. Abductive logic

The central question of abductive or retroductive logic is: is there a logic of scientific
discovery? If yes, what are its justification and method?
Initially, Peirce described abduction as the inference of a case from a rule and a
result:

Hypothesis proceeds from Rule and Result to Case; it is the formula of the […]
process by which a confused concatenation of predicates is brought into order under
a synthetizing predicate. (Peirce 1883, p. 145)

Its general formula is this:

Result: S is M1 M2 M3 M4
Rule: P is M1 M2 M3 M4
Case: Therefore, S is P.

A certain number of surprising facts have been observed which call for explanation, and
a single predicate embracing all of them is found which would explain them. When I
notice that light manifests such-and-such complicated and surprising phenomena, and I
know that ether waves exhibits those same phenomena, I conclude abductively that, if
light were ether waves, it would be normal for it to manifest those phenomena. This
offers rational ground for the hypothesis that light is ether waves.
Beginning in 1900 Peirce began viewing this description of abduction inadequate.
What he in 1883 had called hypothesis or abduction was actually induction about
characters instead of things and is therefore better to be called qualitative induction (see
§ 2.b.iv): its leading principle is inductive and not abductive. Abduction is no longer
constrained by the syllogistic framework. Most generally, it is the non-inductive process
of forming an explanatory hypothesis. In Peirce’s words, abduction “is the only logical
operation which introduces any new idea” (CP 5.172, 1903). Although abduction asserts
its conclusions only conjecturally it has a definite logical form. The following has
become its standard albeit not the ultimate description after Peirce’s pronouncement of it
in the seventh of the Harvard Lectures of 1903:

The surprising fact, C, is observed;

But if A were true, C would be a matter of course,
Hence, there is reason to suspect that A is true. (CP 5.189, 1903)

This schema reveals why abduction is also called retroduction: it is reasoning that leads
from a consequent of an admitted consequence to its antecedent.
Another description of the logical form of abduction is contained in a later,
unpublished manuscript:

In the inquiry, all the possible significant circumstances of the surprising

phenomenon are mustered and pondered, until a conjecture furnishes some possible
Explanation of it, by which I mean a syllogism exhibiting the surprising fact as
necessarily following from the circumstances of its occurrence together with the
truth of the conjecture as premisses. (MS 843, p. 41, 1908)
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The explaining syllogism is the inversion of the 1903 formula:

If A were true, C would be observable,

A is true
Therefore, C is observable.

One more and hitherto unknown formulation of retroduction is found in an unpublished

letter to Lady Welby:

[The] “interrogative mood” does not mean the mere idle entertainment of an idea.
It means that it will be wise to go to some expense, dependent upon the advantage
that would accrue from knowing that Any/Some S is M, provided that expense
would render it safe to act on that assumption supposing it to be true. This is the
kind of reasoning called reasoning from consequent to antecedent. For it is related
to the Modus Tollens thus:

Modus Tollens Abduction

If A is True, C {is not/is} true If A is true, C {is not/is} true
But C {is/is not} true But C {is not/ is} true
Therefore, A is not true. Therefore, Is A not true?

Instead of “interrogatory”, the mood of the conclusion might more accurately be

called “investigand”, and be expressed as follows:

“It is to be inquired whether A is not true.”

The reasoning might be called “Reasoning from Surprise to Inquiry”. (Peirce to

Welby, July 16, 1905, LoF, pp. 907-908)

The whole course of thought, consisting in noticing the surprising phenomenon,

searching for pertinent circumstances, asking a question, forming a conjecture,
remarking that the conjecture appears to explain the surprising phenomenon, and
adopting the conjecture as plausible, constitutes the first, abductive stage of inquiry.
Nonetheless, its crucial phase is that of forming the conjecture itself. This is often
described by Peirce as an act of insight, or an instinct for guessing right, or what Galileo
called il lume naturale.1
However, to pronounce reasoning to be instinctive would amount excluding it
from the realm of logic. For logic only considers reasoning and reasoning is a deliberate
act subject to self-control. According to Peirce, abduction is an inference type based
upon a logical principle. In its most abstract shape, such logical principle gives
abduction its justification, and the justification of abduction is the bottom question of
logical critics (EP 2, p. 443, 1908).
According to Peirce, abduction “consists in studying the facts and devising a
theory to explain them” (CP 5.145, 1903). Its only justifications are that “if we are ever
to understand things at all, it must be in that way”, and that “its method is the only way

1
That Peirce actually got the phrase from Galileo has sometimes been contested. But see the story by
Victor Baker in Bellucci, Pietarinen & Stjernfelt (2014) on the “Myth of Galileo”. Baker refers to Jaime
Nubiola’s finding of Peirce’s copy of Galileo’s Opere that had that phrase underlined in Peirce’s hand.
That fifteen volumes edition was at least in 2012 still to be found at the Robbins Library at the
Department of Philosophy, Harvard University.
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in which there can be any hope of attaining a rational explanation” (CP 2.777, 1902).
The only justification for a hypothesis is that it might explain the facts. But in general,
an inference is valid if its leading principle is an instance of logical principle which is
conducive to the acquisition of new information. Therefore, the logical leading principle
of all abductions is that nature, in general, is explainable. To suppose something
inexplicable is contrary to the principles of logic: such supposition only has the
appearance of an explanation conducive to the acquisition of new information, but to
really suppose something inexplicable is to renounce knowledge at all.
That nature is explicable is therefore the primary abduction underlining all
possible abductions. Human powers of insight may well be justified also inductively,
that is, as testified by the history of science. But abduction’s primary justification is
abductive rather than inductive: if we are to acquire new knowledge at all, sooner or
later we must reason abductively (see Burks 1946; Fann 1970; Kapitan 1992; Kapitan
1997; Paavola 2004 for further details on Peirce’s theory of abduction).
Of these three stages of reasoning, abduction is the most fertile but the least
secure. For this reason, Peirce affirms that abduction is the principal kind of reasoning in
which, after logical critics has pronounced it valid, it remains to be inquired whether and
how it is advantageous. To carry out such tasks pertains to the third branch of logic,
methodeutic, which we will discuss in § 2.c below.

iii. Deductive logic

The works of George Boole and Augustus De Morgan provided the essential backdrop
for Peirce’s development of deductive logic. Also Benjamin Peirce’s Linear Associative
Algebra (B. Peirce 1870) influenced his son’s early development of algebraic logic of
relatives. Peirce’s dissatisfaction with how Boole represented syllogisms as algebraic
equations led him to develop new algebraic approaches to logic, which he did by
combining Boole’s calculus (Boole 1847, 1854) with De Morgan’s treatment of
relations (De Morgan 1847, 1860).
Some of Peirce’s most important contributions to the development of modern
logic are highlighted below.
1867: In the paper “An Improvement in Boole’s Calculus of Logic” published in
the Proceedings of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Peirce 1867) Peirce
subscribed all operation symbols with a comma to differentiate the logical from the
arithmetical interpretation. He also made Boole’s union operator inclusive rather than
exclusive (he was anticipated in this by Jevons 1864). Peirce became aware of the
limitations of Boole’s algebraic logic, such as that it cannot express categorical
propositions (Some X is Y), thus failing to properly represent quantification.
1870: Peirce’s development of De Morgan’s theory of relations is fully exposed
in his paper “Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives, resulting from an
Amplification of the Conceptions of Boole’s Calculus of Logic” (Peirce 1870),
communicated to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in January 1870. In this
paper, Peirce combines De Morgan’s theory with Boole’s calculus. The result is a
logical algebra equivalent in expressive power to first-order predicate logic without
identity. Peirce’s paper introduces a number of original innovations. Among them is a
new process of logical differentiation, explained in Welsh (2012, pp.166-180). Peirce
also introduces the copula of inclusion, , later also termed the sign of illation and
expressed in cursive form as . Inclusion is for Peirce a wider and logically simpler
concept than that of equality. This difference marks another important departure from
Boole’s mathematical algebra towards new types of logical algebras. Beginning with C.
I. Lewis’s (1918) comments on Peirce’s algebra, one finds in the literature a
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considerable discussion whether in this 1870 paper what Peirce calls relative terms are
to be equated with relations (see Merrill 1997 for a summary and further references). It
appears that in the very least they are what verbs and phrases express linguistically, such
as lover of___, whatever is a lover of____, or buyer of____for____from____. Here
blanks stand for nouns that are required to complete the expressions. Beginning in 1882
Peirce comes to define relative terms as classes of ordered pairs, that is, as what
nowadays is commonly understood by relations. He denotes such terms by rhemas with
blanks forms of expressions standing for subjects, such as ____is a lover of____,
whatever____is a lover of____ etc. Of note is that the algebra of Peirce’s 1870 paper is
able to express various forms of quantification although the term “quantifier” and its
modern conception was to emerge later in his works since the early 1880s.
1880a: The long paper “On the Algebra of Logic” (Peirce 1880a), which was
published in the American Journal of Mathematics, introduces a number of further
developments, of which we list the following six:
(1) The copula, expressed as a binary relation between classes of propositions,
Pi Ci, is now understood to express the notion of the semantic consequence, namely
that “every state of things in which a proposition of the class Pi is true is a state of things
in which the corresponding propositions of the class Ci are true” (W4, p. 166). The
binary relation here is thus a truth-functional implication. Moreover, the remarks in his
Logic Notebook published in W4 (p. 216) were written in the same year and appear to be
the first instance presenting variables v and f to denote the truth values true and false.
(2) A dash over a symbol is used to denote a negative of the symbol, such as Pi
Ci , that is, the class complement. Constants ∞ and 0 are taken to mean the values of
the possible and the impossible. An important modal component which Peirce would
develop later on is thus emerging in this work.
(3) The totality of all that is possible is according to Peirce the “universe of
discourse, and may be very limited”, i.e., limited to that which “actually occurs”,
rendering “everything which does not occur” impossible (W4, p. 170). The important
idea of working with variable and restricted domains makes a marked difference not
only to Frege who is well-known to have his logic to quantify over the entire “logical
thought”, but also to Schröder, who though also working on the algebra of logic had
nonetheless rendered Peirce’s 1885 (see below) algebra of logic so as to quantify, in a
Fregean fashion, what Peirce had later in 1903 remarked to be “the whole universe of
logical possibility” (MS 478, pp. 163-4).
(4) A new operation on relatives, which Peirce termed transaddition (º) is then
introduced (W4, p.204). Taking two relatives, such as being lover of___ (l) and being
servant of___ (s), their relative product ls denotes whatever is lover of a servant of___.
Their transaddition l º s denotes whatever is not a lover of everything but servants of___,
that is, it denotes a complement of the complements of the relative product of the two
terms l and s.
(5) The 1880 paper is also the first in which the idea of a relative sum, which is
the complement of the transaddition and which Peirce in 1882 will denote by the dagger
(†), is employed. For example, l † s reads lover of everything but servants of___. Hence
this 1880 paper marks a decisive move towards a theory of quantification which will see
its emergence in his 1883 Note B in the Studies in Logic (see below) and which comes
to be completed in his 1885 “Algebra of Logic” paper (see below).
(6) The 1880 paper also suggests a mathematical theory of lattices for the
treatment of the algebra of logic (W4, pp. 183-188).
Arthur Prior (1958, 1964) showed that Peirce’s 1880 paper provides a complete
basis for propositional logic.
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1880b: In an unpublished manuscript (MS 378, Peirce 1880b) entitled “A

Boolian Algebra with One Constant”, which still in 1926 was tagged “to be discarded”
at the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University, Peirce reduces the number of
logical operations to one constant. He states that “this notation … uses the minimum
number of different signs … shows for the first time the possibility of writing both
universal and particular propositions with but one copula” (W4, p.221). Peirce’s
notation was later termed the Sheffer stroke, and is also well-known as the NAND
operation, in Peirce’s terms the operation by which “[t]wo propositions written in a pair
are considered to be both denied” (W4, p.218). In the same manuscript, Peirce also
discovers what is the expressive completeness of the NOR operation, indeed today
rightly recognized as the Peirce arrow.
1881: “On the Logic of Number” (Peirce 1881), published in American Journal
of Mathematics and read before the National Academy of Sciences, was noted by Gerrit
Mannoury (1909, pp. 51, 78) to be the first successful axiomatization of natural
numbers. Shields (1981/2012) has shown Peirce’s axiom system to be equivalent to the
better-known systems of Dedekind (1888) and Peano (1889). Peirce’s paper formulates,
presumably for the first time, the notions of partial and total linear orders, recursive
definitions for arithmetical operations, and the general definition of cardinal numbers in
terms of ordinals. The paper also provides a purely cardinal definition of a finite set
(Dedekind-finite) by checking whether De Morgan’s syllogism of transposed quantity is
valid. (The syllogism of transposed quantity is expressed in the following mode of
inference: Every Texan kills a Texan; Nobody is killed by but one person; Hence, every
Texan is killed by a Texan.) Peirce then derives in this paper the latter property of
finiteness from the ordinal one. Doing the converse assumes the axiom of choice.
During 1881-2 Peirce edited a book, published in 1883 and entitled Studies in
Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University (Peirce 1883), which contained
significant graduate work by his students: Benjamin I. Gilman, Christine Ladd(-
Franklin), Allan Marquand and Oscar Howard Mitchell. Peirce contributed to the
volume a paper “A Theory of Probable Inference”, together with Note A, “A Limited
Universe of Marks”, and Note B, “The Logic of Relatives”. Some developments in
Mitchell’s paper as well as in Note B are worth highlighting here.
Mitchell’s “On a New Algebra of Logic” was hailed by his teacher as “one of the
greatest contributions that the whole history of logic can show” (MS 492; LoF, p. 225).
Peirce attributed to Mitchell two major discoveries: first, the invention of the basic form
of proof transformation and second, the interpretation of quantifiers in multiple
dimensions, one of which is time. The former is similar to the resolution rule in logic
programming, and consists of series of insertions (by adding to premises) and erasures
(by elimination of consequents). In Peirce’s words, “the passage from a premiss or
premisses … to a necessary conclusion in the manner to which is alone usually called
necessary reasoning, can always be reached by adding to the stated antecedents and
subtracting from stated consequents, being understood that if an antecedent be itself a
conditional proposition, its antecedent is of the nature of a consequent” (MS 905; LoF,
pp. 731-732). The latter discovery, universes in multiple dimensions, has its correlate in
the idea of interpreted domains and in the modern notion of temporal logics and many-
sorted quantification. It can also be seen as a development of new languages that take
the role of indices in the quantifiers to be mappings from contexts to values in universes
of discourse. Having in mind Mitchell’s pioneering idea of logical dimensions, Peirce
goes on to mention that the study of Mitchell’s paper was for him necessary in order to
break “ground in the gamma [modal logic] part of the subject” of existential graphs (MS
 12

467; LoF, p. 332; see below). Years later, Peirce defines the term “dimension” in the
Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology noting that it is

an element or respect of extension of a logical universe of such a nature that the

same term which is individual in one such element of extension is not so in another.
Thus, we may consider different persons as individual in one respect, while they
may be divisible in respect to time, and in respect to different admissible
hypothetical states of things, etc. This is to be widely distinguished from different
universes, as, for example, of things and of characters, where any given individual
belonging to one cannot belong to another. The conception of a multidimensional
logical universe is one of the fecund conceptions which exact logic owes to O. H.
Mitchell. Schröder, in his then second volume, where he is far below himself in
many respects, pronounces this conception ‘untenable’. But a doctrine which has,
as a matter of fact, been held by Mitchell, Peirce, and others, on apparently cogent
grounds, without meeting any attempt at refutation in about twenty years, may be
regarded as being, for the present, at any rate, tenable enough to be held. (DPP 2, p.
27)

In his paper Mitchell develops the idea and the notation for existential and universal
quantifiers and notices, for the first time, that it is by having alternations of these
quantifiers that logic derives its expressive power from. Peirce testifies in the same
dictionary entry that placing Σ and Π in alternating orders “was probably first
introduced by O. H. Mitchell in his epoch-making paper” (DPP 2, p. 650). However,
Mitchell’s language was deprived of some expressive power, being limited to monadic
predicates.
Having supervised and perused Mitchell’s paper, in Note B of the Studies in
Logic Peirce generalizes the groundwork Mitchell had laid on the theory of
quantification by resorting to the theory of relatives and adding indices as individual
variables to the operators Σ and Π to denote individual objects. Relative products and
relative sums are now defined as (lb)ij = Σx(l)ix(b)xj and (l † b)ij = Πx {(l)ix + (b)xj}, thus
becoming species of existential and universal quantification: the lover of a benefactor is
“a particular combination, because it implies the existence of something loved by its
relate and a benefactor of its correlate”. The lover of everything but benefactors is
“universal, because it implies the non-existence of anything except what is either loved
by its relate or a benefactor of its correlate” (Peirce 1883, p. 189). Peirce had already
had the relative sum at his disposal and the idea of it as expressing the non-existence of
exceptions naturally led to its dual of the existential quantification. Towards the end of
Note B Peirce writes something is a lover of something as Σi Σaj lij, everything is a lover
of something as Πi Σj lij, there is something which stands to something in the relation of
loving everything except benefactors of it as Σi Σk Πj (lij + bjk), and so on. Taking α to
denote accuser to___of___, ε excuser to___of___, and π preferrer to___of___, Πi Σj Σk
(α)ijk (εjki + πkij) means that “having taken any individual i whatever, it is always possible
so to select two, j and k, that i is an accuser to j of k, and also is either excused by j to k
or is something to which j is preferred by k” (Peirce 1883, p. 201). The phrasing Peirce
uses here (such as “having taken any individual”, “it is always possible so to select”) is
indicative of a new semantic treatment of quantifiers and sequences of quantifiers which
he goes on to pursue further in later papers, and which in Hilpinen (1982), Hintikka
(1996) and Pietarinen (2006) has been shown to agree with game-theoretic semantics.
Interestingly, Peirce’s examples are all stated in prenex normal form, so that the
important idea of having sequences of dependent quantifiers comes to be highlighted.
Peirce’s quantifiers bind variables ranging over interpreted domains and in this 1883
 13

paper he provides the basic inference rules, such as Σi Πj Πj Σi for manipulating the
strings of quantifiers. The language is not inductively defined, it lacks notation for
functions, and it uses neither constants nor an equality sign, but in other respects it
coincides with that of first-order predicate calculus.
Alfred Tarski’s summary concerning Peirce’s contributions to the logical theory
of relatives is illuminating:

[t]he title of creator of the theory of relations was reserved for C. S. Peirce. In
several papers published between 1870 and 1882, he introduced and made precise
all the fundamental concepts of the theory of relations and formulated and
established its fundamental laws. Thus Peirce laid the foundation for the theory of
relations as a deductive discipline; moreover he initiated the discussion of more
profound problems in this domain. In particular, his investigations made it clear
that a large part of the theory of relations can be presented as a calculus which is
formally much like the calculus of classes developed by G. Boole and W. S.
Jevons, but which greatly exceeds it in richness of expression and is therefore
incomparably more interesting from the deductive point of view. (Tarski 1941, p.
73)

However, it is his 1885 theory of quantification that Peirce calculated to settle the
problems of deductive logic and logical analysis in a way that decidedly brought him
beyond the algebraic approach to the logic of relatives.
1885: Peirce’s logic of quantifiers comes to a full blossom in his paper written in
summer 1884, “On the Algebra of Logic: A Contribution to the Philosophy of
Notation”, published in the American Journal of Mathematics in the following year
(Peirce 1885). This massive paper defies any condensed exposition; in summary, we
find Peirce’s “five icons of algebra” as a system of natural deduction based on
introduction and elimination rules. Peirce had repeatedly stated that having supervised
and examined Mitchell’s paper was essential in order to arrive at the idea of these two
basic operations. There is an abundant use of truth-functional propositions and an
anticipation of the truth-table method to test tautologies. One of the examples comes
close to the tableaux method, later proposed by Evert Beth and Jaakko Hintikka, that
spells out a systematic search for counter-models by deriving contradictions from the
negations of the formula to be proved. In order “to find whether a formula is necessarily
true”, he tells, “substitute f and v for the letters and see whether it can be supposed false
by any such assignment of values” (Peirce 1885, p. 224; see Anellis 2012a).
When he moves on to the first-order (“first-intentional”) logic, Peirce seeks to
devise a notation that is as iconic as possible, building on his semiotic insight that the
more iconic a notation is, the better suited it would be for logical analysis. He starts by
using “Σ for some, suggesting a sum, and Π for all, suggesting a product” (1885, p.
180). Once again, Peirce credits Mitchell, now for the method of separating the
“quantifying part” – which he later termed the “Hopkinsian” to honour its place of
discovery (MS 515, 1902) – from the pure Boolean expression: the latter refers to an
individual by its use of indices (like pronouns in language) while the former states what
that individual is. The quantifying operators are, however, “only similar to a sum and
product,…because the individuals of the universe may be denumerable” (1885, p. 180).
Peirce’s consideration illustrates similar lines of thought as those that prompted
Löwenheim to formulate his famous 1915 theorem: if a first-order sentence has a model
then it has also a countable model, or generally, models for sets of formulas being of
some cardinality imply models of some other infinite cardinality (Badesa 2004).
(Associating infinite products and sums with conjunctions and disjunctions was what
 14

Wittgenstein took to be his own biggest mistake in logic.) The 1885 paper continues
introducing rules for quantifier manipulation, including “putting the Σs to the left, as far
as possible” (1885, p. 182), which is a prelude to the idea of Skolem normal forms. One
could say that it is the sequences of quantifiers, especially those of dependent
quantifiers, that contribute to a linear logic notation as being maximally iconic, and that
it is the prenex and Skolem normal forms that bring out maximal analyticity which
logical icons exploit. The 1885 paper then presents many examples drawn from natural
language to be analyzed logically with this new notation. The paper also extensively
deals with issues to do with the representation of mathematical notions such as one-to-
one correspondence and identity in the second-intentional logic, developed in the third
part of the paper, in which variables range over relations. There is an early attempt at
axiomatizing set theory as well as some profound philosophical consideration on the
possibility of developing a “method for the discovery of methods in mathematics”,
which is to be based on these new approaches that aim at formulating a general theory of
deductive logic.
Thanks to the volumes that have appeared in the Chronological Edition of the
Writings between 1982 and 2010, and which by now have covered Peirce’s work up to
1892, these earlier phases of Peirce’s deductive logic are now relatively well
understood. But the research from that point on has been hampered by the unavailability
of systematic editions concerning Peirce’s logical writings. Yet the mid-1890s marks
only the beginnings of a new and by far the most productive era in Peirce’s logical
investigations, which were to last until the last months of his life. This situation has been
by no means adequately reflected in the secondary literature.
Although Peirce would continue his investigations on the algebra of logic
throughout his life, the algebraic element would no longer assume a central position in
his overall oeuvre:

In 1895 Schröder published the third huge volume of his logic, which consisted
mainly of a vast elaboration in detail of the logical algebra of my Note B. That I
never considered that algebra to be a great masterpiece is sufficiently shown by my
giving my exposition of it no other title than “Note B”. The perusal of Schröder’s
book convinced me that the algebra was not what was wanted, and in the Monist
for January 1897 I produced a system of graphs which I now term Entitative
Graphs. I shortly after abandoned that and took up Existential Graphs” (MS 467;
LoF, p. 332).

Although it was Schröder’s elaboration that was to influence the works of the early
model theorists such as Löwenheim and Skolem (Brady 2000), it was Peirce’s and
Mitchell’s works that germinated the concept of first-order statements being true-in-a
model (Pietarinen 2006; Bellucci & Pietarinen 2015a). Moreover, Peirce’s incessant
hunt for new logical notations and methods was much more ambitious and philosophical
than his early algebraic investigations could reveal.
What was to take the place of algebra were the ideas that emerged from
diagrammatic, iconic and topological considerations on logical representation and
reasoning. These considerations were at first prompted by logical analogues to algebraic
invariants in chemistry first developed by Peirce’s John Hopkins colleague J. J.
Sylvester (1878) and investigated in Kempe (1886). Peirce was initially fascinated by
the analogy in which a chemical atom is like a relative “in having a definite number of
loose ends or “unsaturated bonds”, corresponding to the blanks of the relative” (CP
3.469, 1897). But the continual search for better and better notations for the overall
 15

purposes of logical analysis would also reveal the reasons why Peirce had to overcome
the analogy between logic and chemistry.
Peirce’s theory of Existential Graphs (EGs) (Zeman 1964; Roberts 1973; Shin
2002; Dipert 2006; Pietarinen 2006, 2011, 2015a), first conceived in summer 1896 and
developed in subsequent years (e.g. Peirce 1897, 1906), was in part motivated by his
need to respond to the expressive insufficiency and lack of analytic power of the
systems described in his Note B, which he later termed the algebra of dyadic (dual)
relatives, and in the 1885 general (universal) algebra of logic. The analytic power comes
from the idea of subsuming what the algebraic operations do when composing concepts
under one mode of composition. This composition of concepts is effected in the theory
of EGs by the device of ligatures. A ligature is a complex line, composed of what Peirce
terms the lines of identities, which connects various parts and areas of the graphs:

Fig. 1 Fig. 2 Fig. 3

The meaning of these lines is that the two or more descriptions apply to the same thing.
For example, in Figure 2 there is a line attached to the predicate term “is obedient”. It
thus means that “something exists which is obedient”. There is also another line which
connects to the predicate term “is a catholic”, and that composition means that
“something exists which is a catholic”, which is equivalent to the graph-instance in
Figure 3. Since in Figure 1 these two lines are in fact connected by a continuous line, the
graph-instance in Figure 1 means that “there exists a catholic which is obedient”, that is,
“there exists an obedient catholic”. Ligatures, which represent continuous connections
composed of two or more lines of identities, therefore stand for quantification, identity
and predication, all in one go.
These EGs are drawn on a sheet of assertion that represents what the modeller
knows or what has mutually been agreed upon to be the case by those who undertake the
investigation of logic. The sheet thus represents the universe of discourse. The graph
that is drawn on the sheet makes the assertion, true or false, that there is something in
the universe to which it applies. This is the reason why Peirce terms these graphs
existential. Drawing a circle around the graph, or alternatively, shading the area on
which the graph-instance rests, means that nothing exists of the sort of description
intended. In Figure 4, the assertion “something is a catholic” is denied by drawing an
oval around it and thus severing that assertion from the sheet of assertion:

Fig. 4

The graph-instance depicted in Figure 4 thus means that “something exists that is not
catholic”.
Peirce aimed at a diagrammatic syntax that would use a minimal number of
logical signs but at the same time would be maximally expressive and as analytic as
possible. His ovals, for instance, have different notational functions: “The first office
which the ovals fulfill is that of negation. […] The second office of the ovals is that of
associating the conjunctions of terms. […] This is the office of parentheses in algebra”
 16

(MS 430, pp. 54-56, 1902). The ovals are thus not only the diagrammatic counterpart to
negation but also serve to represent the compositionality of a graph-formula. He held
(MS 430, 1902; MS 670, 1911) that a notation that does not separate the sign of truth-
function from the representation of its scope is more analytic than some other notation,
such as that of ordinary “symbolic” languages, where such separation is needed in order
to force the notation into one-dimensional formats. The role of ovals as denials is in fact
a derived function from more primitive considerations of inclusion and implication (see
Roberts 1973, pp. 35-37; MS 300, 1908).
As to expressivity, Peirce had already recognized that the notion of dependent
quantification was essential in any system expressive enough to serve the purposes of
logical analysis of any assertions. The nested system of ovals in EGs effectuate this in a
natural way, much in contrast to algebras that resort to an explicit use of parentheses and
other punctuation devices. For example, the graph in Figure 5 means that “Every
Catholic adores some woman”. The graph in Figure 6 means that “Some woman is
adored by every Catholic”. Peirce notes that the latter asserts more since it states that all
Catholics adore the same woman, whereas the former allows different Catholics to adore
different women.

Fig. 5 Fig. 6

The graph in Figure 7 means that “anything whatever is unloved by something that
benefits it”, that is, “everything is benefitted by something or other that does not love
it”:

Fig. 7

Lastly, we give here (Figure 8) an example of a very complex graph taken from MS 504
(1898), for which Peirce provided the meaning in natural language as stated below right:

“Every being unless he worships some

being who does not create all beings
either does not believe any being (unless
it be not a woman) to be any mother of a
creator of all beings or else he praises
that woman to every being unless to a
person whom he does not think he can
induce to become anything unless it be a
non-praiser of that woman to every
being.”

Fig. 8

It is on the level of semantics where the power of dependent quantification

comes to the fore. Peirce carried the semantics out in terms of defining the basics of
 17

what we nowadays recognize as two-player zero-sum semantic games. For Peirce these
games take place between the Graphist/Utterer and the Grapheus/Interpreter.
(Sometimes, especially in Peirce’s model-building games, these roles split so that the
Grapheus and the Interpreter are playing separate roles, see Pietarinen 2013.) Peirce’s
semantic games were not limited to EGs but he applied the same idea also to interpret
quantificational expressions and connectives in his general algebra of logic.
It speaks for the superiority of EGs over algebraic systems that in it deduction,
following Mitchell’s work, is reduced to a minimum number of permissive operations.
Peirce termed these operations illative rules of transformation, and in effect they consist
only of two: insertions (permissions to draw a graph-instance on the sheet of assertion)
and erasures (permissions to erase a graph-instance from the sheet). More precisely, the
oddly enclosed areas of graphs (areas within an odd number of enclosures) permit
inserting any graph on that area, while evenly enclosed areas permit erasing any graph
from that area. A copy of a graph-instance is permitted to be pasted on that same area or
any area deeper within the same nest of enclosures (the rule of iteration), and a copy
thus iterated is permitted to be erased (the converse rule of deiteration). An
interpretational corollary is that the double enclosure with no intervening graphs in the
middle area can be inserted and erased at will.
A more detailed exposition of these illative rules of transformation would need
to illustrate their application to the cases of manipulation of quantificational expressions,
namely applying insertions and erasures to the lines of identity. We only provide a
flavor of such proofs in terms of one example. In inspecting the Figures 1, 2 and 3
above, we notice that an application of a permissible erasure on the line of identity in
Figure 1 amounts to the graph-instance in Figure 2, and that another application of a
permissible erasure on the upper part of the graph-instance in Figure 2 amounts to the
graph-instance depicted in Figure 3. Thus what is represented in Figure 2 is a logical
consequence of the graph-instance in Figure 1, and what is represented in Figure 3 is a
logical consequence of the graph-instance given in Figure 2.
Roberts (1973) was the first to prove that these transformation rules, first given
by Peirce in 1898, form a semantically complete system of deduction. Roberts did not
mention, however, that Peirce had demonstrated their soundness in 1898 and again in
1903 and that he had argued for their completeness in terms of what he termed the
“perfect archegetic rules of transformation” in the unpublished parts of the Syllabus for
the Lowell Lectures that Peirce delivered in 1903.
The polarity of the outermost ends or portions of ligatures determines whether
the quantification is existential (that end or portion resting on even/positive areas) or
universal (if it rests on odd/negative area). Unlike in the Tarski-type semantics but just
as what happens in game-theoretic semantics, the preferred rule of interpretation of the
graphs is what Peirce termed “endoporeutic”: we look for the outermost portions of
ligatures on the sheet of assertions first, assign semantic values to that part, and then
proceed inwards into the areas enclosed with ovals. In non-modal contexts, ligatures are
not well-formed graphs as they may cross the enclosures.
The diagrammatic nature of EGs consists in the iconic relationship between
forms of relations exhibited in the diagrams and the real relations in the universe of
discourse. Peirce was convinced that, since these graphical systems exploit a proper
diagrammatic syntax, they, together with any of their extensions that would be
introduced to cover modalities, non-declarative expressions, speech acts etc., can
express any assertion, however intricate. Guided by the precepts laid out by the
diagrammatic forms of expression, and together with the simple illative permissions by
which deductive inference proceeds, the conclusions from premises can be “read before
 18

one’s eyes”: these graphs present what Peirce believed is a “moving picture of the action
of the mind in thought” (MS 298; LoF, p. 655; late 1906-1907).

If upon one lantern-slide there be shown the premisses of a theorem as expressed in

these graphs and then upon other slides the successive results of the different
transformations of those graphs; and if these slides in their proper order be
successively exhibited, we should have in them a veritable moving picture of the
mind in reasoning. (MS 905; LoF, p. 723; late 1907-1908)

The theory of EGs that uses only the notation of ovals and the spatial notion of
juxtaposition of graphs is termed by Peirce the Alpha part of the EGs, and it corresponds
to propositional logic. The extension of the alpha part with ligatures and rhemas (also
termed spots by Peirce) gives rise to the Beta part, and it corresponds to fragments of
first-order predicate calculus. What Peirce termed the Gamma part was a boutique of a
number of developments, including various modalities such as metaphysical, epistemic
and temporal modalities, as well as extensions of such graphs with ligatures. In Peirce’s
writings, we also find developments of graphical systems for higher-order logics and
abstraction (Peirce’s “logic of potentials”), the logic of collections, and investigation of
meta-logical expressions that use the language of graphs to talk about notions and
properties of the graphs in that language (Peirce’s “graphs of graphs”). He mentions late
in 1911 that the Delta part would also need to be added, most likely because of the ever-
expanding systems that had been mushrooming in the Gamma part.

Peirce’s further contributions to deductive logic. While the development of the

theory of the logic of existential graphs was his chef d’euvre, Peirce’s other
contributions to the development of modern logic were numerous. In the Logic
Notebook (1909) he defined a number of operations for three-valued logic and gave
semantics for them in terms of defining truth-tables for such new connectives (Fisch &
Turquette 1966). In these systems which he called triadic logic the third value is “the
limit” between “true” and “not true”, and it applies to what Lane (1999) has identified as
boundary-propositions: in Peirce’s terms, boundary-propositions have “a lower mode of
being” which can “neither be determinately P, nor determinately not-P”, but are “at the
limit between P and not P” (MS 399, p. 344r, 1909). Peirce defined several connectives
to realize this idea in alternative ways, including four one-place connectives which were
later reinvented as strong negation, two Post negations and the Tertium function, as well
as six two-place connectives, including one that pertains to the logic of ordinary
discourse.
Generally, Peirce divided deduction in two: on the one hand, deduction is either
necessary or probable (deductive reasoning about probabilities), and on the other hand,
deduction is either corollarial or theorematic. Corollarial deduction is reasoning “where
it is only necessary to imagine any case in which the premisses are true in order to
perceive immediately that the conclusion holds in that case”. Theorematic deduction “is
deduction in which it is necessary to experiment in the imagination upon the image of
the premiss in order from the result of such experiment to make corollarial deductions to
the truth of the conclusion” (MS L 75, 1902). He considered the theorematic/corollarial
distinction his first real discovery in the philosophy of mathematics. Theorematic
deductions can be of different kinds and degrees of complexity, and he took the
classification of various types of theorematic deductions to be of the utmost value in the
theory of logic (MS 617; MS 201; Peirce 1908). Stjernfelt (2014) proposes a new
classification of theorematic inferences. Hintikka (1980) has argued that reasoning is
theorematic if it increases the number of layers of quantifiers, and that an argument is
 19

the more theorematic the more new individuals are used in it (see also Ketner 1985;
Zeman 1986; Hoffmann 2010).
Zooming into some of the details of Peirce’s systems of logic, including those of
diagrammatic logics, we find a treasury of developments the meaning of which we are
only beginning to unravel a century later (Bellucci, Pietarinen & Stjernfelt 2014). In
1886, Peirce suggested in a letter to his former student Allan Marquand, who had
designed mechanical logic machines for syllogistic reasoning, that “it is by no means
hopeless to expect to make a machine for really difficult problems. But you would have
to proceed step by step. I think electricity would be the best thing to rely on” (L 269,
Peirce to Marquand, 30 December, 1886; W5, p. 422). He then showed how what we
nowadays recognize as switching circuits can be connected serially and in parallel,
noting that these two configurations correspond to multiplication (algebraic sum as
logical disjunction) and addition (algebraic product as logical conjunction) in logic. In
addition to the idea of real logical machines running on electricity, Peirce was also much
interested in the philosophical question of whether living intelligence is required of
performing deductive reasoning, an issue of continuing relevance to the AI and to the
prospects of automatized theorem proving. In 1902 he developed two notational systems
with sixteen binary connectives to map out all of the possible truth functions of the
binary propositional calculus (Clark 1997; Zellweger 1997). According to Max Fisch,
“No other logician compares with Peirce in attention to systems of notation and to sign-
creation” (Fisch 1982, p. 132). Peirce’s work on these notational systems foresaw
geometrical structures of logic, including spaces revealed by the study of the geometry
of negation and other operators. Based on Peirce’s conceptual and sign-theoretic
considerations, an apparatus for displaying and performing a complete set of the sixteen
binary connectives in a two-valued propositional logic was patented in the US in 1981
by Shea Zellweger. Peirce also worked on early forms of topology (Havenel 2010),
including studies on what we might recognize as rudimentary versions of homologies
and knots, in his attempts to find pathways not only to logical issues but also to
questions in philosophy of mathematics (Murphey 1961; Moore 2010). Moreover, his
diagrammatic systems of modal logic included suggestions for defining several types of
multi-modal logics in terms of tinctures of areas of graphs. Tinctures enable logic to
assert, among others, modalities including necessities and metaphysical possibilities,
and so call for changes in the nature of how the corresponding logics behave, including
the identification of individuals at the presence of multiple universes of discourses. He
also defined epistemic operators in terms of subjective possibilities, which just as in
contemporary epistemic logic are epistemic possibilities defined as duals of knowledge
operators. He analyzed the meaning of identities between actual and possible objects in
quantified multi-modal logics. As an example, the two graphs given in Figures 9 and 10
that he presented in a 1906 draft of the Prolegomena paper (MS 292) illustrate the
nature of the interplay between epistemic modalities and quantification.

Fig. 9 Fig. 10
 20

The graph in Figure 9 is read “There is a man who is loved by one woman and loves a
woman known by the Graphist to be another”. The reason is this. In the equivalent graph
depicted in Figure 10 the woman who loves is denoted by name A, and the woman who
is loved is denoted by name B. The shaded area is a tincture that refers to the modality
of subjective possibility. Thus the graph in Figure 10 means that it is subjectively
impossible, by which Peirce means that “it is contrary to what is known by the Graphist”
(= the modeller of the graph) that A should be B. In other words, the woman who loves
and the woman who is loved (whom the graph does not assert to be otherwise known to
the Graphist) are known by the Graphist not to be the same person.
Peirce’s work highlights the philosophical significance of ideas that were
rediscovered later and largely after the mid-20th-century, though often in different outfit:
in Peirce’s largely unpublished works we find him addressing such topics as multi-
modal logics and possible-worlds semantics, quantification into modal contexts, cross-
world identities (in MS 490 he termed these special relations connecting objects in
different possible worlds “references”, see Pietarinen 2005), cumulative and branching
quantifiers (the latter being related to independence-friendly logic, see Pietarinen
2015b), as well as what later on became known as the “Peirce’s Puzzle” (Dekker 2001;
Hintikka 2011; Pietarinen 2015b), namely the question of the meaning of indefinites in
conditional sentences, which Peirce himself analyzed in quantified modal extensions of
EGs.
Far from merely anticipating later discoveries, thus, Peirce’s logic in general puts
what later on came to be explored in the fields of philosophical logic, formal semantics
and pragmatics, philosophy of logic, mathematics, mind and language, cognitive and
computing sciences, and history and philosophy of science, into a systematic logico-
semeiotic perspective. From time to time, his ideas even surpass stagnated contemporary
discussions, especially in the philosophy of logic and mathematics (Bellucci, Pietarinen
& Stjernfelt 2014; Lupher & Adajian 2015; Sowa 2006; Zalamea 2012a; Zalamea
2012b; PM).
For further details on Peirce’s deductive logic, see the collection of Houser et. al.
eds. 1997. Hilpinen 2004 provides a useful overview.

iv. Inductive logic

In 1865 (W1, pp. 263-64) Peirce defines induction as inference from Case and Result to
Rule. Its general form is:

Case: M1 M2 M3 M4 are S
Result: M1 M2 M3 M4 are P
Rule: Therefore, all S are P.

A certain number of objects (M1 M2 M3 M4 ), known to belong to a certain class (S),

possess a certain character (P); therefore, we can infer inductively that the whole class S
possesses that character. I notice that neat, swine, sheep, and deer, which I know are
cloven-hoofed, are herbivores. Therefore, I infer inductively that all cloven-hoofed
animals are herbivores.
Later, Peirce came to divide induction into three principal kinds. Crude induction is
the lowest form of induction, based upon the common practice of generalizing about
future events on the ground of previous experience. For example, “No instance of a
genuine power of clairvoyance has ever been established: So I presume there is no such
thing”; “cancer is incurable, because every known case has proved to be so”. Its general
form is “All observed As are B. Therefore, All As are B”. It is the weakest form of
 21

inductive reasoning in terms of security. Qualitative induction is the intermediate kind in

terms of security. It is what Peirce had earlier called hypothetical reasoning or
abduction. It consists in testing a hypothesis by sampling the possible predications that
may be made on the basis of it (CP 7.216). Qualitative abduction is reasoning that tests
hypotheses already formulated. It should not be confused with abduction, which is
reasoning that originates new hypotheses. Quantitative induction is the highest form of
induction in terms of security. It investigates the real probability that a member of a
certain class will have a certain character. Its procedure consists in finding a
representative sample of the class and noting the proportion of them that possess the
character P. Then, the inference is drawn that the proportion holds for the whole class.
Its logical form is

S1 S2 S3 S4 etc., are taken at random from the Ms

The proportion p of S1 S2 S3 S4 is P
Hence, probably and approximately, the same proportion p of the Ms are P.

The inversion of a quantitative induction gives us a statistical deduction, whose form is

The proportion p of the Ms are P

S1 S2 S3 S4 etc., are taken at random from the Ms
Hence, the proportion p of them is P.

Although crude, qualitative, and quantitative induction are different in kind, their
justification is, according to Peirce, the same:

The validity of Induction consists in the fact it proceeds according to a method

which though it may give provisional results that are incorrect will yet if steadily
pursued, eventually correct any such error. […] all Induction possesses this kind of
validity, and […] no Induction possesses any other kind that is more than a further
determination of this kind. (MS 293, 1907)

The validity rests upon induction being self-corrective: in the long run induction is
bound to lead us ever closer to the correct representation of reality. Its validity is
therefore linked to esse in futuro, to the possibility of self-correction of the very method
itself. Any actual induction that is performed may well be wrong or partly wrong, but it
remains valid because its leading principle is valid, that is, is conducive to truth in the
long run.
Peirce’s polemic target was a theory that would make the validity of induction rest
upon some principles of uniformity or regularity in nature. According to Peirce, that was
how John S. Mill and Philodemus of Gadara (ca.110–ca.30 BCE) attempted, unsoundly,
to justify induction. Of the several objections that Peirce raised from time to time against
this way of justifying induction one is worth reporting. Mill argues that a universe
without any regularity is imaginable, and that in that universe inductions would be
invalid. But the absence of uniformity, that is, the absence among certain objects S of
the character P, is itself a uniformity. No universe is imaginable in which induction is
not valid. According to Peirce, “even if nature were not uniform, induction would be
sure to find it out, so long as inductive reasoning could be performed at all” (CP 2.775).
Cheng 1969, Goudge 1946, Merrill 1975 and Forster 1989 provide further details on
Peirce’s inductive logic.
 22

c. Methodeutic
Traditionally, every logic treatise includes a doctrine concerning the method of logic.
The third branch of Peirce’s logic is methodeutic, which he also termed speculative
rhetoric. It is defined as “the study of the proper way of arranging and conducting an
inquiry” (MS 606, p. 17). It was depicted as “not so exact in its conclusions as is critical
logic” (MS L 75, 1902) involving “certain psychological principles” (MS 633, 1909).
But it is a theoretical study and not an art. Methodeutic is based upon critics; it considers
not what is admissible (logical validity) but what is advantageous (logical economy). It
is a “theoretical study of advantages” (MS L 75, 1902).
Abduction is of special interest to methodeutic, because abduction is the only mode
of inference that can initiate a scientific hypothesis. But being justifiable is not a
sufficient property of good hypotheses:

Any hypothesis which explains the facts is justified critically. But among justifiable
hypotheses we have to select that one which is suitable for being tested by
experiment. (MS L 75, 1902)

Among critically equivalent hypotheses (i.e. hypotheses that explain the facts), we
should be able to select for testing those that are capable of experimental verification.2
This is the core of Peirce’s philosophy of pragmati(ci)sm, which teaches that the whole
meaning of a hypothesis is in its conceivable practical (i.e. experienceable) effects;
pragmaticism therefore is “nothing else than the question of the logic of abduction” (CP
5.196, 1903).
In turn, among “pragmatistically” equivalent hypotheses (i.e., hypotheses that are
capable of experimental verification) we should select those that in the sense of Peirce’s
economy of research are the cheapest ones. His argument for the economic character of
methodeutic is roughly as follows: the logical validity of abduction presupposes that
nature be in principle explainable. This means that to discover is simply to expedite an
event that would sooner or later occur. Therefore, the real service of a logic of abduction
is of the nature of an economy. Economy itself depends on three factors: cost (of money,
time, energy, thought), the value of the hypothesis itself, and its effects upon other
projects and hypotheses (MS L 75, 1902; MS 690, CP 7.164-231, 1901).
Although primarily concerned with abduction, methodeutic also has an interest in
deduction and induction. Theorematic deductions (see §2.b.iii) manifest peculiar logical
steps that are abductive rather than deductive. In order to overcome the lack of critical
instruments for the investigation of those steps, Peirce emphasizes the need to have an
inventory and logical classification of valuable steps in the history of mathematics
which would become part of a methodeutic of necessary reasoning (Peirce 1908, MS
200-201).
Peirce also considered the study of the properties of different logical and
mathematical notations and symbolisms as belonging to the department of methodeutic.
In this respect, he coined the maxim of the ethics of terminology and of notation:

2
Being capable of experimental verification is in Peirce’s philosophy of science to be conceived in the
wide sense, including mental experimentation and imaginative activities in our thoughts (Bellucci &
Pietarinen 2015b). It is not the same thing as the empirical verification criterion of the positivists, which
Peirce criticized.
 23

[t]he person who introduces a conception into science has both the right and the duty of
prescribing a terminology and a notation for it; and his terminology and notation should
be followed except so far as it may prove positively and seriously disadvantageous to the
progress of science. If a slight modification is sufficient to remove the objection, a much
greater one should be avoided. (MS 530, 1902)

Induction too has its methodological side. The methods of the three classes of
inductions are all based on “samples”, and they all presuppose that the samples are
representative of the class from which they are sampled: methodeutic should therefore
teach methods of producing fair samplings. His own experimental work is exemplary in
that it develops new statistical methods to ascertain that truly randomized samples are
achieved and fully blinded testing conditions secured. He emphasized the method of
predesignation, which prescribes that the characters concerning which class is sampled
are to be chosen beforehand so that the sampler would not be influenced by any
agreement among the members of the sample (see Goudge 1946).
Other things Peirce considers to pertain to methodeutic include the principles of
definition, the methods of classification in general, and the doctrine of the clearness of
ideas.
Peirce’s logic, conceived as semeiotic, characterizes a broad philosophical,
methodological and scientific area of investigation. Although the present article has
exposed a number of developments in Peirce’s studies in deductive logic, the deductive
part is only a fraction of the wider project of semeiotic, the theory and philosophy of
signs, and the logic of science. From a contemporary perspective, deductive logic may
have become the mainstay of logic, but for Peirce other areas of logic, such as
speculative grammar and the critics and methodeutic of abduction and induction, are at
least as important as deductive logic.

3. Peirce’s logic in a historical perspective

Peirce’s algebraic work in formal logic influenced Ernst Schröder (1841–1902), who
drew heavily upon Peirce’s work in the three volumes of his Vorlesungen über die
Algebra der Logik (Schröder 1890–1905). Peirce also successfully initiated a school in
logic during his Johns Hopkins period (1879–1884), whose most evident manifestation
is the richness and originality of the papers contained in the Studies in Logic (Peirce
1883). For the main part of his career, Peirce had been in contact and correspondence
with the most prominent logicians, mathematicians and scientists of the time, and his
works appeared in leading scientific journals and proceedings.
All these facts notwithstanding, the reception of Peirce’s deductive logic has been
strangely erratic, even in the early days. Especially in his later period (1892–1914),
Peirce worked virtually alone in an adverse environment and without much intellectual
and material support. It is true that the recognition of his contributions has suffered from
a long-term unavailability of his vast Nachlass of over 100.000 surviving pages of
manuscripts and correspondence. In some cases at least, the explanation may be found in
the unprecedented technical and mathematical standard and rigor characterizing his
work. But what is certainly a main reason behind the general neglect of Peirce’s logic is
the rise, at the end of the 19th century, of what has later been named the Frege-Russell
tradition in logic.
The historiography of logic seems to have accepted the idea, initially promoted by
Bertrand Russell and subsequently canonized by historian of logic Jean van Heijenoort
(1912–1986), of a “Fregean revolution” in logic. In this narrative, modern mathematical
logic (also deceptively called symbolic logic) has replaced traditional or Aristotelian
 24

logic. According to such picture, the work of the “algebraists”, among whom Boole, De
Morgan, Peirce and Schröder, belongs to the pre-Fregean logical paradigm.
Anellis (2012b) identified seven features of such a “Fregean” revolution: 1. A
propositional calculus with a truth-functional definition of connectives, especially the
conditional. 2. Decomposition of propositions into function and argument instead of into
subject and predicate. 3. A quantification theory, based on a system of axioms and
inference rules. 4. Definitions of infinite sequence and natural number in terms of
logical notions (i.e. the logicization of mathematics). 5. Presentation and clarification of
the concept of a formal system. 6. Relevance and use of logic for philosophical
investigations (especially for philosophy of language). 7. Separating singular
propositions, such as “Socrates is mortal” from universal propositions such as “All
Greeks are mortal”. All these characteristics, Anellis argued, can be found in Peirce’s
work, which therefore falls within the parameters of van Heijenoort’s conception of the
Fregean revolution and the definition of mathematical logic. One also needs to
remember that there are many characteristics of Peirce’s logic and philosophy of logic,
vitally important to his logical vision, that either add to, modify or reject those that have
been taken to typify the Fregean tradition. What may be ill-named as a Fregean
revolution is found in a different, and perhaps more penetrating and consequential shape
in Peirce’s work.
Peirce and Frege discovered quantificational theory around the same time (1879–
1883). Frege’s work was at the time largely ignored. Russell credited Frege a posteriori
with having founded modern logic in the Begriffsschrift (Frege 1879). However, while
Frege’s notation was hardly ever used, the Peirce-Schröder notation was largely adopted
by others. The important results of Löwenheim and Skolem at the beginning of the 20th
century were presented in the Peirce-Schröder system without any trace of influence by
Frege or Russell. Peano’s use of the existential and universal quantifiers derives from
Schröder and Peirce, not from Frege. Unlike Frege, Peirce recognized the utmost
importance of dependent quantifiers and experimented with that idea in various ways in
the algebra of logic and in existential graphs, and proposed new systems and dimensions
of quantification that involve independent quantification (MS 430). Peirce’s overall
influence upon the development of modern logic was considerable though its nature and
scope remained ill-understood for a long time (Putnam 1982; Dipert 1995; Pietarinen
2015a).
Peirce’s philosophy of logic has had no better fate. Aside from Josiah Royce and
especially Lady Victoria Welby with whom Peirce corresponded on the logic of signs
and semiotics during 1903-1910, Peirce’s radical idea of “logic as semeiotic” largely
passed by unnoticed. In the 1930s Charles Morris took, misleadingly, Peirce’s trivium of
speculative grammar, critics and methodeutic to correspond to the division of the study
of language into syntactics, semantics, and pragmatics (Morris 1938, pp. 21-22). Carnap
(1942) adopted Morris’ trichotomy and made it popular. Peirce’s philosophy of signs
has since been studied by semioticians, led by the pioneering explorations by Roman
Jakobson and Umberto Eco (see Eco 1975; Jakobson 1977; Eco 1984). Other aspects of
Peirce’s philosophy of logic, such as the distinction between corollarial and theorematic
deduction, his ideas on diagrammatic reasoning, and the evolution of new logical
notations and meanings, has recently raised the interests not only of logicians and
historians of logic, but also philosophers of science, cognitive scientists as well as many
scholars, scientists, artists and practitioners that look ways to overcome boundaries of
 25

narrow conceptions of logic, reasoning, and the scientific methodology that have
characterized their respective fields.3
From the wider perspectives of the history and philosophy of modern logic, it may
not be entirely right to talk in strict terms about the two traditions in logic, namely those
of the algebraic and the symbolic ones. On the one hand, Peirce’s line of work in the
algebra of logic led to the invention of a spectrum of methods in the semantic and
model-theoretic tradition while the logic that for example Schröder preferred was to
quantify over the entire universe and was thus at bottom a universalist one, thus sharing
the same preference with Frege. On the other hand, Peirce’s continuous search for
increasingly more appropriate and expedient notations for the purposes of logical
analysis made what others may have considered to be the subject of symbolic notations
really the subject of diagrammatic and iconic representations. Algebraic notations were
for Peirce iconic and often even very graphically so. What mattered to him was to
remain clear of the significations of logical signs. Logical signs were to be interpreted in
proper contexts and according to the purposes of investigation at hand. Thus, Peirce’s
philosophy of logic stands in stark contrast to purely formal, mathematical and proof-
theoretic approaches to logic, which do not care so much for signification. Peirce should
accordingly be counted in the pragmatic, rather than just the semantic, tradition in
philosophy of logic and language (cf. Tiercelin 1991).
The distinction (van Heijenoort 1967; Hintikka 1997; Peckhaus 2004) between
“logic as calculus” and “logic as a universal medium” is nonetheless instructive here.
According to the former view of logic as calculus, methods and languages are many,
they are reinterpretable according to the context and purposes at hand, and they admit of
many and varying universes as well as modal and intensional considerations. The latter,
universalist position means, in contrast, that there is one logic to “rule them all”, and so
our thought is bounded by what that logic can express. Peirce fits squarely into the
former camp. Here again it is not that all who worked on the algebra of logic would be
members of that same camp (Schröder is a counterexample), or that all of those who in
the literature have been tagged as formalists would share the universalist presuppositions
(David Hilbert may serve as another kind of a counterexample). It may be one of the
lessons of Peirce’s pragmaticism and his methodological pluralism which he exercised
in his logic not to fix in advance what may fall within the scope of logic in the future.

4. References and further reading.

a. Peirce’s works

1867. An Improvement in Boole’s Calculus of Logic. Proceedings of the American

Academy of Arts and Sciences 7, pp. 249-261.

1870. Description of a Notation for the Logic of Relatives. Memoirs of the American
Academy of Arts and Sciences 9, pp. 317-378.

1880a. On the Algebra of Logic. American Journal of Mathematics 3, pp. 15–57.

1881. On the Logic of Number. American Journal of Mathematics 4, pp. 85-95.

3
See e.g. the 2014 Peirce Centennial Conference at Lowell as well as the Applying Peirce Conference
series at Helsinki in 2007 and 2014, which have brought together scholars and scientists interested in
Peirce’s thought virtually on any field of science.
 26

1883 (ed.). Studies in Logic by Members of the Johns Hopkins University. Boston: Little,
Brown, and Co. 1883.

1885. On the Algebra of Logic. A Contribution to the Philosophy of Notation. American

Journal of Mathematics 7, pp. 197–202.

1897. The Logic of Relatives. The Monist 7, pp. 161–217.

1901-1902. Entries in Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, 3 vols, edited by

Baldwin, James Mark. Cited as DPP followed by volume and page number.

1906. Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism. The Monist 16, pp. 492–546.

1908. Some Amazing Mazes. The Monist 18 (3), pp. 416-464.

1931–1966. The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., ed. by Hartshorne, C,

Weiss, P. and Burks, A. W. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cited as CP followed
by volume and paragraph number.

1967. Manuscripts in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as identified by

Richard Robin, “Annotated Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce”, Amherst:
University of Massachusetts Press, 1967, and in “The Peirce Papers: A supplementary
catalogue”, Transactions of the C. S. Peirce Society 7 (1971): 37–57. Cited as MS
followed by manuscript number and, when available, page number.

1976. The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, 4 vols., ed. by Eisele, C.
The Hague: Mouton. Cited as NEM followed by volume and page number.

1982 - . Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, 7 vols., ed. by. Moore,
E. C., Kloesel, C. J. W. et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cited as W
followed by volume and page number.

2010. Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings, ed. by M. E. Moore, Bloomington

and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. Cited as PM.

2015. Logic of the Future. Peirce’s Writings on Existential Graphs, ed. by A.-V.
Pietarinen, Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Cited as LoF.

b. Other works

Anellis, I. 2012a. Peirce’s Truth-Functional Analysis and the Origin of the Truth Table.
History and Philosophy of Logic 33, pp. 37–41.

Anellis, I. 2012b. How Peircean was the ‘Fregean’ Revolution in Logic?

arXiv:1201.0353.

Badesa, C. 2004. The Birth of Model Theory: Löwenheim’s Theorem in the Frame of the
Theory of Relatives, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
 27

Bellucci, F., Pietarinen, A.-V. & Stjernfelt, F. eds. 2014. Peirce: 5 Questions.
VIP/Automatic Press.

Boole, G. 1847. The Mathematical Analysis of Logic. Cambridge: Macmillan, Barclay,

& Macmillan.

Boole, G. 1854. An Investigation of the Laws of Thought. Cambridge: Walton &

Maberly.

Brady, G. 2000. From Peirce to Skolem. Amsterdam: Elsevier Science.

Brent, B. 1987. Charles S. Peirce. Logic and the Classification of the Sciences,
Kingston/Montreal: MacGill-Queen’s University Press

Burch, R. W. 2011. Peirce’s 10, 28, and 66 Sign-Types: The Simplest Mathematics.
Semiotica 184, pp. 93–98.

Burks, A. W. 1946. Peirce’s Theory of Abduction. Philosophy of Science 13, pp. 301-
306.

Carnap, R. 1942. Introduction to Semantics, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Chauviré, Ch. 1994. Logique et Grammaire Pure. Propositions, Sujets et Prédicats Chez
Peirce. Histoire Epistémologie Langage 16, pp. 137–175.

Cheng, C.-Y. 1969. Peirce’s and Lewis’s Theories of Induction, The Hague: Martinus
Nijhoff.

Clark, G. 1997. New Light on Peirce’s Iconic Notation for the Sixteen Binary
Connectives. In Houser et. al. 1997, pp. 304-333.

Dedekind, R. 1888. Was sind und was sollen die Zahlen. Braunschweig: Vieweg.

Dekker, Paul 2001. Dynamics and Pragmatics of ‘Peirce’s Puzzle’, Journal of Semantics
18, pp. 211-241.

De Morgan, A. 1847. Formal Logic. London: Taylor and Walton.

De Morgan, A. 1860. On the Syllogism IV; and on the Logic of Relations. Transactions
of the Cambridge Philosophical Society 10, pp. 331-358.

Dipert, R. 1995. Peirce’s Underestimated Place in the History of Logic: A Response to

Quine. In Ketner, K. L. ed. Peirce and Contemporary Thought. New York: Fordham
University Press, pp. 32-58.

Dipert, R. 2006. Peirce’s Deductive Logic: Its Development, Influence, and

Philosophical Significance. In: Misak, C. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Peirce.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 287-324.
 28

Eco, U. 1975. Trattato di semiotica generale. Milano: Bompiani.

Eco, U. 1984. Semiotica e filosofia del linguaggio. Torino: Einaudi.

Fann, K. T. 1970. Peirce’s Theory of Abduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff.

Ferriani, M. 1987. Peirce’s Analysis of the Proposition: Grammatical and Logical

Aspects. In Ferriani, M. & Buzzetti, D. (eds.), Speculative grammar, universal grammar
and philosophical analysis of language. Amsterdam: Benjamins, pp. 149-172.

Fisch, M. H. 1982. The Range of Peirce’s Relevance, The Monist 65, pp. 123-141.
Reprinted in Fisch 1986, pp. 422-448.

Fisch, M. H. 1986. Peirce, Semeiotic and Pragmatism. Ed. by K. L. Ketner and C. J. W.

Kloesel, Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Fisch, M. H. & Turquette, A. 1966. Peirce’s Triadic Logic. Transactions of the Charles
S. Peirce Society 2, pp.71-85.

Forster, P. 1989. Peirce on the Progress and Authority of Science. Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society 25, pp. 421–452.

Frege, G. 1879. Begriffsschrift: eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache

des reinen Denkens. Halle: Louis Nebert.

Goudge, T. 1946. Peirce’s Treatment of Induction. Philosophy of Science 7, pp. 56-68.

Haack, S. 1993. Peirce and Logicism: Notes Towards an Exposition. Transactions of the
Charles S. Peirce Society 29, pp. 33–56.

Havenel, J. 2010. Peirce’s Topological Concepts. In Moore 2010, pp. 283-322.

Hilpinen, R. 1982. On C. S. Peirceʼs Theory of the Proposition: Peirce as a Precursor of

Game-Theoretical Semantics. The Monist 65, pp. 182-188.

Hilpinen, R. 1992. On Peirce’s Philosophical Logic: Propositions and Their Objects.

Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 28, pp. 467–488.

Hilpinen, R. 2004. Peirce’s Logic, in Gabbay, D.M., and J. Woods. 2004. Handbook of
the History of Logic. Vol. 3: The Rise of Modern Logic From Leibniz to Frege. Vol. 3.
Amsterdam: Elsevier North-Holland, pp. 611-658.

Hintikka, J. 1980. C. S. Peirce’s ‘First Real Discovery’ and Its Contemporary

Relevance. Monist 63, pp. 304-315.

Hintikka, J. 1996. The place of C. S. Peirce in the history of logical theory. In J.

Brunning, J. & Forster, P. eds. The Rule of Reason: The Philosophy of Charles Sanders
Peirce, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp. 13–33.
 29

Hintikka, J. 1997. Lingua Universalis vs. Calculus Ratiocinator: An Ultimate

Presupposition of Twentieth Century Philosophy. Dordrecht: Kluwer.

Hintikka, J. 2011. What the bald man can tell us. In: Biletzky, A. (ed.) Hues of
Philosophy: Essays in Memory of Ruth Manor. College Publications, London.

Hoffmann, M. 2010. Theoric Transformations. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce

Society 46, pp. 570–590.

Houser, N. 1993. On ‘Peirce and Logicism’: A Response to Haack. Transactions of the

Charles S. Peirce Society 29, pp. 57–67.

Houser, N., Roberts, D., Van Evra, J. eds. 1997. Studies in the Logic of Charles S.
Peirce. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

Jakobson, R. 1977. A Few Remarks on Peirce, Pathfinder in the Science of Language.

MLN 92, pp. 1026–1032.

Kapitan, T. 1992. Peirce and the Autonomy of Abductive Reasoning. Erkenntnis 37, pp.
1–26.

Kapitan, T. 1997. Peirce and the Structure of Abductive Inference. In Houser et. al. eds.
1997, pp. 477-496.

Kempe, A. B. 1886. A Memoir on the Theory of Mathematical Form. Philosophical

Transactions of the Royal Society of London 177, pp. 1-70.

Ketner, K. L. 1985. How Hintikka Misunderstood Peirce’s Account of Theorematic

Reasoning. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 21, pp. 407–418.

Lane, R. 1999. Peirce’s Triadic Logic Revisited. Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce
Society 35, pp. 284–311.

Lewis, C. I. 1918. A Survey of Symbolic Logic. Berkeley: University of California

Press.

Lupher, T. and Adajian, T. eds. 2015. Philosophy of Logic: 5 Questions. Copenhagen:

Automatic Press.

Mannoury, G. 1909. Methodologisches und Philosophisches zur Elementar-Mathematik.

Haarlem: P. Visser.

Merrill, D. D. 1997. Relations and Quantification in Peirce’s Logic, 1870-1885. In

Houser et. al. eds. 1997, pp. 158-172.

Merrill, G. H. 1975. Peirce on Probability and Induction. Transactions of the Charles S.

Peirce Society 11, pp. 90–109.

Moore, M. ed. 2010. New Essays on Peirce’s Mathematical Philosophy. Chicago: Open
Court.
 30

Morris, C. W. 1938. Foundations of the Theory of Signs. In Morris, C. 1971. Writings

on the General Theory of Signs. The Hague: Mouton.

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