The Tradition of Symbolic Knowledge in Charles S. Peirce’s Thought

Abstract

The existence of links between Peirce’s theory of signs and Leibniz’s arguments in favour of symbolic knowledge is beyond doubt. The aim of this paper is to place Peirce’s thought in the tradition of symbolic knowledge in formal sciences. The starting point is Peirce’s criticism to the Cartesian notion of intuition.  Hereafter, the paper will focus on Peirce’s notion of iconicity according to the theory of signs, and its role in the characterization of formal sciences. This notion of iconicity will be related to the subrogative and ecthetic function of symbolic knowledge, but the essential analytic function of icons will be stressed too. On this basis, it will be argued that, even if Peirce’s thought is nourished by the tradition of symbolic knowledge, his iconic conception of formal sciences goes beyond this tradition.