Scheda Articolo

Peirce’s Chemistry of Concepts

in Versus n. 115, L'albero e la rete. Ricognizione dello strutturalismo, pp.89-105

Abstract

According to Roman Jakobson, Charles S. Peirce was a forerunner
of structuralism. Jakobson credited Peirce with the idea of the
priority of form over matter and of the whole over its parts; further,
for Jakobson Peirce developed a theory of oppositive relations.
The aim of this paper is to show that this view is misleading.
It will be shown that Peirce’s logic of relatives, his doctrine of the
composition of relative concepts (rhemata) and his conception of
continuous predicate or relation of representation are by no means
reducible to the standard structuralist approach.