Peirce's Cenopythagorean Categories

Charles Sanders Peirce, American philosopher, mathematician, scientist, author of such works as "How to Make Your Thoughts Clear," formulator of the Maxim of Pragmaticism, and a lifelong friend of William James, in 1867 presented a paper entitled "On a New List of Categories" to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, published the following year, in which he laid the groundwork for a Theory of Three Categories that pervades much of his work.

The scheme is a trichotomous architectonic, organizing the essentials of the pragmatic philosophy to which Pierce is credited as founder. The paper follows readings of Kant, Aristotle, and Hegel, and it is notedly dense.

FIRSTNESS

Quality of feeling. Ideas, chance, possibility. Vagueness, ephemeral. Reference to a ground, a pure abstraction of a quality. Essentially monadic. The Quale.

SECONDNESS

Reaction. Resistance. Dyadic relation. Brute facts, actuality. Singularity, discreteness. Reference to a correlate by its relate.

THIRDNESS

Representation. Habits, laws, necessity. Generality, continuity. Reference to an interpretation. Essentially triadic: sign, object, content of interpretation.