Iconicity of Logic: and the roots of the “iconicity” concept

TY - JOUR

T1 - Iconicity of Logic

T2 - and the roots of the “iconicity” concept

AU - Stjernfelt, Frederik

PY - 2015/3

Y1 - 2015/3

N2 - It seems to be a standard assumption that Charles Morris originated the concept of “iconicity” on the basis of Peirce’s icon-index-symbol discussion. This paper locates the origin in Peirce himself, in the context of judging the merits of different mathematical and logic representations – the more iconic such representations generally being preferable to less iconic ones, for scientific purposes. In Peirce’s Collected Papers, “iconicity” occurs in the discussion of different conventions in the logic representation system called “Existential Graphs”. This paper provides the context of logic representations in order to show how Peirce’s articulation of the concept of “iconicity” comes out of the attempt to find as iconic a way as possible to depict logical relations. Moreover, this indicates a use of “iconicity”, from the very beginning, which addresses not only similarities between different visual representations – but also visual representations of abstract contents.

AB - It seems to be a standard assumption that Charles Morris originated the concept of “iconicity” on the basis of Peirce’s icon-index-symbol discussion. This paper locates the origin in Peirce himself, in the context of judging the merits of different mathematical and logic representations – the more iconic such representations generally being preferable to less iconic ones, for scientific purposes. In Peirce’s Collected Papers, “iconicity” occurs in the discussion of different conventions in the logic representation system called “Existential Graphs”. This paper provides the context of logic representations in order to show how Peirce’s articulation of the concept of “iconicity” comes out of the attempt to find as iconic a way as possible to depict logical relations. Moreover, this indicates a use of “iconicity”, from the very beginning, which addresses not only similarities between different visual representations – but also visual representations of abstract contents.

KW - Faculty of Humanities

KW - logic

KW - semiotics

KW - iconicity

KW - language

KW - Peirce

M3 - Journal article

SN - 1873-5037

SP - 35

EP - 53

JO - Iconicity in Language and Literature

JF - Iconicity in Language and Literature

ER -