ONT Re: Logic As Semiotic
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| How often do we think of the thing in algebra?
| When we use the symbol of multiplication we do not
| even think out the conception of multiplication, we think
| merely of the laws of that symbol, which coincide with the
| laws of the conception, and what is more to the purpose,
| coincide with the laws of multiplication in the object.
| Now, I ask, how is it that anything can be done with
| a symbol, without reflecting upon the conception,
| much less imagining the object that belongs to it?
| It is simply because the symbol has acquired a nature,
| which may be described thus, that when it is brought before
| the mind certain principles of its use -- whether reflected on
| or not -- by association immediately regulate the action of the
| mind; and these may be regarded as laws of the symbol itself
| which it cannot 'as a symbol' transgress.
|
| CSP, CE 1, page 173.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "Harvard Lectures 'On the Logic of Science'", (1865),
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Volume 1, 1857-1866',
| Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.
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