The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce (Approaches to Semiotics [As]) by Don D. Roberts (PDF)

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User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐Peirce fused semantic and mathematical reasoning, and made breakthroughs in logic, algebra, and scientific method. It’s sad the bulk of his work remains unpublished; also, that much has to be gleaned from secondary literature. It would be sad if the other review on this page expressed Peirce’s current appreciation. It seems oblivious to Peirce’s life and production. For example, Peirce wrote on the back of his pages because poverty limited his paper supply. His graphs simplified algebraic logic, which has no lock on symbolic perspicacity: Whitehead and Russell’s axioms spread across pages of reference and notations, in proofs that that Peirce had accomplished in a single graph.

⭐Exactly as expected

⭐Charles S. Peirce was a mathematical logician, reasonably well-known around the start of the twentieth century. He is not often remembered now, at least not in my circles. This book does much to explain why.Peirce set about creating a visual notation for formal logic. The basic idea sounds familiar to anyone who’s seen Venn diagrams. (They came from Euler, actually, as did incredible numbers of other things. The term ‘Venn diagram’ follows the informal convention of naming the thing for the first researcher after Euler to work on it.) Peirce went the extra steps, beyond AND and NOT to existential and universal quantification.Although his graphical notations – several of them, and contradictory – are of historical interest, I really see no advantage over standard textual notation. The marks lack clear distinctions of order, in the sense that “for all X there exists Y where Z is true” differs from “there exists Y such that for all X, Z is true.” The diagrams uses lines, sometimes sprawling and forking across the page, where a simple variable symbol would have sufficed. In fact, a set of letter variables seem clearer in that each has visually distinct shape, unlike the lines. (Lines of different weight and style were already reserved for other purposes.) Worse, the notations were especially ungainly in the day when they were scribbled by hand into a type-set page. Peirce’s latest generation of diagrams included colors, metal tones, and more, for expressing possibilities and features of modal logics – decidedly inconvenient, in an age that lacked markers and convenient color printing. He even used the reverse of the sheet on which the graphs were drawn!Anyone devoted to visual representation of formal concepts should be aware of Peirce’s work, if only because bad examples can be so instructive. I have to admit, however, that the peculiar notation of ‘existential graphs’ has little practical purpose.//wiredweird

⭐Great book for people who want to structure qualitative algorithms, and do it in visual terms. I understood and appreciated Peirce’s genius with it. I recommend it to designers, to programmers, and to philosophers; even to mathematicians and to cosmologists, but rather more to intellectual artists and marketing scholars. Americans should be more proud of this guy, as neither of their info-tech and software giants would be there today had there not been Peirce’s Entitative and Existential Graphs conceptions and conventions there to replicate mechanistically. All computer and internet ‘User Experience’ design seems to be striving to fulfill these peculiar logical constructs, unique in that they don’t preclude illogical emotions. But a kind of national guilt prevents them, I suppose, for having allowed such a genius notoriously to perish in poverty. European philosophers and logicians should study Peirce and further his path, in my opinion, instead of popping their heads repeatedly on Popper and other swamping idiots passing moral judgements for logic. But that’s only my opinion, and I am the kind of weirdo that would tell you to go back to Aristotle and start again from there.Don Roberts has done an amazing job putting this work together from Peirce’s unorthodox rigor (-lessness). It could be improved, but it could also have been neglected, and the latter would be a shame. However, one needs to be familiar with Logic as a discipline to get on with this book, and it’s definitely not an easy read for beginners. As for the European discontent with Pragmatism, which usually bars further study of Peirce, I can only say that someone reading this review online would be a fool to pretend resistance to Pragmatism, and more specifically Pragmatism in the sense of Peirce’s Existential Graphs. By the way, Peirce invented this analytical/representational system in the 1890’s, apparently, and Roberts’s book was published in 1973; I read it a few months ago; and maybe in another 100 years someone will discover something profound in or with these graphs. The reviewer that compares Set Theory’s Venn diagrams (1880’s) with the Existential Graphs is quite right to be disappointed with this book. Euler’s diagrams, or whoever’s invented those first (before 1700’s – probably the ancient Greeks again), are more restrictive and therefore more user-friendly for synesthesia-limited people. Reality is different according to the myths we personally hold, and if you aren’t a fan of Pragmatism, you aren’t likely to find anything useful in Roberts’s book. I am a fan.

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