Confines of Semiotics

In January 1907 Paul Carus proposed to Peirce to republish the Illustrations of the Logic of Science of 1877–1878 in book form. ¹ Though a tentative agreement seems to have been reached, and notwithstanding Carus’s insistence to pursue the project, ² nothing happened for the successive two years. Peirce’s work on the republication of the “Illustrations” seems to have begun in January 1909. ³ Initially, he intended to republish them with revisions, “both of thought and expression.” ⁴ But eventually he realized that in fact too many alterations were needed, and in August 1910 he resolved to accept Carus’s repeated suggestion to publish the papers in their original form while adding a preface “in which I state in general terms how what I then say ought to be altered, and I will here (if my strength holds out) try to indicate the points I should make.” ⁵ Several draft versions of the “Preface” survive in Peirce’s Nachlass, and some bear (a variation of) the title of the projected volume: Studies in Meaning (R 620), Studies in the Meaning of Our Thoughts (R 628), Essays on Meaning (640), Essays Toward the Full Comprehension of Reasonings (R 652). None of these draft versions of the “Preface” was eventually completed or submitted, however. In September Carus offered to Francis C. Russell the job of editing Peirce’s Illustrations, which the latter accepted. ⁶ But Peirce protested against this plan, writing that he hoped that “no notes will be added, in any form, by anybody else; for I should regard it as very unfair to exclude my own explanations and print in the volume any other person’s.” ⁷ The project reached an impasse, and in 1913 Carus, after having consulted with the British logician Philip Jourdain, eventually resolved to edit the Illustrations by himself, and wrote a “Publisher’s Preface.” At Peirce’s death in April 1914, the desire of republishing the Illustrations was still alive, but the project was yet to be completed when Carus died in 1919. The Illustrations have eventually been published, with Peirce’s revisions and annotations, by Cornelis de Waal in 2014. ⁸