Abstract
The ontological implications of the Peircean Categories, as set forth most clearly in Peirce’s summative architectonic statement, “New Elements,” and referenced elsewhere in Peirce’s body of writings, are examined with reference to the existent or physical universe. The Peircean universal ontological Categories Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness are shown to give rise to a cosmos that is triadic and representational in essence. This immanently representational cosmos, denominated the “Book Universe,” is shown to be evidenced by the representational contours of both the mathematical and of the conceptual framing of the three broad domains of theoretical physics, the quantum, classical, and relativistic domains. This triadic “Book Universe” model is both characterized and also contrasted with the “Block Universe” model, and is seen to incorporate both time and space as emergent representational characteristics, and to be manifest, qua triadic Representamen, in terms of a “foliated eternalism” that requires both antecedent and parallel cosmoi.
References
Bonta, Steven. 2015. A Peircean typology of cultural prime symbols: Culture as category. Semiotica 207(1/4). 251–277. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2015-0038.Search in Google Scholar
Bonta, Steven. 2018. The lens of firstness: Shamanic/Aboriginal culture as cosmos-sign. Semiotica 221(1/4). 143–174. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2016-0139.Search in Google Scholar
Bonta, Steven. 2020a. The Peircean sign as model for semiotic structures in Mandarin Chinese. Language and Semiotic Studies 6(1). 1–30.10.1515/lass-2020-060101Search in Google Scholar
Bonta, Steven. 2020b. The Dagoba and the Gopuram: A semiotic contrastive study of the Sinhalese Buddhist and Tamil Hindu cultures. Semiotica 236/237(1/4). 167–198. https://doi.org/10.1515/sem-2018-0137.Search in Google Scholar
Bonta, Steven. 2021. The representation of semiotic structures in language. Language and Semiotic Studies 7(2). 1–85.10.1515/lass-2021-070201Search in Google Scholar
Carroll, Sean. 2010. From eternity to here: The quest for the ultimate theory of time. New York: Dutton.Search in Google Scholar
Dainton, Barry. 2010. Time and space, 2nd edn. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.10.1017/UPO9781844654437Search in Google Scholar
Gold, Thomas. 1962. The arrow of time. American Journal of Physics 30. 403–410. https://doi.org/10.1119/1.1942052.Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1931–1966. The collected papers of Charles S. Peirce, 8 vols., C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss & A. W. Burks (eds.). Cambridge: Harvard University Press. [Reference to Peirce’s papers will be designated CP followed by volume and paragraph number].Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1992. Essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, vol. 1, N. Houser & C. Kloesel (eds.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Reference to vol. 1 of Essential Peirce will be designated EP 1.]Search in Google Scholar
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1998. Essential Peirce: Selected philosophical writings, 2 vols., Peirce Edition Project (eds.). Bloomington: Indiana University Press. [Reference to vol. 2 of Essential Peirce will be designated EP 2.]Search in Google Scholar
Price, Huw. 1996. Time’s arrow and Archimedes’ point. Cambridge: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195117981.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans. 1944. Philosophic foundations of quantum mechanics. New York: Dover.Search in Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans. 1958. The philosophy of space & time. New York: Dover.Search in Google Scholar
Robertson, John. 1994. Linguistic implications of the Peircean sign and an analysis of the English inflectional morphemes -ing, -ed, and -s. Semiotica 102(3/4). 179–223.10.1515/semi.1994.102.3-4.179Search in Google Scholar
Smolin, Lee. 2013. Time reborn: From the crisis in physics to the future of the universe. Boston: Mariner.Search in Google Scholar
Turley, Jeffrey & John Robertson. 2003. A Peircean analysis of the American-Spanish clitic pronoun system. Semiotica 145(1). 21–70. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.2003.052.Search in Google Scholar
Weyl, Hermann. 1952. Space – time – matter. New York: Dover.Search in Google Scholar
Wheeler, John Archibald. 1989. Information, physics, quantum: The search for links. In Proceedings of the 3rd international symposium on the foundations of quantum mechanics, Tokyo, 354–368. Tokyo: Physical Society of Japan.Search in Google Scholar
© 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
