On the Logic of Drawing History from Symbols, Especially from Images

1. The Peircean Concept of Image Science: Phaneroscopy

The distinction on which all philosophy is based is between Images of Reason and Images of Sense. The distinction on which all Psychology is based is between Images of the Inner Sense and Images of the Outer Sense. The distinction on which Metaphysics is based is between Images as Images and Images as Representation. (Peirce: MS 920, p. 11)

Peirce granted Phaneroscopy, the study of the phaneron, the observable, a pivotal place within his architecture of scientific methods and the science of inference. As is well known, he divided the sciences into three categories: a Theoretical Science, which aims at the search for truth for the sake of truth, a Practical Science, which searches for truth and its purposes, and an Applied Science that aims at the testing and implementation of theoretical knowledge. He also complemented this primary division with a fourth category, the “Science of Inference,” with three subcategories: doctrine of observation or phaneroscopy, a doctrine of signs, and interpretation.¹ As the first of the three doctrines, Phaneroscopy has the capacity to study the origins of every thought process resulting in signs and interpretation.

All thought, Peirce argues, begins and ends in signs. Signs communicate ideas by linking past ideas with those of the future. However, a science of thought is not identical to a science of the sign. For the sign as the outcome of the reasoning process primarily represents past action; it can only explain the formal contingencies of signs, but never the process of its emergence. In contrast, a science of thought processes, such as pragmaticism, connects Phaneroscopy, Semeiotic (human intelligence), and Relational Logic, to include all three functional fields of Observation, Modelling, and Interpretation.

The epistemological search for a universal order of human knowledge and the continuous work to grasp it on logical foundations determine the overarching structure of Peirce’s writings. However, his logic model follows a dynamic process defined by relations, in which the hierarchy of sign elements appears situationally negotiable. In this model, the triadic activity of object-sensation, representamen-setting, and interpretant-realization constitutes a molecular unity of forces, the effect of which is simultaneously reinforced by the potential of further synaptic junctions. In Peirce’s relational model, the beginning of any cognitive process is first and foremost sensorial, and so is image reasoning; it begins with the description of sensory perception, triggering the phaneron, the collected sensory data. The phaneron as the tangible body that faces the observer becomes the nexus between external reality and its immediate perception, the focal point of semeiosis. Therefore, the questions Phaneroscopy, the science of the observable, addresses are the questions of the source of attention, and the circumstances of the reasoning process.

With Phaneroscopy, Peirce follows a double strategy: he leads the inquiring gaze into the logic of sign processes, while opening a contemplative space from which any meaning production and comprehension can originate.

By the phaneron I mean the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not. If you ask present when, and to whose mind, I reply that I leave these questions unanswered, never having entertained a doubt that those features of the phaneron that I have found in my mind are present at all times and to all minds. As far as I have developed the science of phaneroscopy, is occupied with the formal elements of the phaneron. (Bisanz: 2016, p. 58)

The phaneron is the sum of sensory perceptions and thought processes, activated and employed as information in the process of perception, independent of a physical reference reality. Observing, illuminating, comprehending, and determining are some of the consequences of the work with the phaneron. Peirce leaves no doubt that the focus on the phaneron arises from a concrete motivation: to bring something to light, to open it to inquiry and inspection. The phaneron presents itself and forces us to reason, even before we become aware of an interpretation. It triggers the interaction between the subject and the object without intervention and opens the space for semeiosis.

2. Visual Semeiosis

Visual expressions such as images are more than iconic representations of eidetic and chromatic information. As signs, images comprise an object, a representamen, and an interpretant. Yet, the visual semeiosis activates an additional network of relational processes, such as emotions and memorized experience. The emotional, energetic space of semeiosis also affects the image’s body, as it immediately impacts sign identity by determining its elements.

The organization of the pictorial space triggers a relational process to help our gaze navigate and “create” a virtual world beyond the visual reality. Susanne Langer sees a close relation between visual and virtual space: “Space as we know it in practical world has no shape. Even in science it has none, though it has ‘logical form.’ Space itself is amorphous in our active lives and purely abstract in scientific thought. It is a substrate of all our experience, gradually discovered by the collaboration of our several senses” (Langer, 1953, p. 71). The created space is primarily an illusionary space that expands beyond the limitedness of a framed canvas. Langer gives compelling arguments on how human intelligence has genuinely evolved as visual and cultural intelligence. “Virtual space, the essence of pictorial art, is a creation, not re-creation…in Cézannes reflections, that always center on the absolute authority of Nature, the relation of the artist to his model reveals itself unconsciously and simply: for the transformation of natural objects into pictorial elements took place in his seeing, in the act of looking, not the act of painting” (Langer, p. 78).

Hence, images as embodied memory of the phaneron represent the act of seeing; the phaneron as a virtual or non-existent reality, negates and refutes any origin and fixation. It is even arguable whether the phaneron as the result of experienced instance can be classified into physical categories of spacetime to unfold a temporal and spatial relation. Quantum physics addresses this shift from the dominance of physical laws of spacetime to consciousness as an essential faculty for survival. In the new reality, mathematical structures calculate each perceptual interface’s total sum of processed information resulting from visual perception as a central component for understanding realities. As the physicist Carlo Rovelli writes, “The brain elaborates an image of what it predicts the eyes should see” (Rovelli, 2021, p. 193). Rovelli refers to theories of visual cognition, such as developed by Donald Hofmann, who writes: “Our senses are simply a window on the objective reality.” (Hofmann, 2020) Hofmann goes further by declaring that vision is natural intelligence, and there is an evolutionary purpose for that. For him vision is an interface that gives us just enough information to keep us alive, with our eyes as the information detectors (Hofmann, 1998, pp. 172–173). The question of the reality of images remains closely intertwined with the question of the reality of virtuality. Both realities originate from the phaneron, with phaneroscopy being the method of studying their elements.

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Following this tradition, the book addresses symbolic expressions such as images as documents and instruments that shape our perceptions and reality. It establishes an image theory informed by pragmaticism to highlight the fundamental role of images as emerged from ideologies and as agents of cultural evolution from two defining perspectives: as representations of evolving social idiolects, and as instruments of cultural transformation. In the first part, pragmaticism and relational logic studies are drawn upon; in particular, epistemological features that give rise to cultural dynamics are discussed. In contrast, the second part examines concepts of pictorial representations to provide evidence for the symbolic nature of artefacts that represent realities and, subsequently, model perception.

The volume begins with a treatise written by Charles S. Peirce titled “On the Logic of Drawing History from Ancient Documents Especially from Testimonies,” submitted initially as a lecture for the National Academy of Sciences conference in Philadelphia in 1901. The paper is fundamental to understanding the method of pragmaticism, which Peirce explains and applies with concrete examples. In his later review of the conference, Peirce describes the paper as: “[…] an elaborate memoir, in which the method of balancing probabilities was combated as being, in most cases, illogical, a different method being developed and defended, with full details of the different conditions to be fulfilled”² (Ketner & Cook, 1979, p. 57.).