---
title: "Classification of the sciences (Peirce)"
chunk: 2/2
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classification_of_the_sciences_(Peirce)"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T03:35:44.596418+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

There in 1911 Peirce does not mention the 1906 division into logics of icons, indices and symbols. Critic and Methodeutic appear, as in 1902 and 1903, as the second and third main departments of logic. Analytic is now the first department and the word "Stechiology" goes unused. He includes in Analytic the consideration of issues which, back in his 1902 Carnegie Institute application, he had discussed in sections on logic with headings such as "Presuppositions of Logic" and "On the Logical Conception of Mind" that he had placed before the sections on logic's departments (stechiology, critic, and methodeutic).
On the question of the relationship between Stechiology and the Analytic that seems to have replaced it, note that, in Draft D of Memoir 15 in his 1902 Carnegie Institute application, Peirce said that stechiology, also called grammatica speculativa, amounts to an Erkenntnisslehre, a theory of cognition, provided that that theory is stripped of matter irrelevant and inadmissible in philosophical logic, irrelevant matter such as all truths (for example, the association of ideas) established by psychologists, insofar as the special science of psychology depends on logic, not vice versa. In that same Carnegie Institute application as in many other places, Peirce treated belief and doubt as issues of philosophical logic apart from psychology.

== Notes ==

== References ==
Peirce, C.S., 1902, "An Outline Classification of the Sciences", The Collected Papers, vol. 1, pp. 203–283 (1902) Eprint, from projected book Minute Logic.
Peirce, C.S., 1902, "On the Classification of the Theoretic Sciences of Research", Manuscript L75.350-357, Arisbe Eprint Archived 2013-11-03 at the Wayback Machine, from "Logic, Considered As Semeiotic", Manuscript L75, with draft sections labeled and interpolated into the final (submitted July 1902) version of the 1902 Carnegie Institute application, Joseph Ransdell, ed., Arisbe Eprint Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine.
Peirce, C.S., 1903, "A Detailed Classification of the Sciences", The Collected Papers, vol. 1, pp. 180–202 (1903) Eprint and Eprint, from "A Syllabus Of Certain Topics In Logic", the Essential Peirce, vol. 2, pp. 258–330.
Vehkavaara, Tommi, 2001, "The outline of Peirce's classification of sciences (1902-1911)", "Eprint" (PDF). (11.4 KiB).
Vehkavaara, Tommi, 2003, "Development of Peirce's classification of sciences - three stages: 1889, 1898, 1903", "Eprint" (PDF). (19.4 KiB).

== External links ==
Arisbe: The Peirce Gateway Archived 2022-11-30 at the Wayback Machine, Joseph Ransdell, ed.
The Commens Dictionary of Peirce's Terms, Mats Bergman & Sami Paavola, eds.
C.S. Peirce’s: Architectonic Philosophy, Albert Atkin, 2004, 2005, the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Speziali, Pierre (1973). "Classification of the Sciences". In Wiener, Philip P (ed.). Dictionary of the History of Ideas. ISBN 0-684-13293-1. Retrieved 2009-12-02.
Classification (of the sciences) (once there, scroll down) by Professor A. C. Armstrong Jr. (Wesleyan University) in the Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology, James Mark Baldwin, ed., 1901–1905.
Peirce's first classification of sciences (1889); Peirce's classification of theoretical sciences and arts (1898); Peirce's outline classification of sciences (1903). Compiled by Tommi Vehkavaara, 2003.