Peirce’s Notion of Diagram Experiment. Corrollarial and Theorematical Experiments with Diagrams

Abstract

An important idea in Peirce’s doctrine of diagrammatical reasoning is the notion of using the diagram as a tool for making deduction by performing rule-bound experiments on the diagram. This paper surveys the idea and its connections to central concepts in Peirce’s philosophy of logic, epistemology, and metaphysics, such as the notions of dicisign (proposition), of corollarial and theorematical reasoning, of abduction, of continuity, of real possibilities.