Diagrammatic Thinking, Diagrammatic Representations, and the Moral Economy of Nineteenth-Century Science

Abstract

Abstract This chapter examines Peirce’s work on and with diagrams and places it in a historical and historiographical context. The chapter shows that Peirce’s philosophical reflections on diagrammatic representations and diagrammatic thinking are greatly enriched when placed explicitly in dialogue with the scientific practice of the time and considered from the perspective of what historians of science have characterized as its “moral economy.” It argues that diagrams and diagrammatic practices, as they emerged and consolidated throughout Peirce’s lifetime, were the shared common ground over which an ever-expanding community of scientists negotiated their reasonings and that debates over validity, rigor, perspicuity, and communicability were as much about issues of reliable representation as they were about the reliability and standing of scientists themselves. Peirce was right at the center of these debates, and his philosophical writings on diagrams, as well as his ambitious program for an innovative system of diagrammatic logic, reflect his active participation in them.