The Category of Thirdness in the New Mechanical Philosophy

Abstract

This paper discusses some of the possible connections between the principles of modeling in the new mechanical philosophy and the modeling used by Charles S. Peirce in his work on categories and evolutionary theory. The main goal is to show that the theoretical approaches used in the new mechanism can be beneficial for disciplines that are not clearly labelled as either humanities or natural science – for example, biosemiotics – and that this philosophical movement can help close the gap between natural science and the humanities. In individual chapters, this text deals with: the difference between the doctrine of the universal mechanism and the doctrine of the new mechanism, exploring the concept of the category of Thirdness and evolutionary theory in the work of Charles S. Peirce and finally focusing on the similarities between Peirce’s work and the approach of the new mechanical philosophy.