The Categories

Abstract

This chapter examines Peirce’s categories which explain how we are able to make sense of our experiences of the world. He described the categories as Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness. Firstness is a disembodied quality that Peirce referred to as a ‘feeling’, which does not exist on its own and cannot be observed directly as a sensible quality or characteristic. It is characterised by being a possibility because it has the potential to be actualised. Secondness is about relation and interaction and appears as spatio-temporal objects, events or processes. It involves ‘otherness’ and is based on action and reaction. Firstness is instantiated, embodied or operationalised through Secondness. Thirdness is based on representation and refers to laws or generalities. It allows us to make predictions about the future because a Third is a generality and does not refer to particular, specific instances, which would be a Second. It involves a mediation process between sign and object. It enables us to understand the meaning of propositions or statements and concepts. Thirdness links the past with the present and the possible future, due to its characteristic of continuity. The chapter draws on a number of examples from education to illustrate and explain Peirce’s categories. These include undertaking postgraduate research, students’ experience of sitting through lectures, learning arithmetic tables and language learning in primates.