Peirce’s sign theory as an open source R package

Abstract

Throughout Peirce’s writing, we witness his developing vision of a machine that scientists will eventually be able to create. Nadin (2010) raised the question: Why do computer scientists continue to ignore Peirce’s sign theory? A review of the literature on Peirce’s theory and the semiotics machine reveals that many authors discussed the machine; however, they do not differentiate between a physical computer machine and its software. This paper discusses the problematic issues involved in converting Peirce’s theory into a programming language, machine and software application. We demonstrate this challenge by introducing Peirce’s sign theory as a software application that runs under an open-source R environment.