The nineteenth-century American philosopher and scientist Charles Sanders Peirce is considered to be one of the founders of semiotic, or the theory of signs. Although Peirce was a prolific writer, he never published his work on signs in an organized fashion, and as a result the scope of his thought is difficult to grasp. In this book, James Jakob Liszka presents a systematic and comprehensive account of Peirce's theory.

Although there are excellent critical and expository studies of Peirce's semiotic, this book is the first to integrate all the various branches of semiotic into a coherent picture of what Peirce meant by the discipline. A general introduction for those unfamiliar with Peirce's theory, it is also an attempt to resolve some of the scholarly issues that surround the great American philosopher, and to help achieve some consensus on the more controversial matters of interpretation.

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Liszka begins with a general overview of the discipline of semeiotic (which is Peirce's preferred spelling). Semeiotic plays a critical role in the system of sciences as Peirce understood it. Since all investigation involves signs, semeiotic is pivotal since it not only provides a general understanding of signs, but also investigates their proper use in the process of inquiry, for both the natural sciences and cultural studies.

The character of semeiotic in this regard turns out to be different from the semiology of Saussure, which was meant simply to be a branch of social psychology. Moreover, as a formal discipline, Peirce's semeiotic is broader than the contemporary sense of logic but incorporates most of its traditional concerns.

1. Next, in a chapter on grammar, Liszka explores Peirce's notions of the essential characteristics of signs, their principal components, sign typology, and classification. This is followed by a discussion of critical logic, the proper use of signs in the investigation of the nature of things. Finally, Liszka explains universal rhetoric - the use of signs within discourse communities, the nature of communication, and the character of communities best suited to promote fruitful inquiry.