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Lady Welby’s correspondence and writings span a period of more than sixty years. She corresponded altogether only nine years with Peirce, from 1903 to 1911. It was Lady Welby who took the initiative of the correspondence after reading some entries written by Peirce in Baldwin’s Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology (1902). She had her publisher send her book What is Meaning? to Peirce. She was convinced that she could convert Peirce to the new science she had invented: Signi¤cs, also called Sensi¤cs. Peirce responded with delight for he himself saw the opportunity of converting a responsive reader to his Semeiotic. Neither surrendered, although Lady Welby never lost hope for her pet science while encouraging Peirce not to despair of his Semeiotic—for the worst reason she could think of: Of course I am fully aware that Semeiotic may be considered the scienti¤c and philosophic form of that study which I hope may become generally known as Signi¤cs. Though I don’t think you need despair of the acceptance of your own more abstract, logically abstruse, philosophically profound conception of Semeiotic . (Hardwick 1977: 91) Lady Welby is famous for the part she played in promoting ideas, and especially Peirce’s ideas, among the English and Continental intelligentsia by sending copies of Peirce’s most important letters to people like Bertrand Russell, C. K. Ogden, and Giovanni Vailati. Ogden’s reaction was decisive and it is mostly through him that Peirce became known, thanks to The Meaning of Meaning, written with I. A. Richards (Ogden and Richards 1923), and through him and - 8 Semeiotic and Signi¤cs peirce and lady welby Never confound, and never divide. —Lady Welby (Hardwick 1977: 21) Never block the path of inquiry. —Peirce F. P. Ramsey that Wittgenstein knew of Peirce (Deledalle 1964, 1972, 1981; Hardwick 1977; Schmitz 1985; Thayer 1968; Wittgenstein 1969). What Wittgenstein owed to Peirce is not easy to say, because he could apparently think for himself, and had read James, and had many talks with Ramsey who had a great esteem for Peirce’s logic and philosophy (Ramsey 1924, 1931) and used Peirce’s distinction between Type (Legisign) and Token (Replica) to explain Wittgenstein’s thought in his thorough review of the Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus (Ramsey 1923)—which review Wittgenstein read and discussed with Ramsey. However, Lady Welby seemed to have won here, for it is the question of meaning which became central in the current discussions instead of the question of sign, which was the crucial question for Peirce. One of Lady Welby’s mottoes was “Never confound, and never divide” (Hardwick 1977: 21). If we had to sum up her philosophy, we would say that she inclined more toward the therapeutic turn of Wittgenstein’s philosophy than the semeiotic turn of Peirce’s. She would have been delighted with Wittgenstein’s idea that the purpose of philosophy was to cure language of its diseases: “Philosophy is a battle against the bewitchment of our intelligence by means of language ” (Wittgenstein 1953, 1909); “A main cause of philosophical disease—a one-sided diet: one nourishes one’s thinking with one kind of example” (Wittgenstein 1953: 593); “What is your aim in philosophy? Shew the ®y the way out of the ®y bottle” (Wittgenstein 1953: 309). But of course the remedy is the same for her as for Peirce and Wittgenstein,as testi¤ed by the motto:“Philosophy does not result in ‘philosophical propositions’, but rather in the clari¤cation of propositions ” (Wittgenstein 1961: 4.112). This is a remedy that Peirce was the ¤rst to prescribe in How to Make our Ideas Clear, founding at the same time a new school of philosophy: pragmatism. “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of these effects is the whole of our conception of the object ” (5.402). We must not let ourselves be deceived by language. We have to be careful not “to mistake a mere difference in the grammatical construction of two words for a distinction between the ideas they express” (5.399). ETHICS OF TERMINOLOGY: MEANING AND METAPHOR Peirce’s ethics of terminology was bound to please Lady Welby. I welcome with gratitude your “profession of faith” on the ethics of terminology —a sadly neglected subject. It will be of the greatest value to me and I hope I may use it in a second edition of What is Meaning? (Hardwick 1977: 21) Lady...

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