Peirce, Panofsky, and the Gothic

This paper aims to show that Peirce’s analogy of scholastic logic and Gothic architecture merits more than the dismissive note John F. Boler grants it in his essay “Peirce and Medieval Thought” (Boler 2004). Peirce does not just anticipate art historian Erwin Panofsky’s view of an analogy between the scholastic Summa and the Gothic cathedral. Habitus and habit-taking play a vital part in both analogies. I present William Whewell as a likely source of inspiration arousing Peirce’s interest in Gothic architecture, and suggest that Edgar Wind played a part in transmitting to Erwin Panofsky the Peircean idea of unconscious beliefs as expressed by habits. Thus this essay deals with two connections: on the one hand, the relation between ideas as embodied in the structure of scholastic treatises and of cathedrals, and on the other, the concept of habit linking Peirce and Panofsky. Research on the latter benefits from the publication of Panofsky’s correspondence, which reveals that his study of Gothic architecture and Scholasticism commenced four years earlier than hitherto suspected.