Fulfilling Peirce's dream: Conceptual structures and communities of inquiry

Abstract

C. S. Peirce, as a philosopher, logician, and scientist, argued that we should “adopt our logic as our metaphysics,” and that a system of graphical logic could provide an experimental means to “illustrate the general course of thought.” In particular, Peirce hoped that his Existential Graphs would develop into “the logic of the future.” This paper provides an introduction to the proceedings of the International Conference on Conceptual Structures '97, and explores these two propositions as the basis for what may be the first articulate model of information and knowledge processing, and the direct antecedant of Conceptual Graphs, first developed in the work of John Sowa [19] [20]. The kind of “experiments” Peirce foresaw are exact (but still intuitively available) representations of problems and conceptual relations that permit the development of research groups and communities, such as the Conceptual Graphs and Formal Concept Analysis communities today. The paper outlines the development of Conceptual Graphs from Peirce's Existential Graphs and more recent sources in logic, computational linguistics, semantic networks, and artificial intelligence. A brief account of the planning and the program for ICCS'97 follows, detailing the intention of the Program Committee and the Editorial Board to broaden participation in this conference, and in the growing community of inquiry in many fields where a graphical representation of conceptual structures is proving fruitful.