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Peirce on Wonder, Inquiry and the Semiotic Ubiquity of Surprise

  • Elizabeth F. Cooke
Published/Copyright: April 26, 2014
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Chinese Semiotic Studies
From the journal Chinese Semiotic Studies Volume 8 Issue 1

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between surprise and wonder. Peirce develops a phenomenology of surprise as central to inquiry. In his essay “A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God”, Peirce examines this phenomenon of surprise in relation to the three semiotic universes: firstness, secondness, and thirdness. “Every inquiry whatsoever takes its rise in the observation, in one or another of the three Universes, of some surprising phenomenon”. Inquiry begins by contemplating one of the universes of signs, or their relations upon the discovery of some new and surprising dimension of these universes or their relations. Apparently one could begin inquiry and wonder about virtually anything, but what exactly motivates this process, and why is it motivated in some people sometimes and not others? And, further, what is the relationship between surprise and wonder when we consider that, for Peirce, surprise is ubiquitous throughout our experience? I argue that surprise is a form of error recognition, and that what distinguishes those surprises that lead to wonder is that they regard previous beliefs that we truly care about. Wonder in particular (as opposed to other inquiries) is prompted when a surprise reveals an error in a belief that we care about, making the pursuit to settle the question that arises a deeply personal one.

Keywords : surprise; wonder; inquiry; error; belief
Published Online: 2014-4-26
Published in Print: 2012-12-1

© 2014 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Front matter
  2. Global Semiotics: Bridging Different Civilizations —The 11th World Congress of IASS, Nanjing Normal University
  3. A Portrait of Professor Yiheng Zhao
  4. The Paradox of Translation
  5. Semiotics and Its Double-institutional Aspects: As Analyzing Methods and as Institutionalized Objects
  6. A Semiotic Perspective on the Language of Science
  7. The Theories of Value and Opposition Applied to Mathematics
  8. Zoomorphism: An Analytic Model for Drama Characters
  9. The Back of Mnemosyne A Cultural-semiotic Analysis of the Forgetting Mechanism of Culture
  10. “Le Soleil”. Representation or Re-presentation?
  11. An Analysis of Symbolized Character Images and Dual Discourses in Comic Novels
  12. Theoretical Models for the Rhetorical Analysis of Photomontage
  13. Demystification of an Ad Using Barthes’s Cultural Semiotics
  14. Introduction to the Special Section for Peircean Semiotics and His Philosophy of Inquiry
  15. Semiosis and Phase Transitions in Biology: a Peircean View
  16. Peirce on Wonder, Inquiry and the Semiotic Ubiquity of Surprise
  17. Semiotic Boundary Values, Spirit and Human Freedom
  18. Tartu Semiotics in 2012
  19. The Tartu Synthesis in Semiotics Today Viewed from America
  20. On Cognitive and Semiotic Functions of Shifters
  21. Pragmatical Aspects of Models of Sociocultural Space
  22. Sign Systems Studies and the Semiotic Journals of the World
  23. CogSem Notes IV
https://doi.org/10.1515/css-2012-0037
Keywords for this article
surprise; wonder; inquiry; error; belief

Articles in the same Issue

  1. Front matter
  2. Global Semiotics: Bridging Different Civilizations —The 11th World Congress of IASS, Nanjing Normal University
  3. A Portrait of Professor Yiheng Zhao
  4. The Paradox of Translation
  5. Semiotics and Its Double-institutional Aspects: As Analyzing Methods and as Institutionalized Objects
  6. A Semiotic Perspective on the Language of Science
  7. The Theories of Value and Opposition Applied to Mathematics
  8. Zoomorphism: An Analytic Model for Drama Characters
  9. The Back of Mnemosyne A Cultural-semiotic Analysis of the Forgetting Mechanism of Culture
  10. “Le Soleil”. Representation or Re-presentation?
  11. An Analysis of Symbolized Character Images and Dual Discourses in Comic Novels
  12. Theoretical Models for the Rhetorical Analysis of Photomontage
  13. Demystification of an Ad Using Barthes’s Cultural Semiotics
  14. Introduction to the Special Section for Peircean Semiotics and His Philosophy of Inquiry
  15. Semiosis and Phase Transitions in Biology: a Peircean View
  16. Peirce on Wonder, Inquiry and the Semiotic Ubiquity of Surprise
  17. Semiotic Boundary Values, Spirit and Human Freedom
  18. Tartu Semiotics in 2012
  19. The Tartu Synthesis in Semiotics Today Viewed from America
  20. On Cognitive and Semiotic Functions of Shifters
  21. Pragmatical Aspects of Models of Sociocultural Space
  22. Sign Systems Studies and the Semiotic Journals of the World
  23. CogSem Notes IV
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