The role o f Peirce in the work of Jean-Jacques Nattiez is most easily detected through Nattiez’s adoption o f the Peircian sign complex (Nattiez 1990, 5ff) and his regular use of the term interpretant. Iconism, however, is also an important aspect o f Nattiez’s
semiotics both in theory and, more notably, in practice, and this will be discussed towards the end o f this section. Much insight can be gained into Nattiez’s theories by exploring the apparent correspondence between N attiez’s neutral level and the more generalized notion o f iconism: firstness. This point is not theorized by Nattiez but will be considered at some length here before attention is turned to an alternative conception of his project as focused upon music (or more accurately the score) as object or second rather than sign or first. Before this, however, N attiez’s employment o f the Peircian sign complex will be considered.
On first impressions Peircian semiotics could not be more important to Nattiez’s thought:
If I make his [Peirce’s] idea axiomatic to accommodate my conception o f musical semiology, I do so because every component of this volume - whether the basic theory o f the tripartition ... my critique o f other concepts o f musical semiology, or my music-analytical propositions - is grounded in the Peircian notion o f the infinite and dynamic interpretant.
But Nattiez’s definition o f the sign is developed from a very narrow reading (or misreading even) o f Peirce’s system. This is indicated in the quotation above by Nattiez’s reference to a dynamic interpretant and the exclusion o f the sister term final interpretant. Nattiez is clearly sensitive to this omission and includes a footnote to explain that ‘[o]ne can find elsewhere in Peirce’s writing a much more static conception of the sign and the interpretant’, but Nattiez defends his position by suggesting that ‘one has the option o f choosing from among his [Peirce’s] definitions’ (Ibid., n.8) and
elsewhere that Peirce’s thought is ‘complex, and so often contradictory’ (Ibid., 7).
Nattiez’s view is not surprising, because Peirce’s ideas are indeed complex and still poorly documented in published form (although the chronological edition of his work is improving this situation). But to describe Peirce’s thought as often contradictory misses the very real coherence in his thought after a perceptible shift around 1885 (see Murphey
1961, 301 ff and Hookway 1985, 113ff and Chapter 5 o f this thesis), and even then the sense o f continuity in position is arguably strong before and after this date.
The quotation from Peirce, cited by Nattiez to back up his notion of the infinite character o f the interpretant, is from ‘Minute Logic’, written in 1902. In Chapter 1 of this planned book Peirce does refer to the way in which an interpretant will ‘bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the same form, ad infinitum'’ (CP 2.92), but such a statement needs to be read in the context o f earlier statements in the same chapter where Peirce points to the regulative principle that acts upon the process o f semiosis, allowing us to gain a more and more accurate understanding of the world:
[W]e guess out the laws [of nature] bit by bit. We ask, What [s/c] if we were to vary our procedure a little? Would the result be the same? We try it. If we are on the wrong track, an emphatic negative soon gets put upon the guess, and so our conceptions gradually get nearer and nearer right. The improvements o f our inventions are made in the same manner.
(CP 2.86)
In much the same spirit Peirce rejects the idea that ‘there are no final causes, or ends’ because ‘[t]he organic world is full o f refutations of that position’ (CP 2.86). Having taken these earlier statements in Chapter 1 o f Minute Logic into account, we might then reflect upon the statement that directly follows the passage Nattiez cites. Having stated that an interpretant will ‘bring a Fourth into relation to that Object in the same form, ad infinitum' Peirce continues: ‘If the series is broken off, the Sign, in so far, falls short of the perfect significant character’ (CP 2.92). This suggests firstly that semiosis can be broken off (and is not necessarily infinite in a given case) but also that a perfect significant character is, in principle, obtainable.
That such questions are difficult is clearly acknowledged by Peirce in Minute Logic when he asks how it is possible that inquirers seem to have an extraordinary power to guess correctly when the possible hypotheses are so vast:
Two alternatives only are open. On the one hand, we may say that there is a direct power o f Reason to know how Reason will act; and that Nature is ruled by a Reasonable Power. On the other hand, we may say that the tendency to guess
nearly right is itself the result o f a similar experimental procedure. This involves a deeply interesting difficulty (not the mere stumbling over a regressus ad
infinitum) ...
(CP 2.86)
But despite the recognition o f the difficulty o f such matters, we again have a clear
indication that Peirce did not embrace an infinite regressus or progressus after about 1885 and was arguably uncomfortable with it before that date. On this subject Murphey asks why Peirce having ‘lived happily with this infinite regressus ad infinitum for eighteen years ... suddenly abandoned it in 1885?’ (Murphey [1961] 1993, 301). The central thrust o f Murphey’s explanation concerns Peirce’s attempt to theorize reality; Peirce could not accept a position that ‘degenerates into an extreme form of subjectivism in which we are lost in a phantasmagoric maze o f our own concepts. For one who called himself a realist, such a development was intolerable’ (Ibid.). But by insisting upon an unbounded semiosis Nattiez seems to characterize Peirce as embracing just such a
‘phantasmagoric maze’,16 which is clearly contrary to some of Peirce’s most fundamental tenets.
Nattiez’s conception o f semiosis as infinite (even random) is, as the quotation from Music and Discourse (Nattiez 1990) above indicates, closely related to his development of Molino’s tripartition and the subsequent emphasis upon and analysis o f the neutral
16 Consider for example Nattiez’s comparison o f semiosis (following Molino) to the parlour game where