Trikonic

Trikonic, is a technique of triadic analysis-synthesis which has been developed by Gary Richmond based on the original idea of a possible applied science making three categorial distinctions, which philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, its creator, called “Trichotomic.” Peirce introduces trichotomic as the "art of making three-fold divisions.”

The symbol shown in Figure 1.0 is referred to as the ‘trikon’ symbol by Richmond (2005). It displays the divisions of three categorial elements and their relationship for the subject in consideration

A major part of trikonic analysis is the three Peircean categories; these consist of firstness, secondness and thirdness:

Another way of describing the basic understanding of these notions is from Sowa:

Trikonically represented, the categories are (Figure 2.0):

There are many ways in which these notions can be interpreted. These are can be represented as:

Peirce's Three Universes of Experience (Figure 3.0):

These in turn represent Peirce's three Universal Categories (Figure 4.0 The Universal Categories):

In addition to the universal categories, there are equivalent Existential Categories (Figure 5.0 The Existential Categories):

We can also trikonically analyse thought, by identifying three Logical Modalities (Figure 6.0 The Logical Modalities):

With these representations in mind, firstness, secondness and thirdness can be defined as the following:

There are six vectors that can be used in trikonic vector analysis; these are shown in Figure 7.0.

These six vectors have also been referred to as “directions of movement through the trikon” (Richmond, 2005). They are authentic permutations of the triad, i.e. they are different arrangements of the order of firstness, secondness and thirdness. They represent the relationships between firstness (1ns), secondness (2ns) and thirdness (3ns) for the object that is being analysed.

Within trikonic are six directions, which are all permutations of logical paths of relations keeping the notion of 1ns, 2ns and 3ns throughout the object under consideration.

You can interpret these in many ways, for example, the Determination Vector and Representation Vector (Please refer to Figure 8.0 and Figure 9.0).

The reasoning behind the exploration of the six vectors within the triad aims at bringing a new view on analysis and a more systematic treatment to some of the difficult issues which arise especially in semiotic analysis, i.e. the vector process is a graphically logical analysis with aspects of dependence and constraint, and correlation, which tie in with the "living" reflection of the categories by the semiotic triad.

The reasoning behind the vector analysis is to use the permutations within the triad for the theory and any actual semiosis, mostly the analysis of complex virtual communicative projects.Semiosis is defined as:

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