17 © Springer International Publishing AG 2017 I.A. Ibri, Kósmos Noetós, Philosophical Studies Series 131, DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-66314-2_2 Chapter 2 Realism and the Categorial Conception of the World J’ai crée les fêtes, tous les triomphes, tous les drames. J’ai essayé d’inventer de nouvelles fuers, de nouveaux astres, de nouvelles langues. J’ai cru acquérir des pouvoirs surnaturels. Eh bien! je dois enterrer mon imagination et mes souvenirs! Une belle gloire d’artiste et de conteur emportée! Moi! moi que me suis dit mage ou ange, dispensé de toute morale, je suis rendu u sol, avec un devoir à chercher, et la réalité rugueuse à éteindre! RIMBAUD, Une Saison en Enfer Peirce’s Phenomenology, as simply confned to the universe of appearances, indifferently scrutinizes the elements relevant to the entirety of experience, whether of an interior or exterior nature. The phenomenological inventory of experience identifes three modes of being of the phenomenon, and these constitute Peirce’s three phenomenological categories. The frst category was delineated as that ele- ment of the phenomenon represented by the qualities of feeling in the inner sphere, and by the diversity and variety of the world’s qualities in the outer sphere. Secondness, in turn, brought with it the experience of alterity, the idea of other, of brute force, which is characterized by the reaction of an individual object against a frst consciousness, which becomes the fulcrum of all thoughts. In thought as third- ness is confgured the experience of mediation between a frst and a second, and which is extensive in time insofar as it is general and maintains a link between past and future. The regularities observed in the world translated themselves as phenom- ena of thirdness, since they required a consciousness that experiences in time, and thus is distinct from those forms of consciousness that are under the immediacy of the frst and second categories. Phenomenology so expounded as a science of appearances quite fttingly can be considered a naïve science, given the simplicity of its observations. Perhaps, it should be contested as a science, given that this title instills the most sophisticated abstractions and conclusions of logical nature. The reply is that phenomenological research possesses a scientifc character, attributed by Peirce, due to the universality intended by the categories of experience and by the fact that they may be put to the test by any observer.