**Firstness** is where [[new knowledge]] comes from. It is almost pre-verbal, outside language. **Secondness** has to to with the real, material world. **Thirdness** has to do with conceptual, cognitive phenomena. It's associated with things we already know. #### Other connections You can see how this applies to things like [[icon, index and symbol]] etc. See [[for Peirce, everything is triadic]]: ![[for Peirce, everything is triadic]]