One of the oldest topics in the history of economics is money. The definition and functions of money predate much of modern economics. Here the thesis will be that it is time to recognize the emergence of an abductive, semiotic function of money. Abduction is the process of conditionally and hypothetically imagining some course of future events. Semiosis is the individual and social process of using signs and symbols to interpret the possible meanings of past, present, and/or future events and experiences. The conception of semiotics explored here is that of one its leading founders, Charles S. Peirce who had deep interests in science, philosophy, and semiotics and extended his conception of semiotics to mathematics. Also, Peirce is usually credited for creating the idea of abduction. Peirce traces the idea of abduction back to Aristotle and three if not all four of the historic functions of money can be found in Aristotle’s writings. Recognition of an abductive semiotic function of money highlights the degree to which money facilitates the representation and contingent imagination of forward-looking intricate patterns of exchange, production, and finance for both transactors and scientists. This is a specific application of what Peirce regarded as a crucial aspect of humanity’s most economic resource, its semiotically facilitated ability to logically construct an inferential and conditional argument, an abduction, that something might happen in the future if the contingencies under which it is inferred are in fact realized.
