Colligation or the logical inference of interconnection

The concept of interconnection is fundamental to the modelling of discrete, physical systems. On the basis of centuries of scientific experience, everyone will agree that the concept is part of a logically consistent approach, permitting us to draw conclusions, verifiable by observation, from basic laws or assumptions. Yet interconnection as an abstract concept seems to be without scientific underpinning in pure logic. Adopting a historical viewpoint, our aim is to show that the reasoning of interconnection may be identified with a neglected kind of logical inference, called ‘colligation’ by Charles Sanders Peirce.