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Th e most familiar scheme of diagrams used in logic is known as Euler's circles. It is named aft er the mathematician Leonhard Euler who popularized it in his Letters to a German Princess (1768). Th e idea is to use spaces to represent classes of individuals. Charles S. Peirce, who made signifi cant contributions to the theory of diagrams, praised Euler's circles for their 'beauty' which springs from their true iconicity. More than a century later, it is not rare to meet with such diagrams in semiotic literature. Th ey are oft en off ered as instances of icons and are said to represent logic relations as they naturally are. Th is paper discusses the iconicity of Euler's circles in three phases: fi rst, Euler's circles are shown to be icons because their relations imitate the relations of the classes. Th en, Euler's circles themselves, independently of their relations to one another, are shown to be icons of classes. Finally, Euler's circles are shown to be iconic in the highest degree because they have the relations that they are said to represent. Th e paper concludes with a note on the so-called naturalness of Euler's circles. Euler adopts a circle to represent a set. Is Euler's circle a symbol or an icon? Th is is a classic question that shows that the distinction between a symbol and an icon is sometimes not clear-cut. (Shin 2002: 26)

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