As the human conversation with nature, science is our ongoing attempt to decode the message sent to us constantly by Nature, which message is the phenomenal world. This conversation will continue as long as our actions into the natural world have unexpected consequences. Skeptics may well doubt whether that message really means anything, but a scientist as such cannot be such a skeptic.
Nobody can doubt that we know laws upon which we can base predictions to which actual events still in the womb of the future will conform to a marked extent, if not perfectly. To deny reality to such laws is to quibble about words. Many philosophers say they are ‘mere symbols.’ Take away the word mere, and this is true. They are symbols; and symbols being the only things in the universe that have any importance, the word ‘mere’ is a great impertinence.
— Peirce (EP2:269)
Peirce does not say that symbols are the only realities – quite the contrary. He says that they alone have importance, which implies significance, or meaning; which in turn implies that reality is their Object.