Jerry, List
JC: Jerry Chandler
AS: Arnold Shepperson
On 4/22/06, Jerry Chandler wrote:
JC: I presuppose that most readers of this list will find these statements to clash with their philosophy of physics, the philosophy of genera. I can merely add that the symbol system of physics is not the sole symbol system and that the philosophy of physics is not the sole philosophy of science. The philosophy of the chemical sciences is vastly more complex than the philosophy of physics because it must posit quantitative relations among individuals, species and genera. It must provide a source of generative grammars, not merely genera. Such is Life Itself.
AS: My reading of Peirce suggests that he was aware of the distinctions between such `grammars' and how much confusion arose among the philosophers of his time because they tended to take one of them (whether physical, chemical, biological, or whatever) as `defining' all the others. In Vol IV of the Collected Papers (and, I would guess, throughout the New Elements of Mathematics, a copy of Eisele's edition of which I would dearly love to get!) he goes to considerable lengths in exploring the role that the mathematics of transitive phenomena plays in grounding higher-order mathematical systems. Indeed, the importance of transitive phenomena in Peirce has recently been discussed briefly on the list. In short, we may well find that the very notion of a Symbol System involves transitivities, and that Peirce very thoroughly investigated this relation (as, of course, a species of the Logic of Relations!!).
Cheers
Arnold
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