Bill, Joe, list,

Well, the Pluto example is an intriguing one.
BB: The experiential evolution in the conception of Pluto as a planet can be described as the new information that surprised even the scientists.  This scenario seems to me to fit pretty well Peirce's sketch of the way things necessarily happen in social groups.  But it also involves features I wonder how Peirce would work out in the terms of his sketch,  In some news source, I saw the vote of the astronomers hailed as a triumph of science over romance.  And so it appears at first glance.  But what we have an instance of tenacity ("This is how we have always defined a planet,") propped up by the authority of science, the community of investigators. We can certainly say there has been an advance in information.  But has there been an evolutionary advance in the mode of conception, or just a shift in whose conceptions are valued?

Has there been an evolutionary advance in the mode of conception? A good question. To my mind Peirce would certainly not had applauded at a decision by vote. What is at stake here, is a possible change (or need for a change) in more fundamental issues, those of nominalistic or realistic stance. In other words, is the basic issue about definitions? Or is it about something, which shows that definitions do not play the part they are commonly thought to play in nominalistic way of thinking. Which brings to mind how Peirce criticized the common modern view of geometry as based on definitions, not on what is undoubtedly hold to be true of things ( somewhere in vol.3 of CP).

So to me it seems. on the basis of the information provided by you, that this case was just a shift in whose conceptions are valued, decided in the way constitutive to modern gallup-democracy (which I view as a twisted and peculiar mode of the method of authority).
Kirsti Määttänen
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