Gary, List Gary R: “While Planck was cautious about explicitly theological language (although he was a practicing Lutheran), my sense is that he tended towards a view in which the universe’s ultimate reality is mind-like, far more general than human consciousness, perhaps more like a universal cosmic field in which human minds participate.”
Resonates with aspects of Quantum Field Theory (QFT) and the quantum void. Peirce’s and Planck’s interpretations are exceptional. Peirce, for example, appreciates that “consciousness seems limited to embodied and living beings”, and this resonates nicely with my own thinking. However, my exchanges with Grok focus more on Eastern philosophies, rather than Western. Too many Western interpretations are tinged with anthropocentric (god-leaning) biases, and that’s why I am more inclined to Eastern interpretations, which leave the god-question open. In my latest research (current paper under review with a journal), I factor in the parallels between the quantum void and Sunyata (the creative void of Buddhism/Hinduism), within a Peircean-semiotic context. My extensive convo with Grok covers the “creative void” in greater detail, around the notion that the “tensions” in the void (its potentialities) are essentially semiotic. If anyone is interested, DM me and I can send you a Word transcript of my convo with Grok… or I can post it to the forum, if there’s a way of doing this. If anyone is interested in my current paper that is under review, here’s a link to a preprint on Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/129898049/UPDATE_Association_as_Downward_Causation Cheers, sj From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 14 August, 2025 11:21 PM To: [email protected]; [email protected]; Evgenii Rudnyi <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary Gary F, Evgenii, List GF: I guess we are assuming that what Planck called “consciousness” is essentially what Peirce called “mind.” GR: Not exactly. But see below. GF: But Peirce was very clear that there is much more to mind than consciousness — and that consciousness seems limited to embodied and living beings. For instance, he wrote that “Since God, in His essential character of Ens necessarium, is a disembodied spirit, and since there is strong reason to hold that what we call consciousness is either merely the general sensation of the brain or some part of it, or at all events some visceral or bodily sensation, God probably has no consciousness" (boldface added) GR: Yet that "probably" is significant, especially since he places it in the context of "what we call consciousness." In his relatively late Florence lecture, from which I quoted in my original post, Planck says "There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force. . . We must assume behind this force a conscious and intelligent Mind”. But why assume that either the 'consciousness' or the 'intelligence' of Mind is like ours, or at least very much like ours for either Planck or Peirce? I doubt that either Peirce nor Planck thought that if God has consciousness that it is anything like our human consciousness. And some of this may be a matter of the extremely fallible terminology that everyone who tackles Mind in this cosmological sense is forced to employ. While Planck was cautious about explicitly theological language (although he was a practicing Lutheran), my sense is that he tended towards a view in which the universe’s ultimate reality is mind-like, far more general than human consciousness, perhaps more like a universal cosmic field in which human minds participate. In the Wikipedia article on him, renowned historian of science, John Heilbron, relates that when asked about his religious views, Planck replied 'that although he had always been deeply religious, he did not believe "in a personal God, let alone a Christian God".' Very strong words from a German Lutheran. GF: It seems to me that in the physical world, there are three ontological requirements for anything to happen, to change, or to be determined: time, energy and matter. I find it difficult to imagine that any of them can be more primordial than the other two. This doesn’t seem compatible with Peirce’s cosmology of the 1890s. GR: While it may be that "time, energy and matter" are required once there is " anything to happen, to change, or to be determined," that is, once there is a universe. But when I think of Peirce's "cosmology of the 1890s" I immediately think of the final 1898 lectures, and especially the famous blackboard analogy. Perhaps it would be helpful to review it as, in my view, it puts considerable light on what he means by cosmic Mind, and I will begin that review in a separate post, perhaps a separate thread. But first I want to address Evgennii's remarks. Evgennii wrote: "I would be cautios with this Planck's citation. I have seen it on Internet but this paper as such is not available. Probably he has said this but he was already 86 in 1944. And I have not seen something like this in his previous works." I had earlier referenced two quotations by Planck, the one you pointed to. “There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind -- this mind is the matrix of all matter.” (“The Nature of Matter” (Das Wesen der Materie), Florence, 1944) I'm not sure what his being 86 has much to do with Planck's comment as we are all familiar with scientists and other intellectuals who have worked productively in their old age, and from what I've read, the last few years of Planck's life were full and vibrant. He was frequently visited by famous scientists, for example, Einstein, and there seems to me no reason to think that he was not 'of sound mind' when he gave the 1944 lecture in Florence. As to the publication of the 1944 lecture, so far all I've been able to find is this: Das Wesen der Materie [The Nature of Matter], a 1944 speech in Florence, Italy, Archiv zur Geschichte der Max‑Planck‑Gesellschaft, Abt. Va, Rep. 11 Planck, Nr. 1797; the German original is as quoted in <https://archive.org/stream/GreggBradenTheSpontaneousHealingOfBelief/Gregg%20Braden/Gregg%20Braden%20-%20The%20Spontaneous%20Healing%20Of%20Belief#page/n1> The Spontaneous Healing of Belief (2008) by Gregg Braden, p. 212. As to your comment "I have not seen something like this in his previous works," the first quotation I gave is from 1931, and while not from one of his lectures or pape: “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” (The Observer, January 25, 1931) While not from one of his lectures or papers. I see no reason to doubt the source. Best, Gary R On Wed, Aug 13, 2025 at 12:10 PM <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: Gary R, list, I guess we are assuming that what Planck called “consciousness” is essentially what Peirce called “mind.” But Peirce was very clear that there is much more to mind than consciousness — and that consciousness seems limited to embodied and living beings. For instance, he wrote that “Since God, in His essential character of Ens necessarium, is a disembodied spirit, and since there is strong reason to hold that what we call consciousness is either merely the general sensation of the brain or some part of it, or at all events some visceral or bodily sensation, God probably has no consciousness. Most of us are in the habit of thinking that consciousness and psychic life are the same thing and otherwise greatly to overrate the functions of consciousness” ( <https://gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm#gncx> CP 6.489). This is fully compatible with Gregory Bateson’s Mind and Nature: A Necessary Unity (1979) and with the usage of “consciousness” in the sciences of our time that deal with the subject. Peirce does use the terms “Mind” and “Thought” as synonyms, for the most part, and since Thirdness is predominant in both, clearly Mind has the power to determine what happens in both the psychical and the physical worlds (which are of course not entirely separate). As implied by Peirce’s reference Thirdness as that which “brings about a Secondness,” and his definition of the verb “determine” (“to limit by adding differences”), determination is that aspect of causality which imposes limits on which possibilities can be actualized in the flow of time (and thus be real possibilities?). It seems to me that in the physical world, there are three ontological requirements for anything to happen, to change, or to be determined: time, energy and matter. I find it difficult to imagine that any of them can be more primordial than the other two. This doesn’t seem compatible with Peirce’s cosmology of the 1890s. Love, gary f. Coming from the ancestral lands of the Anishinaabeg } The revelation of the Divine Reality hath everlastingly been identical with its concealment and its concealment identical with its revelation. [The Bab] { <https://substack.com/@gnox> substack.com/@gnox }{ <https://gnusystems.ca/TS/> Turning Signs From: <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> On Behalf Of Gary Richmond Sent: 12-Aug-25 20:26 To: Peirce List < <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Planck and Peirce on mind as primary, matter secondary List, Since my youth I've been interested in what was once called the 'new physics', especially cosmology and quantum theory, from an amateur's standpoint, perhaps beginning in middle school when my older brother, Richard, gave me a book, The Boy Scientist (A Popular Mechanics Book) by John Bryan Lewellen (1955). In my reading concerning quantum theory, every once in a while I come across this quotation by Max Planck. “I regard consciousness as fundamental. I regard matter as derivative from consciousness. We cannot get behind consciousness. Everything that we talk about, everything that we regard as existing, postulates consciousness.” (The Observer, January 25, 1931) Planck expanded on this idea in the course of his work. For example, in a 1944 lecture): “There is no matter as such. All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particle of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together. We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent mind -- this mind is the matrix of all matter.” (“The Nature of Matter” (Das Wesen der Materie), Florence, 1944) Of course each time I read such quotations I can't help but think of this famous Peirce quotation. "The one intelligible theory of the universe is that of objective idealism, that matter is effete mind, inveterate habits becoming physical laws." CP 6.25 It would appear that both thinkers saw Mind as the ultimate foundation of Reality including, of course, our experience of it, and that matter only makes sense within that framework. In short, both argue that the existence of matter presupposes mind, ". . . the matrix of all matter” as Planck put it. So it would appear that Planck, the so-called 'father of quantum theory', and Peirce, the 'founder of philosophical pragmatism' (and 'founder of semeiotics' -- at least the triadic form of it) both advanced this idea, yet from somewhat different standpoints: Planck from investigations at the forefront of the physics of his time, Peirce from the forefront of investigations into logic as semeiotic. Peirce developed his position via a comprehensive philosophical 'system', incomplete as it may be in certain regards. For him, mind and matter are not separate 'substances' (which is dualism) but, rather, proceed along a continuum, matter appearing as the more fixed, habitual form of mind’s activity, mind being more 'fluid' (while his semiosic synchecism allows for the evolution of both and together). To me, Peirce’s view on the matter seems more 'naturalistic' than Planck's as he places the primacy of mind within an evolutionary cosmology, while Planck attributes it to a singular conscious source. As is well known, they both characterized themselves as theists, although it can be argued (and I do mean both pro and con) that each saw God/Mind as a unifying, rational, ordering principle of the cosmos and less the anthropomorphic deity of traditional theology. And both emphasized that science and religion needn't be in conflict, for Planck because he considered that they deal with different aspects of reality: famously, science with the how of things, religion with the why of them. I'm not sure at the moment how I'd characterize Peirce's position on this matter. Any thoughts there? As I see it, and in a nutshell, for Planck mind/consciousness is an irreducible point d'origin that underlies all physical existence. For Peirce it is the ongoing, universal, continuous, semiosic process from which matter forms. Planck’s vision is more reflective, leaning towards personal metaphysical assertions; Peirce’s vision is semiotically structured, mind seen within a more fully developed, detailed, and considerably more systematized account of cosmic development. As always, I'd be interested in what forum members think about any of this matter of Planck and Peirce seeing mind as primary, matter secondary Best, Gary R _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ► PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. 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