Gary R, List, Thank you for sharing this interpretation of the Blackboard analogy. I wanted to ask about one assertion: "Sure, this is all conjectural -- there is certainly no scientific means to explore it."
Are you suggesting that: (1) at the present time, there doesn't appear to be any scientific means to explore or test Peirce's cosmological conjectures about the evolution of order, including the spatial and temporal ordering of things in the very early universe; or (2) at the present time, we can't conceive of any possible tests, but we might be in a better position to come up with some in the future; or (3) there are no such tests, as a matter of principle, that can be conducted to confirm one hypothesis and disconfirm another perhaps because we are talking about a "time before time". For my part, I think we'll be in a better position to explore and put scientific hypotheses to the test if we can make them more exact--and the blackboard analogy is part of an argument is designed to do just that. As such, I think Peirce is trying to show us a path to follow in our scientific inquiries to address the concerns you are raising --Jeff ________________________________ From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Gary Richmond <[email protected]> Sent: Friday, August 15, 2025 8:37 PM To: Peirce List <[email protected]> Cc: Gary Fuhrman <[email protected]>; Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Peirce's Blackboard analogy for the 'time' before time was List, Gary F, Jon, A while back in a lengthy post discussing the Blackboard analogy that Peirce offers in the penultimate lecture of the 1898 series, I attempted to outline. that cosmological lecture. Indeed, in my view the blackboard analogy is profoundly cosmological and, as such, helps illustrate Peirce's vision of a realm of potential dimensions and qualities not yet manifest, imagining the conditions for a universe yet to come into being, to emerge as a cosmos, an evolving semiosic continuum I mentioned in my last post in the thread on Planck and Peirce on mind that I thought that perhaps it would be helpful to review that analogy since some here may not be familiar with it, while others might have some fresh thoughts regarding it, especially in the context of the idea that Peirce proposes: that mind is fundamental, matter being derivative. See: CP 6.203 - 209, The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898, published as Reasoning and the Logic of Things. In the penultimate lecture in the 1898 series we are asked to imagine a clean blackboard representing 'the original vague potentiality': an indeterminate, undifferentiated continuum of possibilities. That is, the blackboard doesn't represent absolute nothingness, but rather everything possible in general, a proto-field of generative possibilities which may become an existent universe. Peirce starts with a clean blackboard (a kind of sheet of assertion), what I've called an ur-continuity (thus, he presupposes 3ns as being 1st) upon which anything might be drawn (by whom? Peirce seems to suggest, by divine Mind). Earlier he had called this 'time before time', that is, before the putative 'Big Bang' (which, of course, has become dogma among mainstream physicists, although questioned by some physicists such as Roger Penrose, Lee Smolin, Paul Steinhardt, and Neil Turok). Earlier in his cosmological musings he had hypothesized this 'time before time was' as a tohu bohu, an absolute nothing. But later in his cosmological reflections he reconceives what he originally thought to be pure nothing to be, rather, a swarming of potential characters (in the 1898 lectures he calls these "Platonic ideas" of which there are an infinite number, only some of which will appear in any given universe which might come into existence). These might inform a universe depending on which characters might be drawn together on the ur-continuity of the blackboard. As Peirce describes it, drawing a chalk mark on the chalkboard introduces a discontinuity separating the surfaces of the blackboard and the chalk mark. The boundary between blackboard and white chalk is neither of these nor both together, but a 2ns: the reaction between the two. The chalk mark is a 1ns, something wholly new springing into being, their interaction a 2ns. The appearance of 'something' (the chalk line, the 1ns) isn't out of an 'absolute void' but, rather, springs from the infinite possibilities within the original continuity. As more characters start to 'stay' on the blackboard and interact (2ns), what one might call 'proto-habits' are formed. So 3ns is 1st (cf. the discussion of involution in 'The Mathematics of Logic') before a universe comes into being; 3ns in two senses: 1. the original continuity, the ur-continuity upon which 1nses play and interact', and 2. the habits formed as some of these characters stay, i.e., 'stick' to the blackboard. Thus a universe such as ours doesn't start in pure 1ns as Peirce first imagined, but emerges with 2ns and incipient habits (3ns) within the context of the original continuity (3ns) represented by the blackboard, thus creating the conditions for a universe such as ours to come into being: the emergence of energy, time, and space, as Gary Fuhrman wrote. Once this happens a universe such as ours becomes ever more rational as laws evolve. (As already hinted at, Peirce suggests that in this time-before-time there is the possibility of any number of universes emerging -- a kind of early 'many universes' theory). Sure, this is all conjectural -- there is certainly no scientific means to explore it. But unless one is ready to believe that time, energy, and space simply emerge from nothing (which is basically what the Big Bang theory amounts to even given some 'quantum fluctuation', etc. alternatives), one has to imagine a time before time, exactly what Peirce did in conceiving the blackboard metaphor. Whether one finds his argumentative persuasive or not is another matter. I would encourage anyone who hasn't yet read the penultimate chapter of Peirce's Reasoning and the Logic of Things (or even CP 6.203 - 209) to do so since what I've written above includes several of my own ideas and terminology. For me, the blackboard analogy suggests an ur-continuity upon which divine agency can ‘scribe’ characters, including the universal categories, as proto-cosmic potential. Some selection of the infinite variety of these were made manifest into our trichotomic semiosic universe: an analogy for primordial indeterminacy to become structured cosmos. For an extended discussion of and an interesting expansion of the blackboard analogy see: Jon Alan Schmidt's “A Neglected Additament: Peirce on Logic, Cosmology, and the Reality of God.” Signs (vol. 9, 2018), esp. section 5. Peirce’s Diagrammatic Discourse, pp. 11–14. Best, Gary R
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