Dear Clark, list - I do not think physics pertains to secondness only. Physical laws safely belong to thirdness. And all empirical processes involve 1-2- as well as 3rdness. But that is another issue. Let me redescribe my claim. Physics, taken in itself, does not study cognition and communication processes - biology does. (Of course physics is indispensable as an auxiliary science in the study of such processes in other sciences - all more basic sciences may be recruited by the sciences depending upon them). This discussion, however, is marginal to my purpose in the book.
The main idea of the first chapter is the claim that one of the most important lessons to take from Peirce lies not in single parts of his semiotics, like some of the famous triads. Rather, it lies in the vast reorientation of the whole domain of sensation, perception, logic, reasoning, thought, language, images etc. which it entails. That reorientation takes the chain of reasoning as its primitive phenomenon. The claim is that it may be formally described, independently of the materials in which it may be implemented. Thus, language, images, perception etc. should be reconceptualized for the roles they may play in the chain of propositions of the reasoning process. This implies that propositions are not entities of language, nor do they presuppose any conscious "propositional stance". Consciousness and language should rather be seen as scaffolding serving and increasing reasoning - and appearing and being selected for during evolution for that reason. In the book I call this the "adaptation to reason" hypothesis - P does not call it this but I think it may be safely abstracted from his writings. It has the corollary that truth and validity may not be reduced to epiphenomena of any other sciences - be it neuro(psychology) on the natural science side or history, anthropology, or sociology on the humantities-social science side. Another corollary is that many of the received dualisms in this area are of relative value only (language-images, perception-conception, mental-physical, animal-human, subject-object, etc.) and should not be taken as points of departure. I think this strong hypothesis has rarely been isolated in Peirce's work. It comes close to the surface, however, in his repeated insistence that logic should be unpsychological - this is why chapter 2 is devoted to that. Best F Den 04/09/2014 kl. 06.24 skrev Clark Goble <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>: On Sep 3, 2014, at 2:47 PM, Frederik Stjernfelt <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Personally, I tend to side with the latter of the two schools, based on the observation that the science of physics does not need semiotics in the description of its subject matter (only in its theory of science) while biology, on all levels, involves spontaneous semiotic concepts, from biochemistry to ecology and ethology you'll find "genetic code", "Information", "signals", "cues" etc. which presumably form part of the subject matter of biology. Could you clarify what you mean with this distinction? I know physics is cast in various guises. Even in basic mechanics. But I just don’t see the distinction. (Undoubtedly a failing on my part) While physics is often thought through in terms of secondness, I’m not sure one can actually describe physics in that manner.
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