Ben, Lists, Given the principles that are being used to guide the formation of the classification of the sciences, why is the division between the physical and the physical sciences a dichotomy and not a trichotomy? If this is a natural divisions between kinds of special sciences, then there should be an explanation. What is it?
--Jeff Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Benjamin Udell [[email protected]] Sent: Monday, December 08, 2014 9:32 AM To: [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: [PEIRCE-L] Re: [biosemiotics:7705] Peirce's classifications - WAS Re: Natural Propositions Chapter 6 Dear Tommi, lists, Regarding Peirce's uncertainty about the ordering of physical vs. psychical sciences, I should provide a quote because he doesn't express his uncertainty in the other sources that I provided. In his 1904 draft intellectual autobiography (L 107 and MS 914, in Ketner 2009 http://www.degruyter.com/view/books/9783050047331/9783050047331.35/9783050047331.35.xml ), Peirce wrote: [....] Idioscopy is occupied with the discovery and examination of phenomena, aided by mathematics and philosophy. It is extremely doubtful which of its two wings should be placed first. [....] [End quote] I seem to remember Peirce's saying somewhere that it might not make much difference, but I haven't been able to find the quote. Anyway, in the 1902 Carnegie application, Peirce put psychical sciences before physical sciences http://www.iupui.edu/~arisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/ver1/l75v1-02.htm<http://www.iupui.edu/%7Earisbe/menu/library/bycsp/l75/ver1/l75v1-02.htm> , then in the 1903 "Syllabus" classification he put the physical sciences first http://web.archive.org/web/20111105121054/http://www.princeton.edu/~batke/peirce/cl_o_sci_03.htm<http://web.archive.org/web/20111105121054/http://www.princeton.edu/%7Ebatke/peirce/cl_o_sci_03.htm> . He did not show such uncertainty in putting religious, or psychical, metaphysics before physical metaphysics, although he did note in the 1903 classification that the two fields at that time regarded each other with "supreme contempt." While, as you said, Peirce sought to classify the sciences as researches pursued by groups of actual living people, he did find his kind of trichotomy popping up often enough, particularly when the divisions that he found in their actual activity turned out to be more logical than genealogical. The physical-psychical distinction is the most obvious case where he refuses to impose trichotomy where he doesn't find it in the facts. The physical-psychical distinction is, for him, the distinction between efficient causation and final causation. In his physical metaphysics, he argues for three operative principles in the cosmos - spontaneity a.k.a. absolute chance (tyche), which is First, mechanical necessity (anance), which is Second, and creative love (agape), which is Third, and three corresponding modes of evolution - tychasm, anancasm, and agapasm. But he finds corresponding divisions of the special sciences corresponding only to anance and agape. In his refinement (in Kaina Stoicheia) of Aristotle's four causes, he basically sees the efficient and material causes as, respectively, external and internal Seconds, and the final and formal causes as, respectively, external and internal Thirds. Tyche, chance, does not appear there; Aristotle himself likewise did not include chance (spontaneity) among the four causes, and, in a sense, absolute chance is not a cause - the sense that what happens by spontaneity happens without cause, or without definite cause at least. Still, if there were a third division of idioscopy, one for tyche and tychasm, what would it be? The following quote is suggestive and a bit surprising. "The First Rule of Logic" Lecture 1 of 1898: [End of CP 5.586] The instincts connected with the need of nutrition have furnished all animals with some virtual knowledge of space and of force, and made them applied physicists. The instincts connected with sexual reproduction have furnished all animals at all like ourselves with some virtual comprehension of the minds of other animals of their kind, so that they are applied psychists. Now not only our accomplished science, but even our scientific questions have been pretty exclusively limited to the development of those two branches of natural knowledge. There may for aught we know be a thousand other kinds of relationship which have as much to do with connecting phenomena and leading from one to another, as dynamical and social relationships have. Astrology, magic, ghosts, prophecies, serve as suggestions of what such relationships might be. [End quote] Note that this was well after his 1887 "Criticism on Phantasms of the Living" in which he criticized the paranormalist work of Gurney, Myers, and Podmore. Best, Ben On 12/8/2014 5:09 AM, Tommi Vehkavaara wrote: Dear Howard, Stan, Ben, Garys and others For me, the understanding of the reasons and principles of Peirce's classification of sciences has been the major key that has organized Peirce's philosophy as more understandable than just confusing. First, to Stan, the hierarchy, physics - chemistry - biology - sociology, is Comte's one, but from him Peirce adopted the principle of ordering, not the order itself. As Ben already noted, physical sciences (physics, chemistry, biology) and psychical (e.g. sociology) are not ordered by Peirce linearly but they form two branches of special sciences. Secondly, I am not sure whether Peirce's hierarchy is a subsumption hierarchy, namely, though the principle of ordering is according to abstractness of the objects of inquiry, what are classified are individual inquiries that consitute the disciplines (i.e. sciences are not the collections of theories or doctrines), so perhaps the hierarchy should rather be seen as a control hierarchy instead? Then to Howard, although it may seem to be, I would say that Peirce's classification of sciences does not give any foundational hierarchy, or at least it should not interpreted as such - the thorough-going anti-foundationalism is one of the major basis of criticism against Cartesian, classical empiricist, Kantian, Hegelian, and classical positivist (e.g. Comte, Spencer, Mach) thinking. As far as I can see, for Peirce (as for other classical pragmatists too) no logical or metaphysical (nor phaneroscopical) foundation for a science is needed - successful inquiries in any special sciences can be made (and in fact are made) relying on scientists intuitive and culturally inherited logica utens and metaphysics (perhaps we could talk about metaphysica utens as well). But if the results of an inquiry are not expected or do not increase our knowledge enough, the reason may be in inaccurate basic metaphysics (too rich or too limited) or in some logical fallacy in the making of the inquiry as well as in the specific theory, observations, and experiments peculiar to that inquiry. As a summary I would see special sciences to be mainly meta-level dependent on Peirce's Philosophical sciences, i.e. making of an inquiry is a logical (normative) process, that mere psychological descriptions (or speculations about the brain processes behind) cannot sufficiently describe. Moreover, Peirce emphasized also that his classification of sciences is not meant to be a logical hierarchy, but the description of sciences at their current state and therefore it is historically changing - Peirce valued both Hegel's Encyclopedie and Comte's as approximately correct at their time but but terribly outdated about at the turn of the century - it would be expectable that some parts of Peirce's classifiacation are similarly outdated in our days, e.g. when it comes to subclasses of mathematics and of psychical sciences (espec. the place of introspective psychology). Yours, Tommi At 20:59 12/7/2014, Howard Pattee wrote: SS: If we understand the meaning of the Spencer-Comte-Peirce hierarchy (a subsumptive hierarchy) {physics {chemistry {biology {sociology}}}} I think it is impossible to be unpersuaded by it! HP: I was not talking about subsumptive hierarchies, but the Peircean claim that logic/semiotics is "higher" than science. I think this means that you should begin all your models with logic/semiotics. It claims that logic is the foundational on which all other models, like science, must rest. Penrose's three-world model says that there is no such logical hierarchy. Rather there are three irreducible foundations with an illogical nontransitivity. The brain is a subset of the physical world. The world of abstract mathematical forms is a subset of the brain's models. The physical world is a subset of the world of mathematical models. http://unlocktao.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/penrose-worlds2.png <http://unlocktao.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/penrose-worlds2.png> Logic cannot be the foundation of an illogical model. (Neither can classical logic be the foundation of Quantum mechanics.) ******************************************************************* "Cousins to the ameba that we are, how could we know for certain?" - Donald T. Campbell ******************************************************************* University of Tampere School of Social Sciences and Humanities - Philosophy Tommi Vehkavaara FI-33014 University of Tampere Finland Phone: +358-50-3186122 (work), +358-45-2056109 (home) e-mail: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> homepage: http://people.uta.fi/~attove<http://people.uta.fi/%7Eattove> https://uta-fi.academia.edu/TommiVehkavaara *******************************************************************
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