List,
Nathan Houser has been uploading many of his papers to academia.edu.
http://iupui.academia.edu/NathanHouser
One does not need to actually download a PDF to read one of his papers.
Once one clicks on the "close" X of the download popup, the paper itself
appears in HTML form on the webpage.
I've been reading his "The Scent of Truth" on abductive inference, and
came upon this tidbit of which I had been unaware. Nathan quotes Peirce
and adds and end note.
Thought is not necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in
the work of bees,of crystals, and throughout the purely physical
world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than
that the colors, the shapes, etc., of objects are really
there.... Not only is thought in the inorganic*³* world, but it
develops there. (CP 4.551)
3. As reported in Houser 2000, in the faircopy manuscript that
Peirce submitted to _The Open Court_, he clearly wrote 'inorganic,'
but the word was set in type for publication in _The Monist_ as
'organic' and that reading was carried over to the _Collected Papers_.
[End quote]
It makes the sentence work better. If he had meant 'organic', it would
have been better to write, "In the organic world, not only is there
thought, but it develops there...." Still, could Peirce have let
'organic' stand on purpose? After all, he could have corrected in the
subsequent errata. But I think he simply missed it, and that 'inorganic'
was the word that he intended. In the past I had put some weight on
Peirce's (seemingly) saying that thought originates in the organic world
and his seeming silence about whether it originates also in the
inorganic world.
Best, Ben
-----------------------------
PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L
to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to [email protected] . To
UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to [email protected] with the
line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at
http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
