Clark, list,
There was indeed a “reversal” of usage of the terms “subjective” and “objective” starting in the 17th century, but no such reversal with “subject” and “object.” This is explained in the Turning Signs chapter at http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/rlb.htm, which includes (toward the end) Peirce’s entry on the matter in the Century Dictionary. As for changes in the usage of the term “subject”, another TS chapter goes into that: http://www.gnusystems.ca/TS/slf.htm. John Deely’s recent work covers the subject in much more detail. Gary f. } You can read the signs. You've been on this road before. [Laurie Anderson] { <http://gnusystems.ca/wp/> http://gnusystems.ca/wp/ }{ Turning Signs gateway From: Clark Goble [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 26-Oct-15 11:52 To: Jon Awbrey <[email protected]>; Helmut Raulien <[email protected]> Cc: Peirce List <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Seeing Things : What Makes An Object? On Oct 25, 2015, at 8:36 PM, Jon Awbrey <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > wrote: There is reason to think that the sense of the word ''object'' that means objective, purpose, target, intention, goal, end, aim, and so on is more fundamental than the more restrictive sense of a compact physical object. That is in fact one of the most critical insights that comes down to us from long lines of physical theory and also from the traditions known as “process thinking”, suggesting that our concepts of physical objects are derivative in relation to our concepts of process, since they arise from our ability to discover “invariants under transformations”, that is, the formal constructs that are preserved by the operations or processes that transform the states of a system. Just a quick thought before I have to go silent for a while. We should remember that our current terminology largely arises out of Descartes. Prior to that point the terms object and subject were largely reversed. Given Peirce’s influence from the scholastics and his overreaching critique of Descartes we should always read carefully with the terms. (Of course Peirce being a product of his time also has to use the common vernacular) Typically in passages it’s not that hard to figure out how he’s using the terms. But when reading short snippets it’s easy to get confused. (Or maybe I should say I easily get confused) While I’m skeptical of how well it captures the mature Peirce’s thought, Kelly Parker’s work on Peirce as a neoplatonist is well worth considering here. The origin of Peirce’s cosmology in semiotics tells us a lot about how he conceives of objects. We just have to be careful since most of Parker’s paper deals with texts from early on as Peirce was working out his ideas.
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