Gary F., List: Your points are well-taken, especially given my thinking on the "logic of ingenuity" as employed by engineers--where there is a cycle of abduction/deduction/induction (analysis) nested within another (design). And like artistic creation, engineering does not (usually) begin with the observation of a surprising fact. What I have posited is that both inquiry and ingenuity are motivated more fundamentally by dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs--doubt in one case, which is resolved by attaining a state of belief; and uncertainty in the other, which is resolved by attaining a state of decision.
Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Sun, May 15, 2016 at 9:00 AM, <[email protected]> wrote: > Jon Alan, Gary R and list, > > > > I think there is an alternative to agreeing to disagree on this question. > > > > If one thinks of inquiry as a *cycle,* more or less as I’ve presented it > in *Turning Signs* (especially Chapter 9, http://gnusystems.ca/TS/mdl.htm > ), then it becomes clear that the choice of starting point of the process > is somewhat arbitrary, or at least depends on the purpose of the analysis. > It also becomes clearer that the boundaries of parts of the process are not > precisely fixed. Does abduction *include* the “surprising fact” which > calls for a hypothesis to explain it? Does it include the judgment of > plausibility or testability of the hypothesis? The fact that inquiry > proceeds in a definite order does not fully determine how we divide it into > parts or how we name the parts. The *completeness* of a cycle is likewise > ambiguous, given that it does not stop but continues with another cycle, > and sometimes the process will ‘loop back’ to an earlier stage before > proceeding to the next. > > > > Another question is whether, or to what extent, we see the process of > artistic creation as similar to the process of scientific inquiry. In the > case of Mozart, for instance, a particular composition begins not with > observation of a surprising fact, but with a commission, or some less > determinate artistic niche to be filled. But in the practice of the artist, > this too is a cycle: his commissioned work gets performed, the audience > like what they hear or see, and this attracts more commissions and more > audiences. Once the cycle is established, it may continue even if parts of > it are missing — I think Mozart’s last three symphonies were not > commissioned, but (we might say) resulted from the momentum of his > creativity. (There’s a possible analogy here to the momentum that carried > Peirce’s inquiry into the roots of logic in the years after the Cambridge, > Harvard and Lowell lectures, when his continuing work was providing him > almost no income.) > > > > I wouldn’t want to push the analogy between art and inquiry too far, for > instance into the question of what role deductive inference plays in > artistic creativity, but I do think this cyclic pattern runs very deep in > all semiosis and in life itself. (Which reminds me that I first came across > this pattern and diagram in Robert Rosen’s book *Life Itself* — but > that’s another story.) > > > > Gary f. >
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