On 11/2/2016 2:01 PM, Jon Alan Schmidt wrote:
His favorite Gospel was that of John, but did he ever quote its first chapter? "In the beginning was the Word [logos] ...
Since his father taught him Greek at a very early age, I'm sure that New Testament Greek was one of the first texts he studied. Given his interest in logic, Peirce may have preferred this gospel because of its use of the word 'logos'. Around 400 BC, Heraclitus (Fragment 1) wrote
all things come to be according to this logos
In the first century AD, John wrote
In the beginning was the Logos. The Logos was with God. And God was the Logos. It was in the beginning with God. All things came to be through it, and without it nothing came to be that has come to be.
They both used 'panta' (all things) and 'gignomai' (come to be). Heraclitus did not use the word 'Theos' (God), but John equated Theos with Logos. Some scholars claim that John was influenced by Philo of Alexandria, who wrote many volumes (in Greek) to reconcile the Torah with Greek philosophy. Other scholars commented on the similarity between Logos as Heraclitus used it, Dao (or Tao) as Lao Zi used it, and Dharma as Gautama Buddha used it. Perhaps that was not a coincidence, because they were approximate contemporaries, and they lived near the trade routes (Silk Road) from China to Asia Minor. In his _Ethica_, Spinoza used the words 'God' (Deus) and 'nature' (Natura) almost interchangeably. When asked whether he believed in God, Einstein replied, "I believe in the God of Spinoza". The equation of God with the laws of nature by Spinoza and Einstein should be compared to Logos, Dao, and Dharma. The Latin 'natura' is the Scholastic translation of the Greek 'physis'. The English word 'physics' is an 18th century synonym for 'natural philosophy'. Peirce was also familiar with Aristotle's use of 'logos'. The first paragraph of _De Interpretatione_ (in Greek and in various Scholastic commentaries) was likely to be another influence:
First we must determine what are noun (onoma) and verb (rhêma); and after that, what are negation (apophasis), assertion (kataphasis), proposition (apophansis), and sentence (logos). Those in speech (phonê) are symbols (symbola) of affections (pathêmata) in the psyche, and those written (graphomena) are symbols of those in speech. As letters (grammata), so are speech sounds not the same for everyone. But they are signs (sêmeia) primarily of the affections in the psyche, which are the same for everyone, and so are the objects (pragmata) of which they are likenesses (homoiômata). On these matters we speak in the treatise on the psyche, for it is a different subject. (16a1)
This is my translation, after comparing several English versions and producing a very literal translation that emphasizes the original Greek terms -- as Peirce would have read them. I discuss that paragraph and its relationship to writings by Peirce, the Scholastics, and others in http://www.jfsowa.com/pubs/rolelog.pdf John
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