John, List: My initial thought when I read your post was that your identification of three different "kinds of time" might align nicely with the points of view of the three Categories that Nicholas Guardiano adopted to analyze Peirce's cosmogony in the paper that I linked yesterday in the thread on "Super-Order and the Logic of Continuity." However, after re-reading that paper, I am not so sure; such an approach would result in the following arrangement.
- Imaginary time = Firstness perspective = continuum (3ns) -> Platonic worlds (1ns) -> existing universe (2ns). - Factual time = Secondness perspective = spontaneity (1ns) -> reaction (2ns) -> habit-taking (3ns). - Theoretical time = Thirdness perspective = chaos (1ns) -> process (3ns) -> regularity (2ns). Guardiano specifically discusses temporality near the end of his paper, and even singles out "the big bang theory" for criticism because of "its temporal nature and the need for its explanatory cause prior in time." By contrast, he claims that Peirce's cosmology "avoids this problem" because "Its cosmogonic stages … appear to be inherent logical implications of the given facts of phenomena," which "all suggest a primordial reality that is more than the same but merely earlier in time." In fact, it seems to me that Guardiano's Secondness and Thirdness accounts both have a temporal aspect, but his Firstness account does not. The Secondness perspective treats all three stages (1ns>2ns>3ns) as distinct temporal events in the past, which is a specific reason that Peirce gave in R 842 for being ultimately unsatisfied with it. The Thirdness perspective encompasses the entire scope of time, with the first stage (1ns) in the infinite past, the second stage (3ns) ongoing, and the third stage (2ns) in the infinite future. The Firstness account places all three stages (3ns>1ns>2ns) in the "past," but time itself does not actually begin until the third stage (2ns). With this in mind, it seems possible to integrate the three narratives. Peirce's diagram makes it very clear that the continuum of highest generality (clean blackboard) is primordial and underlies everything else (3ns>1ns>2ns). Both the Platonic worlds (merged collections of white marks on the blackboard) and our existing universe (colored marks on one of the resulting whiteboards) come about and continue to develop by means of spontaneity, reaction, and habit-taking (1ns>2ns>3ns). However, this is a *temporal *sequence only *within *our existing universe, and it *constitutes *the ongoing process of its evolution from complete chaos to complete regularity (1ns>3ns>2ns), which terminates if and when all habits become inveterate such that there is only dead matter remaining. Regards, Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt On Wed, Nov 9, 2016 at 1:25 PM, John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote: > Edwina, Kirsti, list, > > ET > >> I wish we could get into the analysis of time in more detail. >> > > I came across a short passage by Gregory Bateson that clarifies the > issues. See the attached Bateson79.jpg, which is an excerpt from p. 2 > of a book on biosemiotics (see below). Following is the critical point: > > GB > >> thinking in terms of stories must be shared by all mind or minds >> whether ours or those of redwood forests and sea anemones... >> A story is a little knot or complex of that species of >> connectedness which we call relevance. >> > > This observation is compatible with Peirce, but CSP used the term > 'quasi-mind' to accommodate the species-bias of most humans: > > CP 4.551 > >> Admitting that connected Signs must have a Quasi-mind, it may further >> be declared that there can be no isolated sign. Moreover, signs >> require at least two Quasi-minds; a Quasi-utterer and a Quasi- >> interpreter; and although these two are at one (i.e., are one mind) >> in the sign itself, they must nevertheless be distinct. In the Sign >> they are, so to say, welded. Accordingly, it is not merely a fact >> of human Psychology, but a necessity of Logic, that every logical >> evolution of thought should be dialogic. >> > > Re time: We have to distinguish (1) time as it is in reality > (whatever that may be); (2) time in our stories (which include the > formalized stories called physics); (3) the mental sequence of > thought; and (4) the logical sequence (dialogic) of connected signs. > > ET > >> The question is: Are the Platonic worlds BEFORE or AFTER the so-called >> Big Bang? I read them as AFTER while Gary R and Jon S [not John S] >> read them as BEFORE. In my reading, before the Big Bang, there was >> Nothing, not even Platonic worlds. >> > > This question is about time sequences in different kinds of stories: > the Big Bang story about what reality may be; and Platonic stories > about ideal, mathematical forms. > > The time sequence of a mathematical story is independent of the time > sequence of a physical story. We may apply the math (for example, > the definitions, axioms, and proofs of a Platonic form) to the > construction of a physical story. > > But that application is a mapping between two stories. The term > 'prior to' is meaningful only *within* a story, not between stories. > > In short, our "commonsense" notion of time is an abstraction from > the stories we tell about our experience. The time sequences in two > different stories may have some similarities, but we must distinguish > three distinct sequences: the time sequences of each story, and the > time sequence of the mapping, which is a kind of meta-story. > > JFS > >> Does anyone know if [Peirce] had written anything about embedding >>> our universe in a hypothetical space of higher dimension? >>> >> > KM > >> I am most interested in knowing more on this. >> > > David Finkelstein, p. 277 of the reference below: > >> Peirce seems to have included geometry in his evolutionism, at least >> in principle... [He] seems not to have responded to the continuously- >> evolving physical geometry of Riemann and Clifford... nor to Einstein's >> conceptual unification of space and time. >> > > In any case, I think that the notion of time as an abstraction from > stories -- imaginary, factual, or theoretical -- provides a way of > relating different views. It also allows for metalevel reasoning > that can distinguish and relate different kinds of stories that > have independent time scales and sequences. > > John > ____________________________________________________________________ > > From Google books: > > _A Legacy for Living Systems: Gregory Bateson as Precursor > to Biosemiotics_ edited by Jesper Hoffmeyer, Springer, 2008: > https://books.google.com/books?id=dcHqVpZ97pUC&pg=PA246&lpg= > PA246&dq=Order+is+simply+thought+embodied+in+arrangement&sou > rce=bl&ots=DQUnZlvOYu&sig=X8bH0YAG597uwjyedB4dSf2BuC0&hl=en& > sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwizyZD88JrQAhVENxQKHeEeBwoQ6AEIHTAA#v=onepage > &q=Order%20is%20simply%20thought%20embodied%20in%20arrangement&f=false > > David R. Finkelstein, _Quantum Relativity: A Synthesis of the Ideas > of Heisenberg and Einstein_, Springer, 1996. > https://books.google.com/books?id=OvjsCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA277&lpg= > PA277&dq=peirce+relativity&source=bl&ots=0rc7kjxqIJ&sig=Hsgt > u9_LwZAoDxH7kbVgvWmAfiI&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwihk4SzpZzQAhWF > 3YMKHR1kA5wQ6AEIHzAA#v=onepage&q=peirce%20relativity&f=false >
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