Clark,
How come you say chemists have a "more practical field"??? This I find
an amusing note.
Is there a rationale behind this note, or is it just a flippant one
which cannot be given any grounds for?
Kirsti
Clark Goble kirjoitti 5.12.2016 19:31:
On Dec 5, 2016, at 7:05 AM, John F Sowa <s...@bestweb.net> wrote:
On 11/29/2016 2:57 PM, Clark Goble wrote:
Treating thirdness as something real in the universe independent
of what any particular person thinks about it is key.
That is not a new point. Scientists have always assumed that the
laws of nature are "really real".
It’s a major point but not an universal one. Especially among
physicists Feynman’s loose adoption of a kind of instrumentalism was
influential. So it wasn’t just Mach or certain aspects of the
positivists. Of course most physicists who haven’t studied any
philosophy end up with an incoherent mess of views on the nature of
physical laws. Sometimes a realist, sometimes an idealist, sometimes a
Feynman like denial that anything matters but calculating. At least in
my experience with physicists. (Chemists are somewhat different due to
a more practical field)
However I think what Peirce did differently was in thinking of the
laws of physics in terms of thirdness. I don’t think most others -
even those who were realists about law - put them in quite that
formulation. (If only because few thought of things in those terms)
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