Jon, For what it's worth, I think you're right on.
I would just add that a "diagram" in Peirce's sense (i.e. distinguished from both images and metaphors) not only would require relations between the parts (indices) but also those relationships should be such that we can derive new relationships from them within the diagram. "Diagrams" of things like sales year to year are more like images than diagrams in Peirce's sense. Tom On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 8:08 AM, Jon Alan Schmidt <[email protected]> wrote: > Tom: > > A simple list of color *names *does not seem to qualify as a diagram in > Peirce's terminology, because it does not embody any relations among its > parts. A depiction of the visible spectrum is probably a better example, > whether it is a simple color wheel or the discrete (but dense) version that > you can pull up on your computer monitor to display two million different > shades. > > I would suggest that the object of such a diagram is a range of qualities; > i.e., real possibilities. Which particular diagram is suitable depends > mainly on the purpose for which someone is using it. To teach primary and > secondary colors to a child, the color wheel with only six varieties is > adequate. Early video games and personal computers made do with a palette > of just 16 colors. An artist might not want to be limited to any finite > collection of hues, and thus will freely smear together different paints > until the result is just right. > > Regards, > > Jon Alan Schmidt - Olathe, Kansas, USA > Professional Engineer, Amateur Philosopher, Lutheran Layman > www.LinkedIn.com/in/JonAlanSchmidt - twitter.com/JonAlanSchmidt > > On Wed, Mar 29, 2017 at 9:24 AM, Tom Gollier <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Jon, >> >> I don't know, but your questions as to the parts of a diagram of the >> possibilities of "color" and the relationships between those parts don't >> seem all that problematic to me. Such a diagram might be rudimentary >> categories — black, blue, brown, green, orange, purple, red, yellow, and >> white — or it might be extended categories of colors — such as my computer >> can display. Or, the diagram might be infinitely divisible into sequential >> wavelengths within a certain range. Or, it might be the artist's palette >> with different colors and various combinations smeared together. All of >> these allow us to identify, distinguish, and/or produce colors. >> >> The trouble comes with your question about the object. If we mean >> "object" in the sense of what is this thing "color" which all these >> diagrams ostensibly refer, the question becomes either what is this >> thing-in-itself, i.e. the reality, or which of these diagrams is right, >> i.e. the reality. Peirce, via the scientific community, seems to be on the >> side of evolving diagrams, but personally, I wonder why we bother. Aren't >> these particular diagrams useful, real and general enough, for us? Do we >> really need to know the thing "color" directly or an absolute, >> one-size-fits-all universal diagram? >> >> Tom >> >
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