From Seneca to Hartmann, what is this meant to be about? Who is Cudworth? Mentioning names from the antique until today, what do you intend to tell us? Fatalism and atheism have nothing to do with each other: Fatalism is a weakness of will, camouflaged as supersticion, and atheism is a belief. Helmut
Gesendet: Freitag, 21. Juni 2019 um 20:18 Uhr
Von: "Jerry LR Chandler" <[email protected]>
An: "Peirce List" <[email protected]>
Cc: "John F Sowa" <[email protected]>
Betreff: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Semeiosis and Experience Ralph Cudworth,
Von: "Jerry LR Chandler" <[email protected]>
An: "Peirce List" <[email protected]>
Cc: "John F Sowa" <[email protected]>
Betreff: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Semeiosis and Experience Ralph Cudworth,
List:
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On Jun 17, 2019, at 11:16 AM, John F Sowa <[email protected]> wrote:See the final sentence by
Peirce in the paragraph from R 280: "The Graphist must be regarded
as corresponding to the “Plastic Nature” of Cudworth, or else to the
Artifex of Nature."
When Peirce cites sources, it's important to check the sources to
see what he was talking about. I googled those two terms to see
how Peirce regarded the Graphist. I found two Wikipedia articles
that explained those terms, and I included the URLs at the end of
the final excerpt below.
Thank you John, for posting this reference to Ralph Cudworth’s work.
The online article was rather fascinating wrt. some of the roots of CSP’s philosophy that lies outside of logic and chemical logic.
It is an alternate historical view of “three-ness”…and an early view of “system’s thinking”.
See clip below.
Cheers
Jerry
RALPH CUDWORTH (1617-1688), the most learned and philosophical of the Cambridge Plutonists,
The True Intellectual System, to justify its general title and fulfil its author's plan, should have contained two other parts, each on the same scale as the part which we possess. There appeared to Cudworth to be three systems which deny liberty and involve necessity,—three sorts of fatalism. The first is materialistic fatalism, which suppresses with the idea of liberty every idea of God and spirit, and explains all phenomena, even those of thought and feeling, by mechanical laws, and the formation of all beings by the combination and concourse of atoms; the second is a theological or religious fatalism, advocated by various scholastic and later divines, which makes good and evil, right and wrong, the creation of the will of God, and thus destroys liberty by destroying its condition and its law ; and the third is Stoical fatalism, which, although not denying the Divine existence or the rectitude of the Divine nature, affirms that all that happens is determined by an eternal and unchangeable necessity. These are the three chief false systems of the universe, according to Cudworth, and he would oppose to them three great principles, the fundamentals or essentials of religion —to the first the existence of God and of a spiritual world ; to the second the eternal and immutable distinction of right and wrong; and to the third the freedom and responsibility of man. The proof of these three truths with the refutation of the opposite errors seemed to him to be the establishment of a system of the universe entitled to be called, in opposi-tion to those refuted, true, and, in distinction from physical systems, like the Ptolemaic, Tychonic, and Copernican, intellectual. The first of these forms of fatalism is the only one with which his principal work deals. It includes four species of materialistic atheism, namely,—the atomic, adopt-ed by Democritus, Epicurus, and Hobbes, which recognizes no other substances than material atoms and no other forces than their movements ; the hylopathic, maintained by Anaximander, which makes infinite matter, devoid of understanding and life, form all things by " a secretion or segregation " which takes place according to inherent law; the hylozoic, asserted by Strato of Lampsacus, which explains everything by the supposition of an inward, self-organizing, plastic life in matter ; and the cosmoplastic, perhaps held by Seneca and the younger Pliny, which represents the universe as an organized being, like a plant, with a spontaneous and necessary but unconscious and un-reflective development. They are, however, reducible to two—the atomic and hylozoic,—the one best represented by Democritus, the other by Strato; the one explaining everything by matter and movement, the other everything by matter endowed with life; the one mechanical, the other dynamical.
The history of the atomic philosophy is narrated by Cudworth at great length and with vast erudition, but no one will now be found to accept the view which he gives of its development as even in the main accurate. Like his friend, Henry More, he derives the atomic theory, in so far as it is a purely physical speculation, from Moses, and his conclusions as to its transmission are in many respects not less untrustworthy. He would make it out to have been taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and, in fact, nearly all the ancient philosophers, and only to have been mutilated and perverted by Leucippus and Democritus. He had the merit, however, of seeing very clearly that the atomic theory in itself, or what he calls the atomic physiology, had no natural or even necessary connection with the atomic atheism. He contends that " so far from being either the mother or nurse of atheism, or any ways favourable thereto (as is vulgarly supposed), it is indeed the most opposite to it of any, and the greatest defence against the same." He states with great fulness and fairness the arguments which have been urged in support both of the atomic and hylozoic atheism. He refutes them, although in a cumbrous and discursive manner, with great strength of reason. It is in connection with the refutation of hylozoic atheism that he brings forward the celebrated hypothesis, which he held in common with More, of a plastic nature,—a substance intermediate between matter and spirit,—a power which prosecutes certain ends but not freely or intelligently,—an instrument by which laws are able to act without the immediate agency of God. He argues that to reftr the life and motion of the universe immediately to God renders Divine Providence " operose, solicitous, and distractious," implies that all things are done miraculously and none of them by an inward principle of their own, and is incon-sistent with the slow and gradual development of nature and with its " errors and bungles." It is not wonderful that few should have been convinced by such arguments. Nothing can be toilsome to omnipotence or perplexing to omniscience. It is not more difficult to believe the life and motions of the universe due to the immediate action of God than the life and motions of the secondary agent which Cudworth imagined to animate nature and " drude-ingly to execute a part of the work of Providence." An unconscious and " necessitated plastic power" cannot remove from the creator of it the blame of any " errors or bungles " it may commit. Cudworth's hypothesis became in 1703-4 the subject of an interesting controversy between Bayle and Leclerc,—the former maintaining, and the latter denying, that it was favourable to the atheistical inference. It has been recently reproduced by Joseph John Murphy in his work on Habit and Intelligence. What Cudworth designated " plastic nature" is almost identical with what Murphy calls " unconscious intelligence." It was descended from the anirna mtindi of Plato, and is still represented in the Unbeiousste of Von Hartmann.
The history of the atomic philosophy is narrated by Cudworth at great length and with vast erudition, but no one will now be found to accept the view which he gives of its development as even in the main accurate. Like his friend, Henry More, he derives the atomic theory, in so far as it is a purely physical speculation, from Moses, and his conclusions as to its transmission are in many respects not less untrustworthy. He would make it out to have been taught by Pythagoras, Empedocles, and, in fact, nearly all the ancient philosophers, and only to have been mutilated and perverted by Leucippus and Democritus. He had the merit, however, of seeing very clearly that the atomic theory in itself, or what he calls the atomic physiology, had no natural or even necessary connection with the atomic atheism. He contends that " so far from being either the mother or nurse of atheism, or any ways favourable thereto (as is vulgarly supposed), it is indeed the most opposite to it of any, and the greatest defence against the same." He states with great fulness and fairness the arguments which have been urged in support both of the atomic and hylozoic atheism. He refutes them, although in a cumbrous and discursive manner, with great strength of reason. It is in connection with the refutation of hylozoic atheism that he brings forward the celebrated hypothesis, which he held in common with More, of a plastic nature,—a substance intermediate between matter and spirit,—a power which prosecutes certain ends but not freely or intelligently,—an instrument by which laws are able to act without the immediate agency of God. He argues that to reftr the life and motion of the universe immediately to God renders Divine Providence " operose, solicitous, and distractious," implies that all things are done miraculously and none of them by an inward principle of their own, and is incon-sistent with the slow and gradual development of nature and with its " errors and bungles." It is not wonderful that few should have been convinced by such arguments. Nothing can be toilsome to omnipotence or perplexing to omniscience. It is not more difficult to believe the life and motions of the universe due to the immediate action of God than the life and motions of the secondary agent which Cudworth imagined to animate nature and " drude-ingly to execute a part of the work of Providence." An unconscious and " necessitated plastic power" cannot remove from the creator of it the blame of any " errors or bungles " it may commit. Cudworth's hypothesis became in 1703-4 the subject of an interesting controversy between Bayle and Leclerc,—the former maintaining, and the latter denying, that it was favourable to the atheistical inference. It has been recently reproduced by Joseph John Murphy in his work on Habit and Intelligence. What Cudworth designated " plastic nature" is almost identical with what Murphy calls " unconscious intelligence." It was descended from the anirna mtindi of Plato, and is still represented in the Unbeiousste of Von Hartmann.
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