Jerry, list,
I remember some years ago finding it difficult to find out about
Boscovitchan points online. I just became aware of the alternate
spellings and searched on both spellings, using Google's "OR" operator.
Well, with a name like that and with Peirce's name, it's best to put all
the names in quotes:
"Peirce" "Boscovichian" OR "Boscovitchian"
https://www.google.com/search?&q=%22Peirce%22+%22Boscovichian%22+OR+%22Boscovitchian%22
One could also search for:
Points "Boscovichian" OR "Boscovitchian"
https://www.google.com/search?&q=Points+%22Boscovichian%22+OR+%22Boscovitchian%22
And so on.
As regards your questions - now, Peirce certainly thought that atoms
interact. He thought that matter boils down to points that resist and
react. I haven't read enough (and I got rusty during the past two
years), but it's not really clear to me as to atoms, maybe Peirce
thought that an atom _/contained/_ a Boscovitchian point along _/with/_
a distribution of potential energy. His use of the word "point"
certainly suggests that he thought that the object so labeled occupied
no space. He thought that it exerted force, and had momentum, etc. It
was some kind of singularity. Anyway, he thought that the basic
components of matter have their being AS reactions/resistances, not as
laws or as qualitative things. (He says that space _/is/_ a law, not a
reactive existent). He talks about such a particle as "forcing" or
"crowding" its way in. He really didn't let go of the
continuity/discreteness issue in considering physics, and now one can
find talk of fundamental particles as being tiny black holes. I don't
know how strict that identification is supposed to be; I thought that a
black hole as small as a quark was supposed to evaporate almost
instantaneously. I also don't know whether particles without rest mass
(photons, gluons, gravitons) are supposed to count somehow as black
holes. What are they supposed to be, massless naked singularities? But
I digress.
I found an article "Synechism: the Keystone of Peirce’s Metaphysics"
(2005) by Joseph Esposito, at Commens: Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce
http://www.commens.org/encyclopedia/article/esposito-joseph-synechism-keystone-peirce%E2%80%99s-metaphysics
which discusses Boscovichian points. (Do a browser Find on "Bosco" to
avoid getting tripped up between +t and -t).
It contains this quote among others from Peirce:
[BEGIN QUOTE OF ESPOSITO QUOTING PEIRCE]
"Unless we are to give up the theory of energy, finite positional
attractions and repulsions between molecules must be admitted.
Absolute impenetrability would amount to an infinite repulsion at a
certain distance. No analogy of known phenomena exists to excuse
such a wanton violation of the principle of continuity as such a
hypothesis is. In short, we are logically bound to adopt the
Boscovichian idea that an atom is simply a distribution of component
potential energy throughout space (this distribution being
absolutely rigid) combined with inertia." (CP 6.242)
[END QUOTE]
There's quite a bit more in the article. Maybe Peirce ascribed the
inertia to the point itself within the atom. Or maybe I'm getting
confused and he thought the point WAS the atom. See what you make of it.
Best, Ben
Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] A few loose ends - nonions vs. novenions;
Galilean vs. Lorentz; surprising continuity
Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2019 16:19:31 -0600
From: Jerry LR Chandler <[email protected]>
To: Peirce List <[email protected]>
List:
Just a couple of footnotes to the historical CSP quote from 1898.
CSP assertion "no doubt Boscovichian points” is critical to attempts
to decipher his logics.
The mathematics of “Boscovichian points” remains to be described.
Does a “Boscovichian point” occupy space? Contain mass? Have momentum?
What attributes of “Boscovichian points” are the origin of the
discrete spectral lines of atoms?
Soon thereafter, experimental evidence showed the subatomic structure
of atoms as compositions of electrical charges, nucleus and electrons.
The emanations of atoms, such as sin-signs of families of spectral
lines, indexed over series of frequencies, suggested that the internal
relations among parts of the atom were the physical, energetic source
of the lines. And, a few years later, Schrodingers equation expressed
the changes in internal relations that related spectral lines.
Secondly, nevertheless, the distinctions be continuous and discrete
mathematics remains a deep conundrum for the natural sciences today.
In my view, the conundrum originates in the difference that makes a
difference between the the concept of a mathematical identity (as a
reflexive operator) and the identity of a natural sort or kind with an
individual history and formal attributes.
So, this leads to a question:
Do CSP “Boscovichian points” have attributes that relate atoms to one
another?
If not, how did CSP relate atoms to atoms, atoms to molecules, and
molecules to molecules?
Cheers
Jerry
On Dec 12, 2019, at 1:49 PM, Ben Udell <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
John,
You'll get no argument from me! Especially as regards Peirce's view
of continuous vs. discrete. He held that both of them (as 3rd & 2nd,
along with the vague or indefinite, as 1st) pervade positive
phenomena; for example, and as you said, the sharply defined
frequency of a chemical's spectral line located on a continuous
spectrum. He said more than once that matter is discrete and once
that it "no doubt" consists of "Boscovichian points." (Peirce also
spelt it "Boscovitchian" and I mistakenly quoted him with the "t"
spelling in a previous email).
[BEGIN QUOTE]
The things of this world, that seem so transitory to
philosophers, are not continuous. They are composed of discrete
atoms, no doubt Boscovichian points. The really continuous
things, Space, and Time, and Law, are eternal.
[END QUOTE]
— Peirce in his 1898 lectures, on p. 115 in Reasoning and the
Logic of Things, Ketner, ed., 1992.
On 12/12/2019 2:15 PM, John F. Sowa wrote:
Ben,
I agree that space and time in quantum mechanics are continuous.
But there is one issue that Peirce understood very well: the
discrete lines in the spectrum of any chemical element that is
heated on earth or in any distant star.
In the so-called "black body" radiation, the filament of an
incandescent light bulb emits a continuous spectrum with a peak at a
frequency that is determined by the temperature. But a photon
emitted when an electron of an atom falls from a higher state to a
lower state has a sharply defined frequency.
Peirce learned that fact when he studied chemistry, and he used it
in his photometric studies of distant stars. Although it may be
wrong to consider a continuous line as a set of discrete points,
there are phenomena in physics whose measurements are discrete.
John
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