Peircers,
Gary Fuhrman wrote:
GF: I would agree that Peirce's third method of fixing belief is the most
difficult to give a suitable name to,
but I think Peirce's own choice eventually fell on "fermentation of ideas",
based on this paragraph dated
c. 1906:
CSP: [[[ My paper of November 1877, setting out from the proposition that the
agitation of a question ceases
when satisfaction is attained with the settlement of belief, and then
only, goes on to consider how the
conception of truth gradually develops from that principle under the
action of experience; beginning with
willful belief, or self-mendacity, the most degraded of all intellectual
conditions; thence rising to the
imposition of beliefs by the authority of organized society; then to the
idea of a settlement of opinion
as the result of a fermentation of ideas; and finally reaching the idea of
truth as overwhelmingly forced
upon the mind in experience as the effect of an independent reality. ]] CP
5.564 ]
GF: "Fermentation of ideas" is not very elegant -- i prefer simply "dialogue"
-- but it does imply that the
third method is fully social, and both more reasonable and more democratic
than the method of authority;
the only thing that stops it from being scientific is the lack of appeal to
direct experience. Indeed
I think the Ransdell conception of peer review implies that it is a
prerequisite to a fully developed
science (note the developmental approach Peirce takes in the paragraph
above).
"Fermentality" would preserve the rhyme among reasons,
bringing to mind the venerable motto: In Vino Veritas.
Was it Peirce who spoke of the "solera method", or was
it some other sommelier? We know the truth we find in
wine must be taken with a grain of salt, not to mention
the hair of the dogma that inspired it, later on in sober
reflection, so all those connotations are fitting cautions
vis-a-vis the wrath of grapes.
Among other "y"-words I remember using, there is "sagacity",
which is kin in folk etymology to sapience and good taste,
but allusions to etymology tend to go flat after a while.
There is also "salubrity", if we think to drink to the
health of ideas. And on that note what can I say but,
Cheers,
Jon
--
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