To List:
Thank you, Gary, for the reference to the following paragraph in the
introduction:
http://www.iupui.edu/~peirce/writings/v1/v1intro.htm
"Throughout those thirty and a half years and on beyond them,
however, when he had occasion to state his profession, or even his
occupation, he continued to call himself a chemist. His first
professional publication, in 1863 at the age of twenty-three, was on
"The Chemical Theory of Interpenetration." In later years he found in
Mendeleev's work on the periodic law and table of the elements the
most complete illustration of the methods of inductive science. And
he took satisfaction in having, in June 1869, when he was not yet
thirty, published a table of the elements that went far in
Mendeleev's direction, before Mendeleev's announcement of the law, a
little earlier in the same year, became known in western Europe and
America."
Does anyone know if either of these two publications are available
electronically?
The introduction itself implies that Peirce first developed an
understanding of chemical principles as known at that time and then
sought to create a logical framework for the observations.
The debate between John Dalton's composition of signs into
relationhoods and the use of letters as symbols for elements existed
during Peirce's lifetime.
The logical categorization of chemical relations remains partially
open today, although the foundation of a simple chemical bond as a
pair of electrons binding two nuclei together is widely used.
For those of the list interested in the logical origins of chemical
signs, the book by M. P. Crosland:
Historical Studies in the Language of Chemistry (Dover, 1978)
is a good starting point.
Part 4 of this book, Chemical Symbolism, provides insight into the
history of chemical symbolism.
Does anyone think that these usages of symbols and Dalton's
composition of symbols influenced Peirce?
Can anyone provide a reasonable conjecture on how the logic of
chemical symbols could be approximated by the notions of firstness,
secondness and thirdness?
I would note that chemical logic centers itself on the concept of
identity. After "purification", that is, separating a single
unique form of of matter, encoding of analytical and synthetic
cues generate an identity with a name composed from elemental names.
Cheers
Jerry
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