Thanks for your comments Arnold, and yes indeed, what Peirce and
Whitehead probably have most in common is their respective
competencies in mathematics, and the way in which they use these
competncies to consolidate and explicate their respective
philosophical projects.
It's their maths that lets them try building a bridge between
physics, phenomenology and metaphysics, if you will.
One of my great frustrations is that I am no theoretical
mathematician myself, and cannot read or make sense of anything
rather than really quite simple mathematical proofs, so I basically
have to take on trust anything that Peirce or Whitehead might have
used mathematical forms of argumentation in order to "demonstrate" in
detail.
If you read around the lives and works of both these talented
authors, you can see from many qualified commentators that both were
fairly well respected in the international mathematical communities
of their times for their mathematical musings.
In any case, it seems quite clear to me that any philosophical or
other project that is trying to really get a handle onto what they
were talking about in all the various corners of their work, and to
put it all into perspective needs must be a fairly inter- or
transdisciplinary one...
Peirce-l always seemed to me right from the beginning to be that kind
of community...
Best regards
Patrick
Jean-Marc, Patrick
Patrick has a point in that Peirce's categories are such that in
representation the higher-order presupposes the lower (is that the
way to use `presuppose, by the way?). Jean-Marc equally has a point
in noting that Peirce became a `Three-Category Realist' in his later
thinking. Both points seem to highlight the role of transitivity in
Peirce's thought, and perhaps the more solid sources for
understanding this may be found in his mathematical writings, I
would guess. Also, the Logic Notebook perhaps has more pertinent
material than the CP, the editorial dismemebrment of which is well
enough known.
Cheers
Arnold Shepperson
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Patrick J. Coppock
Researcher: Philosophy and Theory of Language
Department of Social, Cognitive and Quantitative Sciences
University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia
Italy
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