Jerry, thanks for your comments,
Sorry for my rather slow reply, but family and
some university-political obligations have taken
quite a lot of time the last few days.
In any case, I can see I'll have my work cut out
to be brief in replying to your notes, since
brief though they may be, they are also fairly
"dense" in "content". terms, at least if I try to
read between the lines..
Hope to find time over the next few days to
respond in some more detail to other list members
comments too (and thanks to all involved for
those)
You wrote:
My take on the distinctions between Peirce and Whitehead is rather different.
In early Peirce (1868), the analogy with
distance functions and branching was the given
basis for distinguishing paths of logic,
relation to chemical valence and the more
general concept of extension. The later
writings of Peirce describing "division" of a
sign in natural language is not a crisp way of
looking at the concept of extension. (One might
substitute for the term "division" such terms as
partition, trichotomy, lattice, subtraction,
incomplete parts, lack of additivity, and so
forth; but I do not see how that would create a
coherent concept of relational extension.)
Well, first off, I personally think it is very
important that "early" and "late" Peirce's are
seen as part and parcel of one and the same
philosophical project, that developed (emerged)
over a considerable time period, but always with
the key notion of synechism ("the tendency to
regard everything as continuous") at its base.
Kelley Parker's work on Peirce's continuity is a
useful point of reference here.
I know there are many and varying opinions on
this, but I have always tended to sympathise /
empathise most with readings like those of Murray
Murphey who argues in his "The Development of
Peirce's Thought" for a kind of continuous,
recursive, trial-and-error oriented development
by Peirce of his philosophical "architectonic".
He pushes the envelope of his basic project all
the time, changing a bit here and there in order
to integrate new ideas and currents from then
contemporary scientific and philosophical debate
and knowledge, allowing it to grow and develop
continuously, while at the same time always
keeping a firm hand on his triadic, synechistic
and other keystones...
This type of reading argues for a
process-oriented "experimental" philosophical
approach on Peirce's part, a methodology/ way of
working that he embarked upon right from his very
first readings of Kant at aboout 15 and which he
carried on with right up to the development of
his more articulated cosmological model that
incorporates the notion of a "developmental"
teleology, where the combination of tychastic,
anacastic and agapastic modes of evolutionary
process is the ground for the "growth of concrete
reasonableness" (In this connection Carl R.
Hausman's work on Peirce's evolutionary
philosophy is still a good read) in the last ten
or so years of his life.
Of course, this latter part of his life's work
depended a lot on his readings of and reflections
on the evolutionary theories of Darwin, Lamarck
and others, and of course could not have been
developed by him on this particular basis before
these works actually became available. But it is
also interesting to note how easily he is able to
mesh them in, avoiding, too the trap of reducing
of D's extremely complex notion of natural
selection to a simplistic instrumental conception
like the "survival of the fittest" (which is
generally attributed to Herbert Spencer and not
to Darwin himself, though he did apparently
incorporate it in the title of one of his later
editions of "The Origin of the Species")...
When you write that "The later writings of Peirce
describing "division" of a sign in natural
language is not a crisp way of looking at the
concept of extension", I think I'll have to ask
you for a bit more detailed explanation of what
you mean by that...
In late Whitehead, Process and Reality, he gets
into bed with set theory and never re-emerges
from this highly restrictive view of extension.
In modern chemistry, a multitude of
possibilities for extension exist . (The flow
of passions in a bed are great, but they should
not be conflated with the light of reason. :-)
Regarding "early" and "late" with regard to
Whitehead, the same considerations as above
regarding the recursive, stepwise development of
Peirce's architectonic, I think also holds for
Whitehead. From the beginning he was a
mathematician (and education theorist) more than
a philosopher (and in fact, like Peirce, he never
"formally" studied philosophy apart from his own
personal readings of other philosophers' work),
but process and reality is built round ideas
developed in his many other philosophical
writings, such as "Adventures of Ideas", "Science
and the Modern World" -- in my opinion a good
starting point for people who don't know
Whitehead, and who want to get a grasp on the
main rationale behind the "philosophy of
organism" that is much more fully fleshed out in
"Process and Reality".
Apropos the flow of passions, in bed or
otherwise. it's interesting to read Whitehead
precisely because of his particular discursive
style, which has often been compared to that of
Plato.
His discussions of the notions of subjective and
objective ideas/forms (or "eternal objects", in
W's terms) offer an interesting "animation" of
the "traditional" Plationic forms which meshes
quite well with Peirce's notion of matter as
"effete mind", and his claim that "The
evolutionary process is [] not a mere evolution
of the existing universe, but rather a process by
which the very Platonic forms themselves have
become, or are becoming developed" (CP 6.194)
As I see it, rather than "getting into bed with
set theory" and never re-emerging, I'd say that W
creatively tries to develop and qualify in a
quite precise and systematic way, and by means of
a particularly dynamic conception of relational
topological geometry, his argument that there
exists a latent potential for continuity and
creative growth in the cosmos that allows for
continuous transmssion of what he refers to as
objective and subjective "feeling" between actual
occasions/ events/ entities in nature, also those
not immediately temporally or spatially present.
Put in layman's terms, the idea is that both
"objective" and "subjective" aspects of the real
that have participated in the emergence any given
configuration of past events will always have a
"real" potential for participating in the
emergence of occasions/ events/ entities in the
present, which will in turn have a "real"
potential for participating in the emergence of
novel occasions/ events/ entities in the future.
One might say that modern chemistry has in
richer view of extension - valence is richer
than -1,2,3- and it is richer than set theory
by using irregularity as a basis of calculation.
Peirce I think would argue that -1,2,3- would be
just fine for the potential development of any
number of more complex relations you may like to
mention. -1,2- would be too simple, too
restrictive, and -1,2,3,4- would be unnecessarily
redundant...
Also, the propensity of process philosophers to
neglect the concept of inheritance of properties
in time restricts the potential correspondence
between process philosophy and scientific
philosophy.
A modern philosophy of chemistry must cope with
numbers of relations grater than three and also
recognize that islands of stability exist within
the torrential seas of change.
I think notions such as continuity and unlimited
semiosis, growth of concrete reasonablness in
Peirce, and others such as extensive connection,
prehension, concrescence/satisfaction in
Whitehead offer a set of useful metaphorical/
conceptual tools that we may (if we choose) "play
with" and try to use creatively to envision and
systematically describe/ try to understand better
some of the underlying, contingent processes that
form a basis for physical phenmomena such as the
inheritence of properties in time,.
A quote from Whitehead here (PAR: 219): "The
philosophy of organism is a cell-theory of
actuality [...] the cell is exhibited as
appropriating for the foundation of its own
existence, the various elements of the universe
out of which it arises. Each process of
appropriation of a particular element is termed a
prehension."
Another (from "Science and the Modern World": 79)
"The concrete enduring organisms are organisms,
so that the plan of the whole influences the very
characters of the various subordinate organisms
which enter into it. [...] The electron blindly
runs either within or without the body; but it
runs withing the body in accordance with its
character within the body; that is to say, in
accordance with the general plan of the body, and
this plan includes the mental state."
I find both P and W stimulating to read and
especially if we try to see constructive
interconnections between them, since their
respective ways of thinking both in their own
ways urge us to conceive of/ describe physical
(and conceptual) relations as essentially
processual and as temporally and spatially
"continuous" in character, and both are concerned
to maintain open lines and a degree of continuity
between "material" and "mental" phenomeno.
This allows us, too, to consider at any kind of
physical/ material "entity" as inherently
transient, but also at the same time as a
relatively "stable" occasion/ event in an ongoing
creative process that allows for the growth and
development of "effete mind"/ concrete
rerasonableness... Here I think there is a lot of
"cheerful hope" for developing wider, more open
and more dynamic understandings of "our own"
experiences of reality...
(I repeat my earlier disclaimer - I am neither a
philosopher nor mathematician, my background is
in biochemistry and genetics - so everyone ought
to take my conjectures in these fields that are
remote my personal area of concentration with a
huge grain of salt.)
BTW, the Whitehead conference includes sessions
on Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry and Biology.
Several abstracts were quite novel and may be of
interest to readers of this listserve.
see:
http://www2.sbg.ac.at/whiteheadconference/index2.html
I'd echo that too...
Cheers
Jerry LR Chandler
(PS: Patrick, if you know David Lane, please
convey my personal greetings to him.)
Haven't seen him for a while now, as hee's on a
sabattical, but I'll pass on your regards whan I
see him, yes.
Best regards
Patrick
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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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