Hi Peirceans and biosemioticians, These following two quotes address the relations among three quite distinct types of material objects -- *crystals*, *bees*, and *humans*.
"Thought is no necessarily connected with a brain. It appears in the work of bees, of crystals and (090215-1) throughout the purely physical world; and one can no more deny that it is really there, than that the colors, the shapes, etc. of objects are really there." (CP 4.551) ". . . . This is not to say that bees and crystals think in anything like the way that human beings think, (090215-2) and they surely cannot know they are thinking, . . . " [1] To me, the first quote of Peirce highlights the CONTINUITY or invariance (i.e., thought, mind, semiosis, or ITR, irreducible triadic relation) found among these material systems. In contrast, Pickering [1], while cognizant of the continuity, nevertheless, is not blind to the DISCONTINUITY, or the emergent properties (resulting from the increasing organizational complexities from crystals, to bees and to humans), among the same set of objects. I agree with Pickering. Organizations are not all same. Some organizations (as in the human brain) can cause thinking that is detectable by an EEG machine, while some other organizations (e.g., in crystals) cannot cause any thinking since no EEG signals can be generated. To emphasize Statement (090215-1) at the neglect of Statement (090215-2) would be akin to asserting that light is particles (ignoring its wave properties) or waves (ignoring its particle properties), as was the common thinking among physicists before the principle of complementarity was established in the mid-1920s' [2]. Some Peircean scholars may wish to uphold (090215-1) and deny the validity of (090215-2), but, if what I referred to as "the principle of "*emergence-invariance complementarity*" in my last posting on these lists [3] is right, both (090215-1) and (090215-2) would be valid since they reflect the *complementary aspects of mind. *That is: "*Mind may be both continuous* (as Peirce asserts) *and* *discontinuous* (as suggested by the complementarity principle)." (090215-3) All the best. Sung Reference: [1] Pickering, J. (2007). Affordances are Signs. *tripleC* *5* (2):64-74. [2] Plotnitsky, A. (2003). Niel Bohr and Complementarity: An Introduction. Springer, New York. [3] Ji, S. (2015). Emergence vs. Invariance: Are they complementary aspects of complex systems ? Posted to PEIRCE-L on 9/1/2015. -- Sungchul Ji, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Toxicology Department of Pharmacology and Toxicology Ernest Mario School of Pharmacy Rutgers University Piscataway, N.J. 08855 732-445-4701 www.conformon.net
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