But, if chemical icons are a direct consequence of physical laws, that would mean, they can be reduced to them. In a prebiotic world, they would not be icons, but only likenesses not interpreted. I think, an icon is an interpreted likeness, and interpretation of a likeness (icon) requires an animal with a brain with a network of neurons to depict and compare. But I agree, that, if there in prebiotic world there is a mudhole containing a mixture of different salts, and by drying out, on one edge of the mudhole a crystal of one salt is growing, on another edge another, and so on, but is this interpretation, iconicity? I doubt that.
Cheers,
Helmut
Von: "Jerry LR Chandler" <jerry_lr_chand...@me.com>
List, Frederik, Jeff:
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On Oct 4, 2014, at 3:22 PM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
(citing CSP), "icons commit themselves to nothing at all"
This is a clear and crisp example of the influence of historical usage on the meaning of words, grammar, signs, symbols, terms, expressions, logic and so forth.
In modern chemistry, the principle icons are chemical structures that correspond exactly with indices, rhemata, decisigns, arguments, legisigns, the symbols of the chemical table of elements and the sinsign as the source of qualisigns.
Furthermore, chemical icons, at a deeper abstract level, are a direct consequence of physical laws and physical experimentation and chemical mathematics of the atomic numbers.
Chemists call an icon a chemical identity and, and as a class, chemical identities are the basis for the formal logic of mathematical chemistry and a form of logic of relatives developed from the conceptualization of matter as atoms with unique properties.
CSP (1839-1914?) died long before chemists learned construct chemical icons from the indices representing electrical units and integers.
Cheers
Jerry
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