Re: [peirce-l] What Peirce Preserves
Jon Awbrey wrote: I would tend to sort Frege more in a class with Boole, De Morgan, Peirce, and Schröder, since I have the sense when I read them that they are all talking like mathematicians, not like people who are alien to mathematics. I would thoroughly concur. Although Peirce had, perforce, deliberately identified himself as a logician in _Who's Who_, and part 2 of his 1885 AJM paper, after being accepted by Sylvester, was refused publication by Simon Newcomb (who succeeded Sylvester as AJM editor) because Peirce insisted that the paper was logic rather than mathematics, each of these people worked in mathematics as mathematicians (Boole, De Morgan Peirce, Schröder primarily in algebra, but also contributing to differential and integral calculus and function theory; Frege primarily in function theory, but also working in algebra; and all to some extent in geometry as well). My points were -- to put them as simplistically and succinctly as possible -- that: (a) _Studies in Logic_ did not get laid aside because of the diffusion of its contents (Epicurean logic; probability, along with algebraic logic) but because (i) philosophers either mathophobic or innumerate were unprepared or unable to tackle the algebraic logic; while (ii) the mathematician who were capable of handling it did not ignore _Studies..._ in the pre-Principia day (witness Dodgson's being inspired to devise falsifiability trees by Ladd-Franklin's treatment of the antilogism and Marquand's contribution on logic machines; witness the praise for _Studies..._ by Venn, Schröder, and even Bertrand Russell's recommendation to Couturat that he read _Studies..._); (b) once the Fregean revolution began taking effect, in the post-Principia era, not only _Studies in Logic_ slid off the radar even for those capable of handling the mathematics, but so did most of the work in algebraic logic from Boole and De Morgan through Peirce and Schröder to even the pre-Principia Whitehead, in favor of logistic, that is in favor of the function-theoretic approach rather than the older algebraic approach to logic, and THAT was why, in 1941, Tarski expressed surprise and chagrin that the work of Peirce and Schröder hadn't been followed through and that, in 1941, algebraic logic languished in the same state in which it had existed forty-five years earlier. Incidentally, Gilbert Ryle attributed the interest of philosophers in logistic preeminently to the advertisements in favor of it by Bertrand Russell, convincing philosophers that the new mathematical logic could help them resolve or eliminate philosophical puzzles regarding language and epistemology (at the same time, we might add, that Carnap was arguing for the use of he logical analysis of language in eliminating metaphysics). (I do not believe that in my previous posts I said anything to the contrary or said anything that could be construed to the contrary.) - Message from jawb...@att.net - Date: Mon, 07 May 2012 09:25:22 -0400 From: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Reply-To: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Subject: Re: What Peirce Preserves To: Jack Rooney johnphilipda...@hotmail.com Re: Irving H. Anellis, et al. At: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/8116 Peircers, Looking back from this moment, I think I see things a little differently. The critical question is whether our theoretical description of inquiry gives us a picture that is true to life, preserving the life of inquiry and serving to guide it on its way, or whether it murders to dissect, leaving us with nothing but a Humpty Dumpty hodge-podge of false idols and torn and twisted bits of maps that mislead the quest at every turn. There is a natural semantics that informs mathematical inquiry. It permeates the actual practice even of those who declare for some variety of nominal faith in their idle off-hours. Peirce is unique in his ability to articulate the full dimensionality of mathematical meaning, but echoes of his soundings keep this core sense reverberating, however muted, throughout pragmatism. If I sift the traditions of theoretical reflection on mathematics according to how well their theoretical images manage to preserve this natural stance on mathematical meaning, I would tend to sort Frege more in a class with Boole, De Morgan, Peirce, and Schröder, since I have the sense when I read them that they are all talking like mathematicians, not like people who are alien to mathematics. Regards, Jon -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ - End message from jawb...@att.net - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York St. Indiana University-Purdue
Re: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce
propositional calculus, FOL, and the sorts of topics you might expect to find in introductory textbooks. Sorry if this doesn't speak more explicitly to the question you had in mind. - Message from jimwillgo...@msn.com - Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 14:41:18 -0500 From: Jim Willgoose jimwillgo...@msn.com Reply-To: Jim Willgoose jimwillgo...@msn.com Subject: RE: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce To: ianel...@iupui.edu, peirce-l@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Irving and Jon; I wonder if the Studies in Logic did not suffer, in part, from a retrospective lack of unity. In other words, from the vantage point of 1950, the various topics (quantification, induction, Epicurus etc.) did not fit the 20th century development of a more narrow-grained classification into history of philosophy of science or formal deductive logic, or philosophy of language and meaning. Another conjecture might be that the first two decades of the 20th century dealt with the formalization and sytematizing of deductive logic for textbook presentation. Only after sufficient time had passed could the book be retrieved for historical and philosophical interest. Of course, there is always the nefarious possibility of an 'institutional apriori authority having its way. Jim W Date: Wed, 2 May 2012 11:48:14 -0400 From: ianel...@iupui.edu Subject: Re: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce To: PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU Jon, I couldn't have said it better myself! Kneale Kneale, to which Jack referred, was originally written in the late 1950s and published in 1962, and in terms of respective significance pays more attention to Kant even than to Frege, and is best, thanks to Martha Kneale's expertise, on the medievals. Trouble was, in those days, and pretty much even today, it is about all there is in English. My joint paper with Nathan Houser, The Nineteenth Century Roots of Universal Algebra and Algebraic Logic, in Hajnal Andreka, James Donald Monk, Istvan Nemeti (eds.), Colloquia Mathematica Societatis Janos Bolyai 54. Algebraic Logic, Budapest (Hungary), 1988 (Amsterdam/London/New York: North-Holland, 1991), 1-36, includes a brief analysis of what's WRONG with Kneale Kneale and its ilk. When Mendelson's translation of Styazhkin's History of Mathematical Logic came out in 1969, it should really have come to serve as a decent supplement to Kneale Kneale for K K's grossly inadequate treatment of Boole, Peirce, Schröder, Jevons, Venn, and Peano to help fill in the serious gaps in Kneale Kneale. Even if one looks at the hugh multi-volume Handbook of the History of Logic under the editorship of Dov Gabbay and John Woods that is still coming out, it's a mixed bag in terms of the quality of the essays, some of which are historical surveys, others of which are attempts at reconstruction based on philosophical speculation. Irving - Message from jawb...@att.net - Date: Wed, 02 May 2012 11:15:05 -0400 From: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Reply-To: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Subject: Re: Not Preserving Peirce To: Jack Rooney johnphilipda...@hotmail.com Jack, All histories of logic written that I've read so far are very weak on Peirce, and I think it's fair to say that even the few that make an attempt to cover his work have fallen into the assimilationist vein. Regards, Jon Jack Rooney wrote: Despite all this there are several books on the history of logic eg Kneale Kneale[?]. -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ - End message from jawb...@att.net - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York St. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202-5159 USA URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU - End message from jimwillgo...@msn.com - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce
Re: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce
I trust that it is understood that I neither explicitly asserted, nor even implied, that Tarski was the only Polish logician, or the only Pole to write about logic. I merely mentioned Tarski's as one of a given genre of textbooks of the early post-Principia. My chief point regarding Tarski was that he was among the few in the post-Principia era who advocated on behalf of a continuation of the Boole-Peirce-Schroder algebraic style of logic, and that for four decades he was what we might call the fountainhead of a school of specialists in the subfield of algebraic logic emanating out of U Cal-Berkeley. I did refer to his teacher Lukasiewicz, in particular as being one of the Warsaw logicians who interested Tarski in the work of Peirce and Schroder. Neither was my reference to Tarski's textbook intended to suggest that it was the only textbook in Polish of the early post-Principia era that treated mathematical or symbolic logic, any more than that Carnap's _Abriss_ or _Einfuhrung_ were the sole such books in German, only that it was an example of such books that began appearing in the early post-Principia era that did not shy away from a mathematical outlook. I suppose I should also have mentioned Lukasiewicz's _Elementy logiki matematicznej_ (1929), which belonged to that slightly earlier genre of textbooks in mathematical logic of the post-Principia era that, like Cooley's, were based upon lecture notes, in the case of Lukasiewicz's, prepared by Mojiesz Presburger as the editor. Incidentally, Jan Sleszynski, known in Russian as Ivan Sleshinskii, produced a Russian translation of Louis Coututrat's _L'algèbra de la logique_ (in and respectively), and Stanislaw Piatkowski (1849-?) was, apparently, the first to write in Polish about algebraic logic, in his doctoral thesis Algebra w logice (1888), but was critical of it., He nevertheless established a reputation as a pioneer of mathematical logic in Poland, as Tadeusz Batog called him, and Batog and Roman Murawski account him as central to the beginnings of mathematical logic in Poland. None of this, so far as I am aware, alters or otherwise affects the main point of my previous post, which was in response to a specific question, first and foremost regarding the status of the relevance of _Studies in Logic_ vis-à-vis (a) the difusion of topics in _Studies..._ and (b) the rise of logistic as supplanting the older Boole-Peirce-Schröder tradition. - Message from johnphilipda...@hotmail.com - Date: Sat, 5 May 2012 15:42:07 -0400 From: Jack Rooney johnphilipda...@hotmail.com Reply-To: Jack Rooney johnphilipda...@hotmail.com Subject: RE: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce To: Irving H. Anellis ianel...@iupui.edu, peirce-l@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU An addendum: Many Poles besides Tarski wrote about logic. A book or three have been written on the subject of Polish studies of logic between the WW. - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU - End message from johnphilipda...@hotmail.com - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York St. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202-5159 USA URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Re: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce
, others of which are attempts at reconstruction based on philosophical speculation. Irving - Message from jawb...@att.net - Date: Wed, 02 May 2012 11:15:05 -0400 From: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Reply-To: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Subject: Re: Not Preserving Peirce To: Jack Rooney johnphilipda...@hotmail.com Jack, All histories of logic written that I've read so far are very weak on Peirce, and I think it's fair to say that even the few that make an attempt to cover his work have fallen into the assimilationist vein. Regards, Jon Jack Rooney wrote: Despite all this there are several books on the history of logic eg Kneale Kneale[?]. -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ - End message from jawb...@att.net - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York St. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202-5159 USA URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU - End message from jimwillgo...@msn.com - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York St. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202-5159 USA URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
Re: [peirce-l] Not Preserving Peirce
Jon, I couldn't have said it better myself! Kneale Kneale, to which Jack referred, was originally written in the late 1950s and published in 1962, and in terms of respective significance pays more attention to Kant even than to Frege, and is best, thanks to Martha Kneale's expertise, on the medievals. Trouble was, in those days, and pretty much even today, it is about all there is in English. My joint paper with Nathan Houser, The Nineteenth Century Roots of Universal Algebra and Algebraic Logic, in Hajnal Andreka, James Donald Monk, Istvan Nemeti (eds.), Colloquia Mathematica Societatis Janos Bolyai 54. Algebraic Logic, Budapest (Hungary), 1988 (Amsterdam/London/New York: North-Holland, 1991), 1-36, includes a brief analysis of what's WRONG with Kneale Kneale and its ilk. When Mendelson's translation of Styazhkin's History of Mathematical Logic came out in 1969, it should really have come to serve as a decent supplement to Kneale Kneale for K K's grossly inadequate treatment of Boole, Peirce, Schröder, Jevons, Venn, and Peano to help fill in the serious gaps in Kneale Kneale. Even if one looks at the hugh multi-volume Handbook of the History of Logic under the editorship of Dov Gabbay and John Woods that is still coming out, it's a mixed bag in terms of the quality of the essays, some of which are historical surveys, others of which are attempts at reconstruction based on philosophical speculation. Irving - Message from jawb...@att.net - Date: Wed, 02 May 2012 11:15:05 -0400 From: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Reply-To: Jon Awbrey jawb...@att.net Subject: Re: Not Preserving Peirce To: Jack Rooney johnphilipda...@hotmail.com Jack, All histories of logic written that I've read so far are very weak on Peirce, and I think it's fair to say that even the few that make an attempt to cover his work have fallen into the assimilationist vein. Regards, Jon Jack Rooney wrote: Despite all this there are several books on the history of logic eg Kneale Kneale[?]. -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ mwb: http://www.mywikibiz.com/Directory:Jon_Awbrey oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey word press blog 1: http://jonawbrey.wordpress.com/ word press blog 2: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ - End message from jawb...@att.net - Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York St. Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202-5159 USA URL: http://www.irvinganellis.info - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
[peirce-l]
As an addendum to Nathan Houser's The Fortunes and Misfortunes of the Peirce Papers, it might be well to pass along parts of an email exchange I had over the last few days with Ignacio Angelelli. Ignacio wrote on 29 April, in connection with our discussion of lack of interest in history of logic in some quarters that: Peirce's personal copy of Studies in Logic is a good example. I.C. Lieb had received it as a gift from P Weiss around 1950 (how did P Weiss get it... oh well...) . Upon his death Lieb gave it to our Phil Dept in Austin. It was stored in the open stacks of the departmental library... can you imagine! It took lots of paper work to have it transferred to the Humanities Research Library (where at least in theory my Hist of Log Collection continued to exist). It was finally catalogued as the little book deserves. But my point is that none of my logician colleagues was interested in such a beautiful volume, with so many handwritten remarks. In reply, I summarized the main points of Nathan's depressing article on the abuse of such historically valuable material, and then reported my recollection that Henry Aiken, whose T.A. I was in the early 1970s, was among those who has alleged to have gleefully composed his own lecture notes on the verso of original Peirce manuscripts that he acquired when the Harvard philosophy department gave away some of Peirce's papers as souvenirs. I personally can neither confirm nor disconfirm these claims; I saw Aiken referring in his class lectures to notes on clearly yellowing paper with writing on both sides, but never got close enough to get a good look at those pages. In his latest communication in this discussion, Ignacio wrote (in part) on 1 May regarding these interesting comments on the Peirce library that: When back in Austin I should look again into those items left to the Phil Dept little library by Chet Lieb, because I seem to remember there was another Peirce volume, a geometry or math book, of course no recollection of who was the author. Alas, things and people change. I somehow forced the librarian to accept the Studies in Logic, as well as a set of papers left by Lieb. ...To be continued...? Irving H. Anellis Visiting Research Associate Peirce Edition, Institute for American Thought 902 W. New York Street Indiana University - Purdue University at Indianapolis Indianapolis, IN 46202-5157 USA - You are receiving this message because you are subscribed to the PEIRCE-L listserv. To remove yourself from this list, send a message to lists...@listserv.iupui.edu with the line SIGNOFF PEIRCE-L in the body of the message. To post a message to the list, send it to PEIRCE-L@LISTSERV.IUPUI.EDU
