Victoria, I wonder if it's necessary to chart changes in Peirce's view
throughout his career. For example, what do you think are the implications of
this statement (from the Harvard 1903 lectures) for final causation:
The Universe as an argument is necessarily a great work of art, a great
Dear Gary / Kristi:On Apr 19, 2006, at 1:05 AM, Peirce Discussion Forum digest wrote:Dear Gary, I was quite delighted in reading what you wrote: The second law, as i understand it, says that any actual use of energy degrades it, i.e. reduces its quality or usefulness. In the jargon of
Kirsti and Gary, i'll have to get back to you later -- i've decided to
limit myself to one post a day here.
Victoria N. Alexander writes,
[[ Eric Schneider and Dorian Sagan recently published a book with this
idea as the thesis, _Into the Cool_. ]]
Yes, i read _Into the Cool_ last year, and
Jerry,
[[ I find this paragraph fragment to be highly controversial. ]]
I wouldn't argue with that, but your message doesn't explain *your*
reasons for finding it controversial. Your description of the chemical
processes involved is irrelevant, because nothing i said denies that
they *are*
Ben,
I liked your post. In any analysis of process, cause-effect relationships
are created by our puctuations--which in turn inevitably result from our
local (space and time) interests. Time slices can be so misleading.
Watzlawick, Beavin and Jackson (Pragmatics of Human Communication) wrote
Apologies to Jerry and to the list -- i marked my message offlist
and then stupidly sent it to the list! (So now i've broken my own role
twice today ... *sigh*)
But as long as i'm here, let me insert a couple of remarks that might
clear up or head off certain confusions. First, Victoria wrote
Ben,
[[ I wonder what you mean by thermodynamically isolated. I've taken it
to mean a system with no matter or energy interaction with an outside
system. ]]
That's pretty much it. All organisms are open in that sense -- they
require inputs and outputs of energy/matter -- and all organisms are
Bill,
Thank you. Talking about cause effect does seem a bit of an art and when I
think about it too much, I tend to feel like I'm on thin ice. With other
factors held the same, when one wiggles something x, and something y behaves in
some corresponding manner and otherwise does not, then we
