[Arisbe] Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry

[Jon Awbrey]

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Mishtu Banerjee wrote (MB):
Howard Pattee wrote (HP):

HP: Jon, I have read the passages from Peirce you quote over and over, but I doubt
    if I could elaborate sensibly on what it means.  I think a few specific examples
    might help me interpret how Peirce's definition of a sign and use of logic might,
    or might not, be related to any of the wide variety of inquiry that produced great
    discoveries in physics.
 
MB: May I suggest a data set, from the world of physics.  The data set below is
    cited in B. Cohen's 'The Birth of a New Physics', in the chapter on Kepler.
    It's relevant to Peirce because he was deeply interested in the history of
    science, and spent a lot of time repeating the analyses of great scientists,
    attempting by re-doing the work as it were, to better apprehend their thought
    processes.  It was this approach and perspective that caused Peirce to re-analyze
    Kepler's original data for himself, to try and understand Kepler's point of view.
    He began quite critical of Kepler, and by the time he had worked his way through
    the data, and Kepler's reasoning, considered it a triumph of the power of induction.
    The data set was the basis for Kepler's third law:  "in equal time intervals, a line
    from the planet to the sun will sweep out equal areas".  Kepler tried to explain the
    third law's relevance in terms of celestial harmonies, derived analogies to musical
    scales, and the 5 regular polyhedra which he was obsessed with.  Most scientists
    did not know what to make of Kepler's "explanations" and ignored them. 
 
MB: The third law, was then put on deductive terms by Newton, where he showed
    that such motion would follow, assuming the following proposition to be true:
    Proposition 1.  Theorem 1.  "The area by which revolving bodies describe radii
    drawn to an immovable centre of force do lie in the same immovable planes, and
    are proportional to the times in which they are described".

MB: Now, to get at this proposition, Newton appeared to have had to "guess" at a
    different principle of inertia than his immediate predecessors.  They assumed
    that pure circular motion could be inertial (Galilean inertia).  Newton realized
    that even circular (or elliptical motion) required acceleration, thus a force for
    its continuance.  This force was universal gravity.  Newton's guess was that it
    applied not only to the force between the sun and a planet, but everywhere,
    to everything.  Cohen notes, "There is no mathematics -- whether algebra,
    geometry, or the calculus, to justify this bold step.  One can say of it
    only that it is one of those triumphs that humble ordinary men in the
    presence of genius". 
 
MB: Now Cohen, goes on to make a very interesting statement:
 
BC: | While it is true that the Newtonian mechanics is still applicable in the
    | range of phenomena for which it was intended, the student should not make
    | the mistake of thinking that the framework in which the system originally
    | was set was equally valid.  Newton believed there was a sense in which
    | space and time were 'absolute' physical entities.  Any deep analysis
    | of his writings shows how in his mind his discoveries depended on
    | these "absolutes".  To be sure, Newton was aware that clocks do
    | not measure absolute time, but only local time and that we deal
    | in our experiments with local space rather than absolute space.
 
MB: So: The induction was Keplers. ... gained via a labrous process
    of trial and error curve fitting (a formula to fit the data).
 
MB: The abduction, was Newton's guess at universal gravitation.
 
MB: The deduction followed, in terms of a series of propositions,
    the consequences of which could be worked out and tested, and
    which predicted the original data.  They explained Keler's data,
    but also explained a good deal more than just that data, including
    several open questions of the day, such as the phenomena of precession,
    where the axis of a spinning body (a spinning top, the earth) undergoes
    a conical motion:  an ancient observation, that was left unexplained
    until Newton explained it.
 
MB: More simply:  A localized pattern was apprehended (Kepler),
    a guess was made at a generality that might explain the observed pattern (Newton).
    Assuming the guess, deductions followed (More Newton with help from Galileo and
    the various others whose shoulders he was collectively standing upon), that led
    to corrolaries above and beyond the original pattern apprehened, that could
    further be empirically tested (the theory had excess empirical content, and
    explained much more than the data that led to it), and was ultimately found
    to hold within a range of observation (most things we see at the meso scale),
    even after the initial "perspective" that led to the ideas was found to be
    innacurate (absolute space).  The deductive system that resulted could be
    formalized.  Neither the basis for the original guess, nor the point of
    view that led to the guess could be formalized.  The guess, however
    informal, was about form:  it stated that two apparently different
    seeming phenomena -- motion of planets around the sun, falling of
    an apple to earth, may share the same form or relation:  that
    relation was gravitational attraction.  Peirce, poetically
    referred to the attractive force as love, and called it
    a firstness.  The relation had a specific indexical form,
    which could be stated as a formula, this was a Peircian
    2ndness.  The form of the relation, could be seen to
    mediate the motion of all material bodies in the
    universe, providing an interdependance of all
    things at some level, and in this mediative
    role, may be seen as a thirdness. 
 
MB: Peirce went one step further, in positing that laws were not "absolute", good
    for all places at all times, but rather evolutionary, a form of habit-taking.
    The "more general" laws that appeared universal, were merely older.  Laws were
    coming into being all the time, usually at some level of contingency.  Popper,
    reached similar conclusions, much much later, and apparently either independantly
    of Peirce, or without citing him.  What Popper calls "propensities" were Peirce's,
    "habit taking", and Peirce's explanation of the origins of propensities is given in
    his essay "The Doctrine of Necessity Examined" (reprinted in 'Chance, Love, and Logic',
    edited by Morris R. Cohen).  Popper relates propensity to the concept of conditional
    probabilities, whereas Peirce develops a notion of pure chance, which is not the same
    as probability, which he also sometimes refers to as vagueness.  Recall, that any
    probability requires one to be able to "count" in a very well defined combinatorial
    space.  Peirce posits, that vague (or underdefined) relations do not allow such
    counting initially -- as the relations develop, such counting becomes possible,
    and as the relations --- become fixed, or necessary, the relations appear to
    take on universality
 
MB: What I have tried to demonstrate is that Peirce's ideas of firstness, secondness, thirdness
    from which his diagramettic method followed, can be seen to naturally flow from a study of
    the history of physical science, by abstracting the method of scientists from the particular
    facts or even the hypotheses and theorems they posit.  But I am no expert on Peirce, and may
    be putting words in his mouth. 
 
MB: Here is an updated version of the data (from Cohen's book again).
    I leave it to Jon and Howard to place their cuts where they will:
    What is the sign, what is the interpretant, what is the object
    in the context of observations of planetary motion. 
 
    | Planet    Period(years)   Distance from Sun
    o---------------------------------------------
    | Mercury    0.24           0.387
    | Venus      0.615          0 .723
    | Earth      1.00           1.00
    | Mars       1.88           1.524
    | Jupiter   11.86           5.203
    | Saturn    29.457          9.539   
 
MB: I hope this example provides the kind of conrete example that Howard seemed to be seeking
    to ground the discussion, while also providing a very good starting point for discussing
    the scientific problems that provided impetus for Peirce's development of his ideas, and
    therefore a good jumping off (or jumping on) point for Jon also. 
 
MB: It may be that as someone trained as a scientist, I suffer from being overly pragmatic.
    But I often feel that discussions of Peirce's logic, separate from Peirce's science is
    like trying to discuss the dynamics of a forest, without discussing the roots of the
    trees.  Most of the "matter" of the forest, is actually underground, in those roots. 
 
MB: At the same time, the artist in me, often makes analogies to understand semiotic, in terms
    of a blank piece of paper, the appearance of a sign upon it at an artist's hand, the placing
    of the first mark, defining other marks, the creation of positive and negative space, and the
    final drawing as the mediation between negative and positive space. 
 
MB: The logic follows, once the cuts are made.
    Where the cuts are made ...... that is art
    (whether committed by scientific artists,
    or artistic scientists).

Yes, that sounds about right to me,
subject, off course, to the usual
uncertainties of a retrospective
analysis (Monday Morning QB'ing).
Which, per via, is just one of
the reasons why I would never
dare to start out -- and I am,
after all, still starting out,
after all these many years --
on such a full-blown, complex,
and rich example, but have to
try, and try, and try again to
get at, to grasp, or at least
to reach for the still and yet
still deeper roots, the finest
root-hairs of these ur-pflanzen
cacti, dandelions, grass-blades,
in hopes of oneday, if only maybe,
coming to see the forest, the tree.

Oh, by the way, here is an excellent book
on Peirce's pragmatic account of inquiry
that I have been meaning to recommend:

| Cheryl (C.J.) Misak,
|'Truth and the End of Inquiry:  A Peircean Account of Truth',
| Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK, 1991.

Jon Awbrey

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