[Inquiry] Re: Extension x Comprehension = Information

[Jon Awbrey]

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ECI.  Note 20

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| Thus every increase in the number of equivalents of any term increases either
| its extension or comprehension and 'conversely'.  It may be said that there
| are no equivalent terms in logic, since the only difference between such
| terms would be merely external and grammatical, while in logic terms
| which have the same meaning are identical.  I fully admit that.
| Indeed, the process of getting an equivalent for a term is
| an identification of two terms previously diverse.  It is,
| in fact, the process of nutrition of terms by which they
| get all their life and vigor and by which they put forth
| an energy almost creative -- since it has the effect of
| reducing the chaos of ignorance to the cosmos of science.
| Each of these equivalents is the explication of what there is
| wrapt up in the primary -- they are the surrogates, the interpreters
| of the original term.  They are new bodies, animated by that same soul.
| I call them the 'interpretants' of the term.  And the quantity of these
| 'interpretants', I term the 'information' or 'implication' of the term.
|
| CSP, CE 1, pages 464-465.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce,
|"The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis",
| Lowell Institute Lectures of 1866, pages 357-504 in:
|
|'Writings of Charles S. Peirce:  A Chronological Edition',
|'Volume 1, 1857-1866', Peirce Edition Project,
| Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1982.

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