[Inquiry] Re: Peirce's Logic Of Information -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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PLOI.  Discussion Note 5

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BCES = Bernard Scott

BCES: Just to say thanks again for the links and refs and for your own
      exegesis of Peirce.  I read "CSP: The Essential Writings" many
      years ago but have not been able to follow up to any great
      extent.  I did note, amongst other things, his influence
      on Warren McCulloch re the importance of triadic relations,
      his discussion of habit formation in dynamical systems,
      which in its abstraction is pure cybernetics a la Ashby.
      As a psychologist, I also appreciated his discussion of
      the social nature of humnan knowledge and saw there the
      forerunners of GH Mead's theses re mind, self and society.

Bernard,

Yes, that's the ticket that got me into this very ballpark --
some of my very first readings in cybernetics back in the
60's were Arbib, Ashby, Bateson, Cherry, McCulloch, McKay,
and Wiener, all of whom seemed to be interested in a kind
of "qualitative information theory", or trying to bring
about closer links between information theory, logic,
and semantics/semiotics -- and most of whom had run
across Peirce's work somewhere in their wanderings.
McCulloch especially, in the 'Embodiments of Mind'
anthology, used Peirce's "dot-cross" notation for
the 2-place boolean functions, and a mysterious
figure in one article -- made more mysterious
by the circumstance that my copy of the book
had the figure printed upside down! -- sent
me into the microfilmed manuscripts of
Peirce's Nachlass for enlightenment.

It wasn't until the 'Chronological Edition' started
coming out in the 80's, though, that I discovered
that what I had thought of as some of Peirce's
last ideas were really some of his earliest,
and that he had as early as 1865 started
talking about the "laws of information"
that he had arrived at through sheer
force of logical analysis. (!)

Jon Awbrey

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