[Inquiry] Re: Simple Meanings In Limnal Expressions

[Jon Awbrey]

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SMILE.  Note 6

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| 3.3.  The Simplest Branch of Mathematics (cont.)
|
| For example, suppose the problem under consideration be to determine,
| upon a certain hypothesis, the numerical definition of the instant,
| or, as we may say, to determine the exact 'date', at which two
| couriers will meet.
|
| The date is some one of the series of numbers each of which is expressible,
| at least to any predesignate degree of approximation, in our usual method
| of numerical notation.  That series of numbers will be the system of values;
| and the number we want 'is' one of them.
|
| But we find it convenient to use a different phrase, and to
| say that the date 'is' defined to be the date at which the
| couriers meet, that 'this' fixes its 'identity', and that
| what we seek to know is what value becomes 'attached' to
| it in consequence of the conditions the problem supposes.
|
| It will be convenient to conceive of this statement as a "mere" variation
| of phraseology, although, as we shall learn, the word "mere" in such cases
| is often inappropriate, since great mathematical results are attainable by
| such means.
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers', CP 4.251
|
| C.S. Peirce, 'Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Volume 4,
| The Simplest Mathematics', Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (eds.),
| Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, 1933, 1961.

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