[Inquiry] Re: Logic Of The Sciences -- Discussion

[Jon Awbrey]

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LOTS.  Discussion Note 3

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BM = Bernard Morand
JA = Jon Awbrey

Re: LOTS.  http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2005-March/thread.html#2413

JA: NB.  These excerpts from MS 113 were cited earlier on a couple of other threads.
    I became interested in this MS in connection with some longstanding discussions
    with Bernard Morand, having to do with whether Peirce started out from a mostly
    logical or a mostly mathematical basis, and also in connection with the earlier
    critique of Thomas Short's paper on the development of Peirce's theory of signs.

BM: This is a question that bothers me when I am musing.  Most people will surely say
    that it is irrelevant to anything reasonable.  It goes so:  to what extent the
    early CSP inclination for logic was owed to outdoing the mathematical skills
    of his father?  The son tried to make his own way through his own field but
    seems somehow to follow in his father footsteps.  This would explain the
    complex and original relationship of his logic with mathematics as well
    as his early interest in the questions of method.

BM: Warning: this question is not scientific, even
    not psychological but wholly psychanalytical :-)

Bernard,

I can't see any sort of absolute distinction between logic and mathematics,
but relative to the arena of the present topic I seem to have some sense
of a difference between the logic of relative terms and the mathematics
of relations.  Logic and mathematics cannot be disentangled, making up
the warp and woof of a coherent science, but the fabric may be biased
in different directions, depending on how we stress it from moment
to moment.  The logical emphasis bears slightly heavier on the
terms, propositions, and arguments in the sign-interpretant
plane, while the mathematical emphasis has a tendency to
dismiss matters of "mere notation" in understandable
preference to the objective focus.

As far as the Oedipal thematics goes, that would
require me to speculate far beyond my ability to
falsify the off-base projections of my thematics.

One of the changes that has taken place in my views since
we started these discussions has been more to revise my
definitions of "early" and "late" in their application
to Peirce's work than anything else.  I used to lump
together everything up to 1870 as early Peirce, and
everything afterwards as later Peirce, whereas now
I am tending more and more to view the work up to
1865-1866 as the precocious Peirce and the work
of 1870 as the "come of age" Peirce.

Relative to that shifted perspective, I am beginning to see that
his early written work has a definite intensional-logical trend,
which does not appear to acquire a due extensional-mathematical
ballast until the LOR of 1870.  On the other hand, I know from
the time that I once spent with Peirce's microfilm manuscripts
that this appearance may be due to a selective bias, one that
comes from neglecting the reams of scratch paper that are
filled with extensive explorations of concrete examples.

"Further research is needed", as they say ...

Jon Awbrey

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inquiry e-lab: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/
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