ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Subj: Re: Inquiry
Date: Sun, 03 Sep 2000 23:36:37 -0400
From: Jon Awbrey <jawbrey@oakland.edu>
To: Stand Up Ontology <standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org>
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| Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
| mi ritrovai per una selva oscura
| ché la diritta via era smarrita.
|
| Midway upon the journey of our life
| I found myself within a forest dark,
| For the straightforward pathway had been lost.
|
| Dante Alighieri, 'Inferno', Canto 1.1-3
| http://www.divinecomedy.org/
| http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/projects/dante/
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| If, walking in a garden on a dark night, you were suddenly
| to hear the voice of your sister crying to you to rescue her
| from a villain, would you stop to reason out the metaphysical
| question of whether it were possible for one mind to cause
| material waves of sound and for another mind to perceive them?
| If you did, the problem might probably occupy the remainder
| of your days.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "Vitally Important Topics", CP 1.655.
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| Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason,
| that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so
| desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to
| think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves
| to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:
|
| Do not block the way of inquiry.
|
| Although it is better to be methodical in our investigations,
| and to consider the economics of research, yet there is no
| positive sin against logic in 'trying' any theory which
| may come into our heads, so long as it is adopted in such
| a sense as to permit the investigation to go on unimpeded
| and undiscouraged. On the other hand, to set up a philosophy
| which barricades the road of further advance toward the truth
| is the one unpardonable offence in reasoning, as it is also
| the one to which metaphysicians have in all ages shown
| themselves the most addicted.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "The First Rule of Reason", CP 1.135-136.
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| Inquiry is the controlled or directed transformation of
| an indeterminate situation into one that is so determinate
| in its constituent distinctions and relations as to convert
| the elements of the original situation into a unified whole.
|
| John Dewey, "Logic: The Theory of Inquiry", in 'John Dewey:
| The Later Works, 1925-1953, Volume 12: 1938', Edited by
| J.A. Boydston, Southern Illinois University Press,
| Carbondale, IL, 1986, page 108.
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| This paper is based upon the theory already established,
| that the function of conceptions is to reduce the manifold
| of sensuous impressions to unity, and that the validity of
| a conception consists in the impossibility of reducing the
| content of consciousness to unity without the introduction
| of it.
|
| Charles Sanders Peirce, "On a New List of Categories", 14 May 1867,
| In 'Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 2,
| 1867-1871', Indiana University Press, Bloomington, IN, 1984, page 49,
| Customarily cited as (CE 2, 49). Cf. 'Collected Papers', CP 1.545.
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By way of giving this question a proper form of inaugural,
I thought that I would share with you some of my favorite
quotations on the subject of inquiry, each one reflecting
a different facet of this resplendently fascinating topic.
With regard to the bearing of the more poetic expressions,
I will leave you now to your own contemplations, and, for
the moment and the immediate future, I will focus on what
is evidently the most prosaic and derivative of the bunch,
where I think it sufficient to echo Peirce's echo of Kant.
I believe that this statement forms a cardinal expression --
embodying the heart and serving as the hinge -- for a very
important principle, one that goes a large part of the way
toward explaining how the information that is stored up in
an ontology, a "body of ontological knowledge" (BOOK), can
work to inform the progress of inquiries on which it bears.
Jon Awbrey
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