ONT Re: Inquiry Into Inquiry
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Stan Salthe wrote (SS):
Jon Awbrey wrote (JA):
SS: By "triad O-S-I", I just mean the general object-sign-interpretant form.
If you mean something else ...
JA: Speaking about the "general object-sign-interpretant form" is like
speaking about the "general A-B-C form of a triangle". It does make
a bit of sense, in a vaguely general and a generally vague sort of way,
but when one gets down to the point of trying to speak sensibly about the
particular geometry that one needs for a real application, then there are
a few futher questions that one needs to ask before one can get to work
on anything practical. That is the point to which I have been down for
a while now, and if others are happy to remain at the phase of general
vaguity, then I will be happy for them, but must get moseying along.
SS: Well, for me the whole semiotic enterprise is just one piece
on a complex board of many subjects that I am trying to pull
together into a whole. The details do not occupy me as they
would a specialist. But I DO want to get the broad, vague
outlines right.
And how does one know if the broad vague outlines are right?
SS: When I refer to an -ism, it is my usual experience that the intellectual
I am communicating with has a store of knowledge about them. If you don't,
then we will find it hard to communicate.
JA: I have rather a large store of experiences talking with people who go on
about "ism too" and "ism not" as a substitute for thinking about what is,
and instead of thinking critically to examine whether the unreflectively
adopted coordinate systems and presumptive frames of reference that they
seek to construct from their purported oppositions of modism versus nodism
really do manage to cut up what may well be a non-orientable space or knot.
SS: The -ism is a handy shortcut to referring to whole books.
There just ain't time for it.
Now you are just being coy. Empiricism, Formalism, Materialism, Rationalism --
nothing but shortcuts for referring to whole books? Maybe that's how an ism
gets going, but you know as well as I do that the handy shortcut that an ism
always comes round to advising is to skip the reading of the otherhand books.
JA: What my store of knowledge on the-isms tells me is that any ism worth its
salt probably reflects some interesting and useful facet of what is, but
by no means exhausts the core solidity of what is and stays in question.
SS: This is one reason why I am trying to tie many of them
together under the umbrella of natural philosophy.
Well, if you really mean that, it would be a start,
but all of my sadder-but-wiser experience tells me
that there is just something about an ism that will
never play nice, and so I have come to believe that
a good next step is to drop the epithetical tissue
of the super-sufficial "ism" altogether. Otherwise,
at least, in my sad experience, every time one tries
any sort of integrative, synthetic, umbrella approach
in a community of ismatic characters one ends up being
dismismed under some such name as a mere "aspectualist".
JA: So if somebody is proselytizing an ism in a spirit of enthusiasm about
one aspect, one face, one view of a subject, then I think that's great,
but if that one turns to telling me that no other perspective is worth
the candle, then that is where I start to feel that I have heard that
kinda line before.
SS: I agree with this. I am trying to relate -isms. I don't give a damn
if they are reasonable or whacky. The discourses need to be related
to each other on a cognitive map. None can be "true", and all are
partial. All have something to contribute, which might be magnifed
upon apposition against others.
Smushing -isms? Well, good luck with that.
Just watch out for all those negative ions.
SS: In the sciences I know fairly well:
No mechanism, no phenomenon.
JA: Another oldie but goodie from Aristotle.
JA: I cannot imagine how "oldie but goodie" can be taken as a put-down,
but then, how could know what's in my record collection? Anyway,
I was only remarking on Aristotle's fundamental insight about
the demarcation of science from many other things with which
it might be confused. It's an all important idea, one that
marks the limit of scientific method, "limit" here being
a good thing, as it is the limit that makes it a method.
SS: Well, OK. I have no problem with A. I think that his causal analysis is just the
latest thing we need in complex systems. The sciences (since Bacon, I think) threw
out the babies, Formality and Finality (and some, even, Materiality), but the whole
family is back. (Formality has actually been with us since we drew equations, but
unacknowledged as such.)
I am beginning to suspect you of virtually Peircean tendencies.
Jon Awbrey
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