ONT Re: Fwd: Ontology As Math Or Metaphysics?
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and here's yet another note from that intermittent series,
this one being mary's "diagram" of joe's "reconstruction".
jon awbrey
> Subj: Peirce's Work - Classification of the Sciences (fwd)
> Date: Fri, 3 Nov 2000 14:37:39 -0800 (PST)
> From: Mary Keeler <mkeeler@u.washington.edu>
>
> Okay, here it is! See if you can tell why
> I think this "diagram" helps so much?
>
> ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> Date: Tue, 8 Aug 2000 17:51:10 -0700 (PDT)
> From: Mary Keeler <mkeeler@u.washington.edu>
> To: port-l@iupui.edu
> Subject: Peirce's Work - Classification of the Sciences
>
> Peirce's classification scheme first divides inquiry into the Sciences of
> Review and the Sciences of Discovery. This reconstruction of part of his
> classification is a slightly corrected and modified version of what will
> appear in my ICCS paper this year. I will be leaving for the ICCS
> conference on Friday, but will send several more posts in the "Peirce's
> Work" series, before I depart. Will be visiting family and friends in
> Germany, Paris, and London. Do let me know if I will be near enough to
> meet up with any PORTers during the next three weeks? (Tony, will you be
> in Paris, by chance?) I will be meeting with Jaime Nubiola in Cambridge,
> MA, on my return, and we will work on mirror-site issues. Hope to see
> many of you in Darmstadt! --Mary
>
> Bear in mind as you examine the following that Peirce said:
>
> "Modern science, with its microscopes and telescopes, with its chemistry
> and electricity, and with its entirely new appliances of life, has put us
> into quite another world; almost as much so as if it had transported our
> race to another planet. Some of the old beliefs have no application
> except in extended senses, and in such extended senses they are sometimes
> dubitable and subject to just criticism. It is above all the normative
> sciences (esthetics, ethics, and logic) that men are in dire need of
> having severely criticized, in their relation to the new world created by
> science. Unfortunately, this need is as unconscious as it is great." [MS
> 291 (1905); CP 5.513]
>
> ______________________________________________________________________
>
> _The Structure of Philosophy in a Classification of the Sciences of Discovery_
> represents philosophy as a positive science, in the sense of discovering what
> really is true but limited to "so much of truth as can be inferred from common
> experience." The special sciences are principally occupied with the accumulation
> of new facts inferred from specific human and natural inquiries
> [see CP: 1.183-238 (1903)].
>
> I. Mathematics ("the Conditional or Hypothetical Science, whose only aim
> is to discover not how things actually are, but how they might be supposed
> to be, if not in our universe, then in some other studies what is and what
> is not logically possible, without making itself responsible for its
> actual existence.") [CP, 5/40 (1903)]
>
> II. Philosophy ("in Three Branches: Phenomenology ascertains and studies
> the kinds of elements universally present in the phenomenon; meaning by
> "the phenomenon," whatever is present at any time to the mind in any
> way; Normative science distinguishes what ought to be from what ought not
> to be, and makes many other divisions and arrangements subservient to its
> primary dualistic distinction; Metaphysics seeks to give an account of the
> universe of mind and matter. Normative science rests largely on
> phenomenology and on mathematics; Metaphysics on phenomenology and on
> normative science.") [CP: 1.186 (1903)]
>
> A. Phenomenology (the science of experience [in terms of Category
> Theory: Firstness, Secondness, Thirdness]. Peirce says: "The most
> fundamental fact about the number three is its generative potency.
> This is a great philosophical truth having its origin and
> rationale in mathematics. . . . I analyze experience, which is the
> cognitive resultant of our past lives, and find in it three
> elements. I call them Categories. . . . I will so far follow
> Hegel as to call this science Phenomenology although I will not
> restrict it to the observation and analysis of experience but
> extend it to describing all the features that are common to
> whatever is experienced or might conceivably be experienced or
> become an object of study in any way direct or indirect.")
> [CP: 4.309 (1903), see also 2.84 (1902), 5.37 (1903)]
>
> B. The Normative Sciences ("the science of the laws of conformity
> of things [as phenomena] to ends, that is, perhaps, to Truth,
> Right, and Beauty.") [CP: 5.121 (1903)]
>
> 1. Esthetics (the science of ideals; considers those
> things whose ends are to embody qualities of feeling)
>
> 2.Ethics (the theory of self-controlled or deliberate
> conduct; considers those things whose ends lie in action)
>
> 3. Logic (Formal Semiotic, or the science of
> self-controlled or deliberate thought; considers those
> things whose end is to represent something)
>
> a. Philosophical Grammar (Speculative Grammar, or
> the theory of meaning)
>
> b. Critical Logic (the theory of inference)
>
> i. Abduction (logic of hypothesis)
> ii. Induction (logic of sampling)
> iii. Deduction (formal logic)
>
> c. Philosophical Rhetoric (Speculative Rhetoric,
> i.e., theory of method)
>
> C. Metaphysics ("the science of Reality. Reality consists in
> regularity. Real regularity is active law. Active law is
> efficient reasonableness, or in other words is truly reasonable
> reasonableness. Reasonable reasonableness is Thirdness as
> Thirdness.") [CP: 5.121-129 (1903); see also V 6, B1 (Monist
> series of 1891)]
>
> 1. Ontology (general metaphysics)
> 2. Psychical metaphysics (religion)
> 3. Physical Metaphysics or Cosmology (natural laws)
>
> III. The Special Sciences: these are now represented by the various
> disciplines in a college of arts and sciences, apart from philosophy and
> mathematics. Peirce divides these into what we now think of as the
> humanities and human studies (including psychology and the social
> sciences) and the natural sciences, which would correspond roughly to the
> distinction between the Geisteswissenschaften and the Naturwissenschaften)
> [based on Joseph Ransdell's reconstruction].
> ______________________________________________________________________
>
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