On Reading Peirce

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: On Reading Peirce • Discussion 1
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/09/04/on-reading-peirce-discussion-1/

Re: Peirce List
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2021-09/thrd1.html#00021
::: John Sowa
https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2021-09/msg00024.html

<QUOTE JFS:>
I detect a prebit of irony in your note.

Although I respect Peirce's ethics of terminology and observe his
recommendations when they are appropriate and realistic, I also
know that most of them have died on the vine of common sense.

If Peirce had owned an automobile, he would have called it an
autokineto. Greece is the only country in the world that uses
the word 'autokineto'.
</QUOTE>

Dear John,

I actually like the sound (if not the fuzy) of “prebit”,
there's a lot of potential for playing off QM's “qubit”
and I once coined the term “ambit” for an ambiguous bit.

But seriously, Folks, my tone may be comic ironic but the underlying
sentiment is straightforward enough. I've been consistent in the way
I read Peirce since my first encounters with his work over 50 years ago,
the same way I read every other mathematician or scientist worth reading,
doyen or pioneer or otherwise. Of all the things they say or write, some
things can be proven logically, some things can be supported experimentally,
and then there's a host of approximations, beliefs, conjectures, hypotheses,
impressions, popular expositions, rhetorical parables, speculations, ad inf.

If the thinker in question is worth reading at all then all of that is worth
reading in the proper light, but it takes the due sort of intellectual prism
to sort it all out.

Regards,

Jon

[Jon Awbrey]

Cf: On Reading Peirce • Discussion 2
https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2021/09/05/on-reading-peirce-discussion-2/

Re: Peirce List ( https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2021-09/thrd1.html#00021 )
::: Gary Richmond ( https://list.iupui.edu/sympa/arc/peirce-l/2021-09/msg00029.html )

<QUOTE JA:>
Well, it's true, all science is under construction.
But not everything under construction is a science.
</QUOTE>

<QUOTE GR:>
True. But I'd suggest that there is no good reason to block the way of
inquiry of those who think that phaneroscopy, for example, may prove to
be a science even if, at present, it remains in my view but a science egg.
That it is not yet clear whether it can be fully developed as a science
(I believe that there is good to think that it can) is, for me at least,
one of the reasons why we're having this slow read.

So, those who think phaneroscopy (involving the doctrine of categories)
is worth looking further into include not only André De Tienne, but to
cite again a recent book on the topic, Richard Kenneth Atkins' 2018
monograph, Charles S. Peirce's Phenomenology : Analysis and Consciousness
( https://oxford.universitypressscholarship.com/view/10.1093/oso/9780190887179.001.0001/oso-9780190887179 ) .
</QUOTE>

Dear Gary,

You know me well enough to know I have nothing against neologisms —
I used to coin 5 or 6 every morning before breakfast … but I'm much
better now — and don't get me wrong, I fully sympathize with Peirce's
desire to distinguish his take on phenomenology from Hegel's mis-takes.
And I'm totally copacetic with using the word “inquiry” to describe any
activity aimed at fixing belief, at least, in broad brush among friends.
But it's one toke over the line if we call any form of inquiry a science,
for then we'd have Tenacioscopy, Authorioscopy, Apriorioscopy to counter
on a recurring basis, not that we don't already have to deal with them
under hosts and legions of the usual suspect old-fangled paleologisms.

So it's gotta stop somewhere — and for that we have to acknowledge
critical criteria in our critique of what makes inquiry scientific.

I see I'm one neologism short of my old quota —
but I'll save oöscience for next time …

Regards,

Jon