Hi Mike,
I believe that it might be good first to consider this issue in the
framework of epistemology as it would be nice first to understand how
physics is working. I doubt that Markov blankets will help in this respect.
By Søren Brier there once was a nice picture of "The Cybersemiotics
Star". Unfortunately, his site is down but I have found this picture in
his paper - see the end of the paper:
Brier S. Can Cybersemiotics Solve the Problem of Informational
Transdisciplinarity? Proceedings. 2017; 1(3):196.
https://www.mdpi.com/2504-3900/1/3/196
There are four rays that correspond to Matter/Energy, Living System,
Experiential Consciousness, and Social Meaning. I should confess that I
could not follow Brier's interpretation of Pierce's ideas but in my
interpretation, we do not know how to combine all four rays in the
single ray of the development.
Best wishes,
Evgenii
Am 01.10.2026 um 06:47 schrieb Michael K Bergman:
Hi Evgenii,
Your candle analysis is fascinating and I appreciate your exploration of
the physical, phenomenological, and physical laws. I can see how this
thread caught your attention and interest in learning more about
Peirce's possible take on these questions.
Almost universally you will hear that Peirce's emphasis on signs is a
good lens for interpreting his thoughts on how to view the world. But,
as in the case of your candle example, I think that is not yet the deep
enough level to understand how Peirce might provide insight to your
questions. I would start more fundamentally, with his universal
categories of Firstness, Secondness and Thirdness.
To see things in this light -- which extends from possibilities and
qualia, through actual physical things and relations, to ideas,
abstractions and concepts -- needs an understanding of "things" and
"concepts" that are more akin to Markov blankets [1] than to actual
physical boundaries or membranes. There is an internal aspect of the
thing, an external aspect of the thing, and then a boundary that plays
an interesting role of mediating between the two.
Driving the analysis down to the fundamental level of the universal
categories leads to an interesting interface between the potential and
the actual, which is, in essence, a Markov blanket between Firstness and
Secondness. Many Peircean scholars have likened this boundary to
explaining the transition from Firstness to Secondness, that is, in your
terms, from quantum physics to classical physics.
Peirce's sign metaphors certainly provide a richness of language-based
means for understanding (or getting a very meaningful perspective on)
the universal categories, but I think you might find the categories
themselves a more fruitful target of Peircean inquiry.
Best, Mike
[1] A Markov blanket is the statistical interface that separates a
system’s internal states from external states. Conditioned on the
blanket, the two sides are independent. Karl Friston treats that
partition as the thing that lets a system persist, self-evidence, and
look as if it is doing active Bayesian inference. Michael Levin uses the
same construct for the scale-free “computational surface” of a self—from
cells and tissues up through organisms—so the boundary of agency is not
required to coincide with a crisp membrane. Chris Fields treats the
interface as a holographic screen: information exchanged across the
boundary is limited in the spirit of the Bekenstein–Hawking /
holographic bound. As generalized, a Markov blanket can represent
concepts as easily as actual things. The name and the original
definition of a Markov blanket come from Judea Pearl’s work, where the
basis for bounding something depends on its Bayesian free-energy active-
inference. These boundaries are conditional interfaces between the
internal and external that have no time, spatial or scale limits. Though
never expressed as such, these are very Peircean concepts.
On 9/30/26 05:50, Evgenii Rudnyi wrote:
List,
I could give you an example to discuss this issue - a burning candle.
Recently by using this example, I have discussed sophisticated
relationships between theoretical and experimental physics. It could
be interesting to analyze this in your terms.
My starting point is Faraday's book "The Chemical History of a Candle"
(1861). This is a mixture of theory and experiments at the level of
chemistry and continuum mechanics. There are no words about atoms
there. Now there is statistical and quantum mechanics and new
experiments related to this example. Hence our understanding of what
is going on in the burning candle greatly expanded. It gives a good
possibility to discuss this development in semiotics terms.
In my paper there are no equations, but general knowledge of physics
is still required. Provided there is interest and hence questions, I
could answer them here.
Burning Candle and Levels of Organization, 2026, PREPRINTS.ORG,
doi:10.20944/preprints202603.0037.v1
Best wishes,
Evgenii Rudnyi
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