Søren, youve given us a lot to think about(!) in this introduction to the
final chapter of Kees book, and I can only focus on a couple of key words
here: mystical and revelation.
Im aware of the place in the Brent biography (revised ed., p. 210)
referring to an unsent letter from Peirces hand describing a mystical
revelation. Yet Im not aware of any passage in Peirces published writings
and I mean published now, not just published during his lifetime where
he applies the term mystical in an unreservedly positive sense; and his
opinion of revelation was even less positive, as far as I can see. Ive
also seen no clear evidence to support Brents claim that his mystical
experience at age 52 had a profound effect on his later life. I havent
read all the secondary sources you cite here, so maybe thats why I havent
seen such evidence; but Id like to see more specific support for your
emphasis on the mystical as an important element of Peirces religion (and
maybe a clearer definition of what that word means in Peirce).
I do agree with Raposa and others who describe Peirce as a panentheist,
but I dont think that either his panentheism or his worship of science
places much value on either mysticism or revelation. In my view, Peirces
God is a combination of creative power with reasonableness, and thats why
the best way to worship him is through the religion of science.
I havent included quotes from Peirce here, but Ill be happy to do so if
you (or anyone) want to challenge my view of Peirces religious orientation.
Meanwhile Thanks again for this introduction!
gary f.
} The oceanic vow of great compassion has no shore or limit, and saves
living beings with release from the harbor of suffering. [Dogen] {
<http://www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm> www.gnusystems.ca/CSPgod.htm }{
Peirce on God
From: Søren Brier [mailto:sb....@cbs.dk]
Sent: 19-May-14 10:35 AM
1. God is real but does not exist: so the best way to worship him is through
the religion of science
I thought this sums up nicely Section 9.6 in Kees book and was a good way
to start the discussion of: God, science and religion. Peirces theory of
the relation between science and religion is one of the most controversial
aspects of his pragmaticist semiotics only second to his evolutionary
objective idealism influenced by Schelling (Niemoczynski and Ejsing) and
based on his version of Duns Scotus extreme scholastic realism, which
Kees did an exemplary presentation of as well. Peirces view of religion
and how science is deeply connected to it in a way that differs from what
any other philosopher has suggested except Whiteheads process philosophy,
but there are also important differences here.
I have no quarrels with Kees exemplary understandable formulations in the
short space he has. That leaves opportunity for us to discuss all the
interesting aspects he left out like Peirces Panentheism (Michael Raposa ,
Clayton and Peacock), his almost Neo-Platonist (Kelly Parker
http://agora.phi.gvsu.edu/kap/Neoplatonism/csp-plot.html ) metaphysics of
emptiness or Tohu va Bohu (see also Parker) and ongoing creation in his
process view, and from this basic idea of emptiness ( that is also
foundational to Nargajunas Buddhism of the middle way ) a connection to
Buddhism. This was encouraging Peirce to see Buddhism and Christianity in
their purest mystical forms integrated into an agapistic Buddhisto-Christian
process view of God. Brent mentions an unsent letter from Peirces hand
describing a mystical revelation in the second edition of the biography.
This idea of Buddhisto-Christianity was taken up by Charles Hartshorne - one
of the most important philosophers of religion and metaphysicians of the
twentieth century - http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hartshorne/ who also
wrote about Whiteheads process view of the sacred (see references).
I have collected many of the necessary quotes and interpreted them in this
article
http://www.transpersonalstudies.org/ImagesRepository/ijts/Downloads/A%20Peir
cean%20Panentheist%20Scientific%20Mysticism.pdf , and in Brier 2012 below.
Even Peirces evolutionary objective idealism is too much to swallow for
most scientists who are not fans of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. So even
today it is considering a violation of rationality to support an
evolutionary process objective idealism like Peirces, which include a
phenomenological view. Even in the biosemiotic group this is dynamite. We
have had the most wonderfully heated metaphysical discussion and quarrels
about what it means to be scientific. That is when Marcel Barbieri left the
group being tired of Peirceans unscientific stance.
In my days studying in the sciences it was really a problem to be a true
religious Christian and a scientist at the same time as one of my teachers
in comparative physiology was. She reflected a lot on it in some interesting
seminars. (By the way I am not a member of any church or religion). But it
is difficult to be part of main stream science today if you are an objective
evolutionary idealist and you have the Peircean familys conviction (see
some of Steven Ericsson-Zeniths contributions to this list and Benjamin
Peirces book on Ideality in The Physical Sciences) that science reveals the
truth about Gods nature. Look for the truth and you will find God seems to
be their view. Science is driven by the ethic of finding truth and as such
in the end it is a religious search, as Pierce has integrated phenomenology
with ethics and aesthetics in his theory of science. Not keeping them apart
as traditional views of science does in the slip stream of logical
positivism.
But, what is also interesting is, that Peirces view is close to a
combination of modern quantum field physics, thermodynamics, systems theory
and self-organization theory except for his integration of phenomenology,
ethics and aesthetics in his theory of science. No system theorist and
cyberneticians have made this including, though there are some objective
idealists like Erwin Làszló standing out in meticulously working an
integrated view of modern physics with a pure mystical objective idealism
and system thinking through a concept of information. See for instance
Science and the Akashic Field: An Integral Theory of Everything. But he
also started as a musician
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ervin_L%C3%A1szl%C3%B3 .
Let us end with John Sheriffs wonderful summarizing statement about
Peirces theory:
It places humans in a universe of signs that connect mind and matter,
inside and outside, transcendence and immanence. It gives us a theory of
human and cosmic meaning that does not lead to the dead-end nothingness of
pure form or to the decentering of the human subject, but to the possibility
of unlimited intellectual and moral growth
(Sheriff 1994 p. XVI).
Interesting works dealing with Peirces view on religion and science:
Brent, J. (1938): Charles S. Peirce: A Life, Revised and Enlarged Edition
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
Brier, S. (2010): The Conflict between Indian Vedic Mentality and Western
Modernity. I: Mentality and Thought: North, South, East and West. red. / Per
Durst-Andersen ; Elsebeth F. Lange. Frederiksberg: Copenhagen Business
School Press, 2010: 53-86.
Brier, S. (2012). C. S. Peirce's Complementary and Transdisciplinary
Conception of Science and Religion, Cybernetics & Human Knowing, Volume 19,
Numbers 1-2, 2012: 59-94
Corrington, R. S. (2000) An Introduction to C.S. Peirce: Philosopher,
Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield,
1993) and A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000),
Clayton, P. and Peacock, A. (2004). In Whom We Live and Move and Have Our
Being: Panentheistic Reflections on Gods Presence in a Scientific World,
Cambridge, UK: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company.
Ejsing, A. (2007). Theology of anticipation: A constructive study of C. S.
Peirce. Princeton Theological Monograph Series. Eugene, OR: Pickwick
Publications.
Hartshorne, C. (1972). Whiteheads philosophy. Lincoln, NE: University of
Nebraska Press.
Hartshorne, C. (1984). Towards a Buddhisto-Christian religion. In K. K.
Inada & N. P. Jacobson (Eds.), Buddhism and American thinkers (pp. 1-13).
Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Innis, R.E. (2013). The Reach of the Aesthetic and Religious Naturalism:
Peircean and Polanyian Reflections,
https://www.missouriwestern.edu/orgs/polanyi/TAD%20WEB%20ARCHIVE/TAD38-3/TAD
38-3-fnl-pg31-50-pdf.pdf
Orange, D. M. (1984). Peirces Conception of God: A Developmental Study
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984),
Peirce, B. (1881). Ideality in the Physical Sciences , Boston: Little ,
Brown, and Company.
Potters, V.G. (1997): Charles S. Peirce: On Norms & Ideals, American
Philosophy Series, Fordham University Press.
Raposa, M. (1993).Peirces Philosophy of Religion (Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1993)
Sheriff, J.K. (1994): Charles Sanders Peirces Guess at the Riddle: Ground
for Human Significance, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University
Press.
Niemoczynski , L. (2011). Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics
of Nature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011).
Best wishes
Søren Brier
Professor in the semiotics of information, cognition and commmunication
science,
department of International Business Communication, Copenhagen Business
School,
Home page: <http://www.cbs.dk/staff/sbibc> www.cbs.dk/staff/sbibc. ,
Cybersemiotics.com
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