Jon, I too find more continuity than discontinuity in the development of Peirce's thought. However, I don't think that following that development in chronological order is the easiest or best way to understand his "truly radical ideas". My experience has been that we can clearly see the roots of those ideas in his early work (1865-70) only after we've become well acquainted with his later work (such as the contents of EP2). For instance, I would never recommend to a beginner in Peirce that they start with the 1867 "New List of Categories", because that paper is far more difficult to follow than almost anything in EP2. That's why I've recommended Peirce's "New Elements" (1904) as the best companion text to Chapter 3 of NP. For one thing, it serves as a better introduction to Peirce's concept of Information = Comprehension × Extension than Peirce's 1867 paper on the subject, important as that is.
Personally I'm reluctant to spend much time studying Peirce's algebraic formulations of logic because, when I do so, I feel afterwards that I've learned a new notation but nothing about logic that I didn't already know; and that's also been my experience with translations of Peirce's early notation into the more prevalent notational conventions of our time. For someone well versed in those conventions, your work is a good pathway to Peirce, I think, but lacking any training in mathematical logic myself, it seems to be a long and roundabout path for the likes of me. I find NP itself to be much more direct. Or at least more concise. gary f. -----Original Message----- From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawb...@att.net] Sent: 23-Sep-14 9:48 AM To: Gary Fuhrman Cc: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; 'Peirce List' Subject: Re: Natural Propositions, Chapter 3.1 Thread: GF:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14236 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14249 JA:http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/14264 Peircers, As a general rule, I find more continuity than discontinuity in the development of Peirce's thought over time. To my way of reading it, the divergences we see in the record of his thought have more to do with the increasing diversity of his audiences over time than earthshaking shifts in his general standpoint. I think as more people shove their spades down to the strata between 1865 and 1870 the more they will find the roots of truly radical ideas about signs and science, logic and inquiry, some of which have found their echoes in our time but most of which have yet to be fully developed. At any rate, these are the conclusions that I draw from my study of his writings on the "laws of information", going back to the Harvard and Lowell lectures of 1865 and 1866, to his first major work on the logic of relatives in 1870. Information = Comprehension × Extension http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Information_%3D_Comprehension_%C3%97_Extension Peirce's 1870 Logic Of Relatives http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/Peirce%27s_1870_Logic_Of_Relatives Regards, Jon
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