> On Nov 2, 2014, at 2:48 PM, Jerry LR Chandler <[email protected]> > wrote: > > 1. the nature of the chemical bond was highly controversial and no clear > general propositions were available. > The iconic representation of chemical bonds was NOT yet standardized. > Multiple icons were used to represent the same physical identity. Problems > with the plethora of isomers with the SAME molecular formula. > > 2. the lack of clarity between "radicals" and bonded structures in which all > of the parts are welded/fused into a whole with an exact representation of > the adjacency relations. > > 3. the same sorts of problems, no general methods for making a string (or > set) of chemical propositions that different laboratories could agree upon. > > In CSP's day, 1,2,and 3 restricted the number of known structures to a few > thousand. > Today, CAS has a registry of about 20,000,000 unique identities of molecules, > some containing millions of atoms.
That’s fascinating. I did not realize that chemistry at the time of Peirce was still so fragmentary. I thought that even prior to the rise of quantum theory that such things were worked out. Since I’m largely ignorant of this aspect of chemical history, I wonder if the distinction between covalent and ionic bonds was well understood. The analogy Peirce makes with rhemes always struck me as a very good one. However I wonder if you could perhaps comment on whether the understanding of the era affects our understanding of the analogy. (Apologies if this was discussed earlier - I’m behind) The way I took it was that the rheme - dicisign - argument distinctions paralleled atoms with covalent sharing - molecules - chemical reactions I assume that chemistry was the iconic way Peirce conceived of signs and so while a kind of analogy one should be careful. It seems from the few recent posts I’ve read that you think it might be stronger if we understand chemistry of the era. Could you expand on this at all? I confess I find this quite intriguing.
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