Jon, list,
I clicked on your link to my message from 2007 with Peirce's definition
of "Synechism" in the Baldwin dictionary, and found that in a subsequent
message I reposted the passage with corrected punctuation. I just now
noticed the lack of italics, checked the Baldwin itself (via Google),
and found that the only italics were of Greek words and a journal name.
Anyway, here is the punctuation-corrected version that I sent in 2007,
plus the (not really needed) italics etc., plus a link to the Google
Books version. - Best, Ben
"Synechism" from Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology,
Volume 2, 1902, page 657
http://books.google.com/books?id=Dc8YAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA657&lpg=PA657
Synechism [Gr. /συνεχής/ , continuous, holding together, from /σύν/ +
/᾿///έ/χειν/, to hold] not in use in the other languages. That tendency
of philosophical thought which insists upon the idea of continuity as of
prime importance in philosophy, and in particular, upon the necessity of
hypotheses involving true continuity.
A true CONTINUUM
<http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/Baldwin/Dictionary/defs/C4defs.htm#Continuum>
(q. v.) is something whose possibilities of determination no multitude
of individuals can exhaust. Thus, no collection of points placed upon a
truly continuous line can fill the line so as to leave no room for
others, although that collection had a point for every value towards
which numbers endlessly continued into the decimal places could
approximate; nor if it contained a point for every possible permutation
of all such values. It would be in the general spirit of synechism to
hold that time ought to be supposed truly continuous in that sense. The
term was suggested and used by C. S. Peirce in the Monist, ii. 534
<http://books.google.com/books?id=8akLAAAAIAAJ&pg=PA534&vq=synechism>
(July, 1892). Cf. PRAGMATISM
<http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Baldwin_Dictionary_Definition_of_Pragmatic_%281%29_and_%282%29_Pragmatism>,
passim.
The general motive is to avoid the hypothesis that this or that is
inexplicable. For the synechist maintains that the only possible
justification for so much as entertaining a hypothesis, is that it
affords an explanation of the phenomena. Now, to suppose a thing
inexplicable is not only to fail to explain it, and so to make an
unjustifiable hypothesis, but much worse — it is to set up a barrier
across the road of science, and to forbid all attempt to understand the
phenomenon.
To be sure, the synechist cannot deny that there is an element of the
inexplicable and ultimate, because it is directly forced upon him; nor
does he abstain from generalizing from this experience. True generality
is, in fact, nothing but a rudimentary form of true continuity.
Continuity is nothing but perfect generality of a law of relationship.
It would, therefore, be most contrary to his own principle for the
synechist not to generalize from that which experience forces upon him,
especially since it is only so far as facts can be generalized that they
can be understood; and the very reality, in his way of looking at the
matter, is nothing else than the way in which facts must ultimately come
to be understood. There would be a contradiction here, if this ultimacy
were looked upon as something to be absolutely realized; but the
synechist cannot consistently so regard it. Synechism is not an ultimate
and absolute metaphysical doctrine; it is a regulative principle of
logic, prescribing what sort of hypotheses are lit to be entertained and
examined. The synechist, for example, would never be satisfied with the
hypothesis that matter is composed of atoms, all spherical and exactly
alike. If this is the only hypothesis that the mathematicians are as yet
in condition to handle, it may be supposed that it may have features of
resemblance with the truth. But neither the eternity of the atoms nor
their precise resemblance is, in the synechist's view, an element of the
hypothesis that is even admissible hypothetically. For that would be to
attempt to explain the phenomena by means of an absolute
inexplicability. In like manner, it is not a hypothesis fit to be
entertained that any given law is absolutely accurate. It is not, upon
synechist principles, a question to be asked, whether the three angles
of a triangle amount precisely to two right angles, but only whether the
sum is greater or less. So the synechist will not believe that some
things are conscious and some unconscious, unless by consciousness be
meant a certain grade of feeling. He will rather ask what are the
circumstances which raise this grade; nor will he consider that a
chemical formula for protoplasm would be a sufficient answer. In short,
synechism amounts to the principle that inexplicabilities are not to be
considered as possible explanations; that whatever is supposed to be
ultimate is supposed to be inexplicable; that continuity is the absence
of ultimate parts in that which is divisible ; and that the form under
which alone anything can be understood is the form of generality, which
is the same thing as continuity. (C.S.P.)
On 11/10/2014 9:02 AM, Jon Awbrey wrote:
Peircers,
I was just about to copy out the whole of Peirce's Baldwin entry on
Synechism (CP 6.169-173) to my blog for continued study when I found
that Ben Udell had previously posted a copy here:
☞ http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.science.philosophy.peirce/3531
I am finding much to think about in those paragraphs.
Regards,
Jon
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