Howard, Peirce: CP 6.322
322. For forty years, that is, since the beginning of the year 1867, I have been constantly on the alert to find a genuine triadic relation -- that is, one that does not consist in a mere collocation of dyadic relations, or the negative of such, etc. (I prefer not to attempt a perfectly definite definition) -- which is not either an intellectual relation or a relation concerned with the less comprehensible phenomena of life. I have not met with one which could not reasonably be supposed to belong to one or other of these two classes. As a case as nearly brute and inorganic as any, I may mention the form of relationship involved in any screw-form which is definitely of the right-hand, or occidental, mode, or is definitely of the Japanese, or left-handed, mode. Such a relation exists in every carbon-atom whose four valencies are saturated by combination with four atoms of as many different kinds. But where the action of chance determines whether the screw be a right-handed or a left-handed one, the two forms will, in the long run, be produced in equal proportions, and the general result will not be definitely, or decisively, of either kind. We know no case of a definitely right-handed or left-handed screw-phenomenon, where the decision is not certainly due to the intervention of a definitely one-sided screw in the conditions of that decision, except in cases where the choice of a living being determines it; as when Pasteur picked out under the microscope the two kinds of crystals of a tartrate, and shoved those of one kind to the right and those of the other kind to the left.†1 We do not know the mechanism of such choice, and cannot say whether it be determined by an antecedent separation of left-handed screws from right-handed screws or not. No doubt, all that chance is competent to destroy, it may, once in a long, long time, produce; but it is a question whether absolute chance -- pure tychism -- ought not to be regarded as a product of freedom, and therefore of life, not necessarily physiological. It could not be caused, apparently, by the inorganic action of dynamical law. For the only way in which the laws of dynamics involve triadic relations is by their reference to second differentials of positions. But though a second differential generally involves a triadic relation, yet owing to the law of the conservation of energy, which has been sufficiently proved for purely inorganic phenomena, the dynamic laws for such phenomena are expressible in terms of first differentials. It is, therefore, a non-genuine, or, as I phrase it, a "degenerate" form of triadic relationship †3 which is involved in such case. In short, the problem of how genuine triadic relationships first arose in the world is a better, because more definite, formulation of the problem of how life first came about; and no explanation has ever been offered except that of pure chance, which we must suspect to be no explanation, owing to the suspicion that pure chance may itself be a vital phenomenon. In that case, life in the physiological sense would be due to life in the metaphysical sense. Of course, the fact that a given individual has been persuaded of the truth of a proposition is the very slenderest possible argument for its truth; nevertheless, the fact that I, a person of the strongest possible physicistic prejudices, should, as the result of forty years of questionings, have been brought to the deep conviction that there is some essentially and irreducibly other element in the universe than pure dynamism may have sufficient interest to excuse my devoting a single sentence to its expression. For you may be sure that I had reasons that withstood severe, not to say hostile criticism; and if I live to do it, I shall embody them in a volume. I think Peirce has his finger on a nice way of framing the key question when he says: "In short, the problem of how genuine triadic relationships first arose in the world is a better, because more definite, formulation of the problem of how life first came about; and no explanation has ever been offered except that of pure chance, which we must suspect to be no explanation, owing to the suspicion that pure chance may itself be a vital phenomenon." Jeff Downard Associate Professor Department of Philosophy NAU (o) 523-8354 ________________________________________ From: Howard Pattee [hpat...@roadrunner.com] Sent: Sunday, January 25, 2015 7:54 PM To: biosemiot...@lists.ut.ee; Sungchul Ji; PEIRCE-L; biosemiotics Subject: [biosemiotics:7995] Re: NP 8.3 and the At 09:02 PM 1/25/2015, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote: >While he [Peirce] does explore this idea in places, he suggests >elsewhere that can't find any clear examples of genuine sign >relations outside of living or intelligent systems. I believe Frederik says this, but where does Peirce say this? Howard
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