Clark, the inspiration for my own thinking is Isaac Newton. What I would love to see in the life sciences is an axiomatic framework that hangs together, much as Newton delivered for the physical sciences... hence my interest in Peirce. There’s a lot of bad, unfalsifiable science doing the rounds, like multiverse theory, the invention of dark energy/matter, etc, in regards to which Wolfgang Pauli’s dismissal “not even wrong” often comes to mind. So it’s not a case of trying to provide a Peircean interpretation of the different theories, but to provide a solid foundation for a life science that hangs together. sj
From: Clark Goble [mailto:cl...@lextek.com] Sent: Monday, 1 February 2016 11:02 PM To: Stephen Jarosek; Peirce-L Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Pragmatism - atoms, molecules, entanglement On Feb 1, 2016, at 12:21 PM, Stephen Jarosek <sjaro...@iinet.net.au> wrote: I stumbled upon a fascinating <https://youtu.be/FzcTgrxMzZk> video clip on the weekend. Might Peircean-biosemiotic concepts apply also to atoms and molecules? Peirce’s “mind hidebound with habits” comes to mind. But back in his day, Peirce could never have known what we now know about quantum physics and entanglement – he’d have much to say about all this were he alive today. Atoms and molecules also have to “know” very specific properties in order to make possible the astonishing complexity within a cell. Entanglement is the medium by which atoms and molecules “know” (imitate) their properties. I think the mathematics of quantum mechanics can easily be dealt with by Peircean semiotics. I suspect though you’re more asking about Peirce’s appropriation of the Epicurean swerve into his ontology as it relates to the ontological interpretation of quantum mechanics. (Correct me if that isn’t what you mean) I don’t know the answer to that if only because it’s far from clear how to interpret quantum mechanics. Most of the interpretations simply adopt different ontologies from Peirce. An interesting question might be reconciling say Everette possible worlds mechanics with how an object determines an interpretant in Peirce. But while I could see an Everette transformation of Peircean semiotics at the ontological level this would be different from how Peirce appears to have conceived it. The second issue is entanglement. Again this is still very much an open question in quantum mechanics even if physicists tend to favor certain interpretations. (Typically against hidden variables) I’m not quite sure what you mean here but I suspect you’re getting at the teleology vs. efficient causation issue. Most analysis of quantum entanglement is done at a given time but it’s possible to also conceive of entanglement across time which some might see as a way to rescue teleology. (Without looking it up I want to say both Smolin and Penrose have speculated on this but I might be confusing who wrote on it - it’s been years since I last looked into this) In this way what a system evolves to in the future can affect the past which is a kind of teleology. One thing to keep in mind when considering Peircean teleology is that it’s not really the way medievals conceived of teleology where we have intentions of God. Rather for Peirce teleology was much more about a tendency. A big question then is how to understand this. My sense is that he’s thinking more of tendencies within a particular environment for evolution to arrive at certain solutions. I suspect one might say Peircean teleology is efficient causation + implications in particular environments. I’m not sure if others would agree.
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