> On Apr 3, 2017, at 12:59 PM, Edwina Taborsky <tabor...@primus.ca> wrote: > > That is - I am also suggesting that Firstness is not simply quality, feeling, > chance - but - is entropy.
Could you unpack that a little more? I *think* I understand what you’re getting at — how chance undermines order — but I’m not quite sure. Or, put an other way, if habit is the opposite of a rise in entropy then movement away from habit (substance being the ultimate limit) would increase entropy. The place where of course Peirce has some difficulty here is with the second law of thermodynamics. The heat death thesis is the clearest example of this. Now one might say that Peirce’s conception of substance as the limit of semiosis is heat death, but I don’t think that’s right. The heat death is basically the interaction between things leading to a broad distribution of energy so you lose differentiation. But for Peirce of course habits are moving towards more differentiation. While we see that locally we don’t see that globally. So far as I know not a lot has been written on Peirce and the second law of thermodynamics. Which is surprising given how much has been written on Peirce and chance - particularly related to classic epicureanism and stoicism. Given Peirce’s background in physics and chemistry he knew thermodynamics but from what I can tell didn’t really apply it to his cosmology. One of the few articles on the subject in Andrew Reynolds “Peirce’s Cosmology and the Laws of Thermodynamics” in Transactions. There he notes Peirce’s conception of the first law (conservation) was that it was just an algebraic relationship and not an ontological condition (the way most physicists take it). So for him it simply doesn’t prescribe that the total amount of energy in the universe is constant. Merely that in any system you have algebraic connections between energy flow. (See CP 6.602) He next distinguishes between forces for growth, that are irreversible, from those tied to the conservation of energy which are reversible. Since Perice thought growth had stronger evidence than conservation, growth was the exception. (6.613) He adopts the position of Carus in which the brain is primarily physical and thus subject to conservation laws except that “there are present states of awareness….Neither states of awareness nor their meanings can be weighed on any scales….” (CP 6.614) In explaining that quote from Carus, Peirce says, “It escapes materialism. It supposes a direct dynamical action between mind and matter, such as not been supposed by any eminent philosopher that I know of for centuries.” Regarding entropy again, Peirce’s platonic cosmology is kind of the inverse of what physicists would expect. The end is not heat death but a system “in which mind is at last crystalized in the infinitely distant future” (6.33) Reynolds argues that we ought distinguish between 20th century views of entropy from Peirce’s 19th century views. (I don’t know enough about the detailed history here to know how accurate he is - I’m assuming he’s getting it right) Peirce praises the Maxwell/Boltzmann statistical interpretation of entropy. (Reasoning, 220) The Boltzmann interpretation is that entropy holds only statistically. But Peirce sees real chance as working in a direction counter to the increase of entropy. “But although no force can counteract this tendency, chance may and will have the opposite influence. Force is in the long run dissipative; chance is in the long run concentrative. The dissipation of energy by the regular laws of nature is by those very laws accompanied by circumstances more and more favorable to its reconcentration by chance.” (Writings 4.551) Reynolds argues Peirce is thinking of what later was called the Poincare Recurrence Theorem. However Peirce for mechanism favors Boltzmann and thus something like the heat death but due to chance thinks this won’t happen. He recognizes the problem with entropy but sees himself as an ontological evolutionist. Since “the universe as a whole…should be conceived of as growing” (6.613) that growth ontologically escapes both conservation and entropy. The way he does this is to see that there are temporary violations due to chance but that there’s then a tendency towards entropy. So it’s that combination that he thinks will let him achieve a final state, but which because of growth won’t be a heat death state. Now of course none of this is terribly satisfying - especially to scientists who tend to see the laws of entropy as ontological or absolute laws. Indeed physicists seem quite willing to give up on most laws except thermodynamics. It’s this reason that I personally find Peirce’s cosmology so troubling, although I don’t think I’ve explained that before now. I know that was all long, but I want to return to Edwina’s initial comment that firstness is both chance and entropy. For Peirce, I’ve hopefully shown, those are actually opposed. Firstness is what violates entropy. It is anti-entropy.
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