On 4/14/2017 10:41 AM, Jeffrey Brian Downard wrote:
I have to say (one more time) that if we want to understand Peirce’s terms — especially what he means by a *triadic relation* — we need to read them *in the context *where Peirce uses them, not lift them out of their context and drop them into a scheme of our own invention.
For any particular text, that principle is quite reasonable. But Peirce's life included a very wide range of contexts -- all of which were lurking in the back of his mind while he wrote. Note the frequent digressions in his writings. And note the dates. He wrote his 1870 article on relations while he was working on physics and engineering (measuring gravity and designing instruments). He wrote his 1880, 1883, and 1885 work after he edited his father's book on linear algebra and while he was teaching logic at Johns Hopkins. He wrote his articles and MSS on existential graphs *after* he had written or edited thousands of definitions for the _Century Dictionary_.
not ... drop them into a schemeof our own invention.
But I would add "not choose one aspect of Peirce's work to the exclusion of others." In short, we should consider his writings on chemistry when we analyze his graph logic. But we should not forget his other work, especially his algebraic logic and his more recent work on lexicography. John
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