John, list,
My comment wasn't referring to the chronological order of these developments in Peirce's work, but still, I put my point badly. "Grow" is the wrong word. What I had in mind was that "the theory of the advancement of knowledge is not possible until the logician has first examined all the different elementary modes of getting at truth"; and "before it is possible to enter upon this business in any rational way, the first thing that is necessary is to examine thoroughly all the ways in which thought can be expressed"; and "this introductory part of logic is nothing but an analysis of what kinds of signs are absolutely essential to the embodiment of thought"; and the final step back to the absolute basics, as it were, is the analysis not only of signs, but of all phenomena, into their essential elements, the "formal elements of the phaneron." The chronological order is different; Peirce was working on logic since the age of 12; his main focus in the early 1890s was phenomenology, although he didn't call it that until 1902; and his main work on semeiotic analysis was done in 1903-08. But in his classification of sciences, as your diagram shows, phenomenology is the first division of philosophy, followed by the normative sciences, including logic (with its own three divisions). The main reason I mention this 'quest for the elementary' is that I'm looking ahead to the first sentence of Lowell 2, which is: "Let us take up the subject of necessary reasoning, mathematical reasoning, with a view to making out what its elementary steps are and how they are put together." Peirce consistently introduced his graphs with a similar statement of their purpose, which was not to facilitate reasoning but to analyze it into its simplest and smallest steps. This is consistent with his remark that EGs expressed "the atoms and molecules of logic"; and I see this as analogous to his work in semiotic and phenomenology, especially in this period around 1903. Gary f. -----Original Message----- From: John F Sowa [mailto:s...@bestweb.net] Sent: 14-Oct-17 11:45 To: peirce-l@list.iupui.edu Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Lowell Lecture 1.10 On 10/14/2017 8:46 AM, <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> g...@gnusystems.ca wrote: > Peirce's study of logic seems to be a /quest for the elemental./ It > grows out of his phenomenology, which aims to identify the... It's unclear what "It" refers to. His study of logic certainly does not grow out of phenomenology. Therefore, "It" probably refers to the quest. > "indecomposable elements" of the phaneron/phenomenon, and his logical > graphs aim to 'decompose' the thought process into the simplest > possible steps, the better to understand how arguments are 'composed, But I would guess that his experience in math, logic, and science guided the ways he thought about everything -- including elements. He even said that his EGs expressed "the atoms and molecules of logic". Since his writings on phenomenology and/or phaneroscopy appear rather late, they would probably be effects rather than causes. John
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