We now commence discussion of the second Lowell Lecture. As before, I will post parts of it serially, without comment, and those who have comments or questions can post them to the list as replies, keeping the subject line unchanged (unless a thread moves on to a topic unrelated to this lecture). Those who want to read ahead can find the whole lecture on my website at http://gnusystems.ca/Lowell2.htm . The manuscripts themselves are visible (alongside the transcription) on the FromThePage site which the SPIN project is using to enable "crowdsourced" transcriptions like this one.
I expect that there will be many more questions than we had for Lowell 1, because this text has not been published before and (speaking for myself) is harder to follow. Gary f. Charles S. Peirce: second of the Lowell Lectures of 1903. Robin catalogue: MS. 455, notebook, 1903, pp. 1-31: The first and third parts of an introduction to the alpha and beta parts of the system of existential graphs; MS. 456 is the second part: 1903, pp. 40-66. [note: This version of Lowell Lecture 2 is based on my transcription of the manuscripts, done in September-October 2017 using the tools provided online by the SPIN project. Any transcription errors are mine alone. I have occasionally altered punctuation for clarity. This is not a peer-reviewed scholarly edition of the text, but is made available here in conjunction with a close reading of the Lowell Lectures on the PEIRCE-L email list.] -Gary Fuhrman, 16 October 2017 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. In order to do this it is necessary to replace the confused syntax of ordinary language by a system in which the meaning of every form is exactly defined, which is free from forms that cast a tinge of passion or of any kind of subjective feeling on the facts, and which has no more forms than are requisite in order to express every kind of fact or truth in such a way as to enable us to carry the dissection of reasoning to its smallest steps. Let us devote this evening's hour to forming such a system of expression. Before beginning, let us distinctly recognize the purpose which this system of expression is designed to fulfil. It is intended to enable us to separate reasoning into its smallest steps so that each one may be examined by itself. Observe, then, that it is not the purpose of this system of expression to facilitate reasoning and to enable one to reach his conclusions in the speediest manner. Were that our object, we should seek a system of expression which should reduce many steps to one; while our object is to subdivide one step into as many as possible. Our system is intended to facilitate the study of reasoning but not to facilitate reasoning itself. Its character is quite contrary to that purpose. http://gnusystems.ca/Lowells.htm }{ Peirce's Lowell Lectures of 1903 https://fromthepage.com/jeffdown1/c-s-peirce-manuscripts }{ SPIN project
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