Jerry C, to answer your question, In that post, was not trying to say anything about the chemical sciences as they exist today; and Peirce himself was not trying to inform his readers about chemical science when he adopted the “valency” analogy to construct a hypothesis about the elements of the phaneron. This thread is about phaneroscopy, and about Peirce’s development of that science. When I use the term “chemistry” in this thread, I am referring to the universe of discourse from which Peirce drew the concept of valency — which was, of course, the chemical science of his time. In the context you are quoting from, I was trying to distinguish among three applications of the term “medad.” I don’t know whether anyone other than Peirce ever used that term to denote an element (such as argon) which does not react or combine with others; I’m only concerned with Peirce’s own usage of it in phaneroscopic analysis.
By the way, I didn’t respond to your earlier question as to what Peirce had in mind when he referred to the “dark Mamoth cave of inorganic chemistry” because I have no better idea of what he’s talking about than you do. Actually, I am leaning toward the possibility that Peirce, in drafting the “Bedrock” essay, simply and accidentally switched the terms “organic” and “inorganic” in that passage. One hesitates to ascribe such a mistake to Peirce, but there are several such mistakes in that draft which indicate to me that Peirce abandoned the draft and never went back to revise it. The misspelling of the name of the Mammoth Cave in Kentucky is another clue that points in this direction. I have no better suggestion to account for Peirce’s rather strange remarks about inorganic chemistry in the “Bedrock” draft — actually I was hoping someone else would! Gary f. From: Jerry LR Chandler <jerry_lr_chand...@icloud.com> Sent: 30-Mar-19 20:02 To: Peirce List <peirce-l@list.iupui.edu> Cc: Gary Fuhrman <g...@gnusystems.ca> Subject: Re: [PEIRCE-L] Phaneroscopy and logic List, Gary: On Mar 30, 2019, at 2:21 PM, g...@gnusystems.ca <mailto:g...@gnusystems.ca> wrote: In chemistry, a medad is an atom of valency zero, As far as I am aware, the term “medad” is not now used in the chemical sciences and I can not recall ever seeing this term in the technical literature of the chemical sciences. Gary, is this phrase of your personal construction? Cheers Jerry
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