Jeff, I strongly agree with the points you made in this thread. My only recommendation is to modify the last line below by replacing "seems to involve facts" with "requires facts and actions". Peirce made the strongest possible justification for that change: "The elements of every concept enter into logical thought at the gate of perception and make their exit at the gate of purposive action; and whatever cannot show its passports at both those two gates is to be arrested as unauthorized by reason." (CP 5.212) That quotation by Peirce is based on his many years of work in work in logic, mathematics, and experimental science. His late writings are the distilled essence of his experience. It's impossible to appreciate their meaning without relating them to that work. Although we can't go back to the 19th c and observe him directly, we can relate his late writings to his descriptions of his work -- for example, his book on Photometric Researches -- *and* to 20th and 21st c work on similar subjects. John ____________________________________________________________________ JBD> This approach to reading important texts in the history of science has been adopted by schools such as St. John's [College, Annapolis, MD] where students learn to understand Newton's inquiries and theories by building an experimental apparatus--such as the one Galileo used for rolling balls down an inclined plane--and by then making the measurements for themselves. Having done so, they then draw out the conclusions from those measurements and compare their results to Newton's. In a number of places, Peirce says that something similar must be done to understand his inquiries in philosophy. Readers need to carry out the inquiries themselves and then check to see if they arrive at the same result. Carrying out these inquiries seems to involve facts that go beyond the words written on the pages.
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