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I obviously completely agree. A vital issue in Peircean studies is-
what do his ideas mean for us today? Quite frankly, to confine
Peircean studies to textual analysis, terms, etc has its uses, but,
it relegates Peirce to the past. And his conceptual infrastructure is
far too important to be so isolated.
I consider that we should - those of us who want to - focus on the
functionality of the Peircean infrastructure in modern research in
fields such as the natural sciences, and societal systems and
economics.
I acknowledge that for some Peircean scholars - this is
unacceptable. I can't tell how many times I've tried to introduce a
research paper from someone in the sciences to this list, a paper
that, to me, clearly shows how Peirce's infrastructure is relevant in
that field...and been met with total silence. Or, informed that
'Peirce never used those words'; Peirce never mentioned such terms as
'input and output'. Or - You are putting in your own theories and they
have nothing to do with Peirce. Or very commonly, I am told they are
'post Peirce'...whatever that means. But the taint of impurity is
clear.
This confinement of Peirce to a focus only on his texts and his
specific words [this word means only this...]...locks the Peircean
infrastructure from reality - which is why I have complained so often
about 'seminar room discussions'.
I think it's vital to show how the Peircean semiosic infrastructure
is operative in the actual world - For example, I am using a paper
from the journal Entropy on 'Crucial Development: Criticality is
important for cell-to-cell communication and information transfer in
living systems I Hunt von Herbing August 2021. The authors don't use
Peircean terms but in my view, they do use Peircean concepts of
'complexity patterns [Thirdness]; phase transitions [semiosic
networking]; interplay between homeostasis and disorder [3ns and
1ns]….And this fits in well with a paper I've been asked to write
on biological information generation.
And I've continued to use the notion of the semiosic process as a
function of f(x)=y - [also used by other Peirce scholars] and of
course, see this as the use of Pierce in modern scholarship.
I agree with John Sowa - it's not up to anyone to criticize the
focus of someone else's research about Peirce. I acknowledge that
those with a textual focus are vital to the whole research field. But
so is work expanding the texts of Peirce from the page into modern
research areas.
Edwina
On Sun 10/10/21 1:30 PM , "sowa @bestweb.net" s...@bestweb.net
sent:
I accidentally hit SEND on my previous reply. I won't criticize
anybody's attempts to determine exactly what Peirce intended a
century ago/ But a far more important issue is what his ideas mean
for us today. A few years ago, I wrote a widely cited n article with
the title "Peirce's contributions to the 21st century:
http://jfsowa.com/pubs/csp21st. [1] If I were writing that today,
I'd add quite a bit more. On the topic of continuity and
dimensionality, an enormous amount of new work has been published in
the century after Peirce. For a survey, see the article on infinite
dimensional category theory in the October 2021 issue of Scientific
American. This is related to the work that Robert Marty and others
have been discussing. Different people have different preferences.
Textual criticism of what Peirce wrote (as the PEP project was doing)
is important. Surveys of what Peirce wrote are also important. But
at APA,conferences that kind of work is buried in sessions that are
only attended by Peirce scholars. Meanwhile, lectures on other 19th
century philosophers and logicians (Frege, for example) get far more
attention in general sessions. I have no intention of telling
anyone what they should not do. But Peirce himself wwas writing for
the future, especially in the last several years of his life. I
believe that Peirce's legacy depends critically on his relevance for
ongoing research today. The Peirce Centennial Congress in 2014 was
far more exciting. It drew international participants from a wide
range of fields who showed how Peirce's ideas had influenced their
research today. I have no intention of stopping anybody from
talking about the past, but Peirce's emphasis was always on the
future. I believe that Peirce would strongly encourage us to relate
his ideas to the latest research today. John
Links:
------
[1] http://jfsowa.com/pubs/csp21st.
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