Hi Harris,

I don't know the book, but you might find this review of interest.

Best,

Gary R

Peirce's Theory of Scientific Discovery: A System of Logic Conceived as
Semiotic (review)

   -
   - Patrick Sullivan
   
<https://muse.jhu.edu/search?action=search&query=author:Patrick%20Sullivan:and&min=1&max=10&t=query_term>
   - Journal of the History of Philosophy <https://muse.jhu.edu/journal/76>
   - Johns Hopkins University Press
   <https://muse.jhu.edu/search?action=browse&limit=publisher_id:1>
   - Volume 28, Number 2, April 1990 <https://muse.jhu.edu/issue/12335>
   - pp. 307-308
   - 10.1353/hph.1990.0035 <https://doi.org/10.1353/hph.1990.0035>
   - https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/1/article/226423/pdf
   -

Richard Tursman. Peirce's Theory of Scientific Discovery: A System of Logic
Conceived as Semiotic. Peirce Studies, No. 3. Bloomington: Indiana
University Press, 1987. Pp. xi + 16o. $25.00.


Tursman has provided a work that is a significant guide to understanding a
difficult and complex area of Peirce's philosophical thought, and a guide
both to locating the position of Peirce's thought with respect to the
intellectual currents of his own time, and to marking out for us today a
distinctively pragmatistic philosophy of science.


Tursman's general project can be seen as attempting to address several of
the eight "unfinished tasks of Peircean semeiotic scholarship" indicated by
Max Fisch? Among those tasks important for understanding Tursman's
direction are that of showing how, for Peirce, the analysis of the logic of
science was to be situated in a semiotic framework , and revealing what we
might have seen if Peirce had finished his own *A System of Logic,
Considered as Semiotic*. Tursman's subtitle should suggest that the last of
these suggested tasks is a central concern, and he employs the very
organizing principle suggested by Fisch for Peirce's own work.


This principle is the division of Peirce's theory of signs into Speculative
Grammar, Critic, and Speculative Rhetoric. What Tursman's analysis shows is
how Peirce constructed a system of logic within semiotic, and how the
semiotic was constructed within a larger framework of the analysis of the
most general features of experience. This, as Fisch suggests, is what would
have been the outcome of Peirce's own unfinished System of Logic.~ The
explication of Peirce's method of inquiry (the interrelated functions of
abductive , deductive, and inductive inference, governed by the Pragmatic
Maxim) is one of the most thorough available.


One of the most important contributions Tursman's examination makes is the
treatment of the illative relation (transitivity) and its function in
Peirce's system. Within the Peircean account of the method of science and
its shift in focus from existentially particular cognitive antecedents for
knowledge toward a focus on the results of inquiry, the importance of the
illafive relation emerges. The illative relation is, for Peirce, the
primary semiotic relation because it is the law of inference that grounds
the leading principles which inform abduction, deduction, and induction,
and thereby governs the relations of signs with other signs. ' Max H.
Fisch, "Peirce's General Theory of Signs,". . .


Tursman thus shows us how intricately involved the interrelations among
Peirce's categories, his theory of signs, and his account of the method of
science really are. Understanding precisely what these interrelations are
and how they function is, however , crucial to understanding Peirce's
philosophical thought, and specifically, his account of the method of
science. We should be able to see, for example, the differences between
Peirce's account of inquiry and both positivistic and the various
"postpositivistic " approaches to the method of science.


Tursman's book makes one other important contribution that should be
noticed. It is commonly thought that Peirce said very little in a
systematic fashion about the third branch of his semiotic, Speculative
Rhetoric. The amount of secondary literature on Speculative Rhetoric,
moreover, is quite small. Tursman's treatment of Speculative Rhetoric in
the last three chapters of his book marks a substantial addition to the
available material. Peirce characterized Speculative Rhetoric as being
concerned both with the laws of inference that govern the relations of
signs with signs, and the theory of the method of inquiry. What this
suggests, I think, is that Peirce in fact said quite a lot about
Speculative Rhetoric, much of it far more systematically...





On Thu, Apr 20, 2023 at 10:56 PM Harris Bolus <bolushar...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I found a book called *Peirce's Theory of Scientific Discovery: A System
> of Logic Conceived as Semiotic*, by Richard Allen Tursman, at my
> university library. I haven't been able to find any reviews. Has anyone
> read it? Do you know if it's particularly insightful or well written,
> especially with regard to forging a relationship between logic and science
> through semiotic?
> Best,
> Harris Bolus
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