[peirce-l] Re: Design and Semiotics Revisited (...new thread from "Peircean elements" topic)

[Gary Richmond]

Joe, Frances, list: Joe, thanks for your response as it points to an aspect of the cause of my "strongly worded rhetoric," as Steven phrased it, which I did not address in my comments to him and which I refrained from adding to those comments precisely since you had not by then responded. As already noted, I would tend to agree with you that anyone introducing unnecessary neologisms "just adds one more difficulty to understanding" what Peirce was saying. However, some of Frances' coinages past and present are in line with Peirce's terminological practice. Consider, for example, this passage: 6.302  Three modes of evolution have thus been brought before us: evolution by fortuitous variation, evolution by mechanical necessity, and evolution by creative love. We may term them tychastic evolution, or tychasm, anancastic evolution, or anancasm, and agapastic evolution, or agapasm. The doctrines which represent these as severally of principal importance we may term tychasticism, anancasticism, and agapasticism. On the other hand the mere propositions that absolute chance, mechanical necessity, and the law of love are severally operative in the cosmos may receive the names of tychism, anancism, and agapism So, for example, we have here agapasm (==agapastic evolution], agapasticism (the doctrine of this) and agapism (the simple notion of this). In addition, while on the one hand Frances is here using fewer of these coinages than in the past, terms like 'semiosic' are not infrequently found in the semiotic literature (if not necessarily the semeiotic). On the other hand, 'semiosics' is not, and her use of such expressions seems idiosyncratic and at least off-putting. Also, and as noted in much earlier discussions, we already have a perfectly good term identifying the science, indeed we have three terms, or at least spellings, viz., semeiotic, semiotic, and semiotics (a number of scholars have taken to using the first spelling, one of several Peirce used, to refer to the specifically Peircean version of logic as semeiotic). On the other hand (I think I now have a three handed beast here!) within her own revisionary project involving a consideration of all possible arts and sciences, Frances apparently continues to find it necessary to conceive terminology along the lines of the kinds of distinctions Peirce is making in 6.302. But, again, I mainly agree with you, Joe, that less of this is more, so that one would hope that new terminology would be rare and to some significant purpose (whereas, again, 'semiosics' appears not to be). I too, as mentioned, will take a closer look at Frances' post and in the light of your earlier comments, while I look forward to reading "exactly what [you were] objecting to." I imagined that since her entire message concerned an analysis of a fundamental thrust of Ben's tetrastic project, and that the sign/representamen distinction might play a significant role in the discussion of collateral knowledge, the status of the object, etc. that you were indeed commenting in some way on Ben's theory. I see from your comments that you were not. Gary   Joseph Ransdell wrote: Gary, Frances, and list:   I think I was sloppy in my statement, Gary, which was not intended as a general attack on Frances's views but was a comment on what she is saying in a particular message.  I regret not making that clear.  I could be mistaken about what was happening that I was objecting to,  too, but I need to reread the message carefully and then if I still find it off the mark to state exactly what I was objecting to, which I didn't do.  In the meanwhile, I agree with your admiration for her courage in putting up with a lot of harsh criticism earlier on, in particular.  Ben's view is another matter altogether, and I said nothing about that.   I do think it is a mistake for her to indulge the tendency to introduce neologisms of her own, though, when one of the main problems in interpreting Peirce has to do with problems of terminology.  Each new coinage just adds one more difficulty to understanding what he is saying.    Joe Ransdell --- Message from peirce-l forum to subscriber archive@mail-archive.com