Re: [PEIRCE-L] Just Be Cause
That's also found in CP 6.66, "Let he who has insight calculate the number..." Matt On 4/2/14, 5:25 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote: Peircers, The physics courses I took in college and all the extra reading I did on the side taught that the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics had overthrown former notions about the rock-bottom status of causality, space, and time, placing the "causal picture" and the "spacetime picture" in a kind of complementary suspension with one other, neither primary, neither complete in and of itself. As longtime readers of Peirce may well expect, Peirce was prophetic on this point. Those who make causality one of the original _uralt_ elements in the universe or one of the fundamental categories of thought, — of whom you will find that I am not one, — have one very awkward fact to explain away. It is that men's conceptions of a Cause are in different stages of scientific culture entirely different and inconsistent. The great principle of causation which we are told, it is absolutely impossible not to believe, has been one proposition at one period of history and an entirely disparate one [at] another and is still a third one for the modern physicist. The only thing about it which has stood, to use my friend Carus's word, a κτημα ες αει, — _semper eadem_, — is the _name_ of it. Charles Sanders Peirce, ''Reasoning and the Logic of Things'', p. 197 It's a quote that John Sowa was fond of citing back in the days when the issue of causality came up on various discussion lists concerned with ontologies and their engineering. ☞ http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm Regards, Jon -- Matt - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
Re: [PEIRCE-L] Just Be Cause
Jon, list, I've thought of that quote quite a bit lately. It didn't quite hit me like a bus, but it reinforces my feeling of imprecision about what a cause is. - Best, Ben On 4/2/2014 5:25 PM, Jon Awbrey wrote: Peircers, The physics courses I took in college and all the extra reading I did on the side taught that the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics had overthrown former notions about the rock-bottom status of causality, space, and time, placing the "causal picture" and the "spacetime picture" in a kind of complementary suspension with one other, neither primary, neither complete in and of itself. As longtime readers of Peirce may well expect, Peirce was prophetic on this point. Those who make causality one of the original _uralt_ elements in the universe or one of the fundamental categories of thought, — of whom you will find that I am not one, — have one very awkward fact to explain away. It is that men's conceptions of a Cause are in different stages of scientific culture entirely different and inconsistent. The great principle of causation which we are told, it is absolutely impossible not to believe, has been one proposition at one period of history and an entirely disparate one [at] another and is still a third one for the modern physicist. The only thing about it which has stood, to use my friend Carus's word, a κτημα ες αει, — _semper eadem_, — is the _name_ of it. Charles Sanders Peirce, ''Reasoning and the Logic of Things'', p. 197 It's a quote that John Sowa was fond of citing back in the days when the issue of causality came up on various discussion lists concerned with ontologies and their engineering. ☞ http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm Regards, Jon - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
[PEIRCE-L] Just Be Cause
Peircers, The physics courses I took in college and all the extra reading I did on the side taught that the rise of relativity and quantum mechanics had overthrown former notions about the rock-bottom status of causality, space, and time, placing the "causal picture" and the "spacetime picture" in a kind of complementary suspension with one other, neither primary, neither complete in and of itself. As longtime readers of Peirce may well expect, Peirce was prophetic on this point. Those who make causality one of the original _uralt_ elements in the universe or one of the fundamental categories of thought, — of whom you will find that I am not one, — have one very awkward fact to explain away. It is that men's conceptions of a Cause are in different stages of scientific culture entirely different and inconsistent. The great principle of causation which we are told, it is absolutely impossible not to believe, has been one proposition at one period of history and an entirely disparate one [at] another and is still a third one for the modern physicist. The only thing about it which has stood, to use my friend Carus's word, a κτημα ες αει, — _semper eadem_, — is the _name_ of it. Charles Sanders Peirce, ''Reasoning and the Logic of Things'', p. 197 It's a quote that John Sowa was fond of citing back in the days when the issue of causality came up on various discussion lists concerned with ontologies and their engineering. ☞ http://www.jfsowa.com/ontology/causal.htm Regards, Jon -- academia: http://independent.academia.edu/JonAwbrey my word press blog: http://inquiryintoinquiry.com/ inquiry list: http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/ isw: http://intersci.ss.uci.edu/wiki/index.php/JLA oeiswiki: http://www.oeis.org/wiki/User:Jon_Awbrey facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/JonnyCache - PEIRCE-L subscribers: Click on "Reply List" or "Reply All" to REPLY ON PEIRCE-L to this message. PEIRCE-L posts should go to peirce-L@list.iupui.edu . To UNSUBSCRIBE, send a message not to PEIRCE-L but to l...@list.iupui.edu with the line "UNSubscribe PEIRCE-L" in the BODY of the message. More at http://www.cspeirce.com/peirce-l/peirce-l.htm .
