Charles S. Peirce and the Philosophy of Science Papers from the Harvard Sesquicentennial Congress
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Page iii Charles S. Peirce and the Philosophy of Science Papers from the Harvard Sesquicentennial Congress Edited by Edward C. Moore Page iv Copyright © 1993 by The University of Alabama Press Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487–0380 All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America The paper on which this book is printed meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information SciencePermanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.481984. Library of Congress Catalogingin Publication Data Charles S. Peirce and the philosophy of science : papers from the Harvard Sesquicenten nial Congress / edited by Edward C. Moore. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 081730665X 1. Science—Philosophy—Congresses. 2. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 1839–1914—Congresses. I. Moore, Edward C. (Edward Carter), 1917 . Q174.C46 1993 501—dc20 9228877 British Library Cataloguingin Publication Data available Page v To Arthur W. Burks with many thanks Page vi I no longer think, as I once did, that there is a difference between science and metaphysics . as long as a metaphysical theory can be rationally criticized. —Karl R. Popper Page vii CONTENTS Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Abbreviations xv Introduction: Charles S. Peirce and the Philosophy of Science 1 Edward C. Moore Part 1. Logic and Mathematics 1. Peirce on the Conditions of the Possibility of Science 17 C. F. Delaney 2. Peirce's Realistic Approach to Mathematics: Or, Can One Be a Realist 30 without Being a Platonist? Claudine EngelTiercelin 3. Peirce as Philosophical Topologist 49 R. Valentine Dusek 4. Peirce and Propensities 60 James H. Fetzer 5. Induction and the Evolution of Conceptual Spaces 72 Peter Gärdenfors Page viii 6. Abduction, Justification, and Realism 89 Anthony J. Graybosch 7. Peirce and the Logic of Logical Discovery 105 Leila Haaparanta 8. Truth, Laudan, and Peirce: A View from the Trenches 119 Shelby D. Hunt 9. Peirce and Statistics 130 Henry E. Kyburg, Jr. 10. Peirce's View of the Vague and the Definite 139 Joseph Margolis 11. The Test of Experiment: C. S. Peirce and E. S. Pearson 161 Deborah G. Mayo 12. Pragmatism, Abduction, and Weak Verification 175 Jeremiah McCarthy 13. Peirce's Theory of Statistical Explanation 186 Ilkka Niiniluoto 14. Peirce on Problem Solving 208 Peter Robinson Part 2. The Physical Sciences 15. Peirce as Participant in the BohrEinstein Discussion 223 Peder Voetmann Christiansen 16. From Peirce to Bohr: Theorematic Reasoning and Idealization in Physics 233 Eliseo Fernández 17. The Role of Potentiality in Peirce's Tychism and in Contemporary 246 Discussions in Quantum Mechanics and Microphysics Demetra SfendoniMentzou 18. Aristotle and Peirce on Chance 262 Philip H. Hwang Page ix Part 3. The Life of the Mind 19. Peirce's Definitions of the Phaneron 279 André De Tienne 20. An Application of Peirce's Valency of Relations to the Phenomenon of 289 Psychological Dissociation Martin Lemon 21. Knowing One's Own Mind 300 Gerald E. Myers 22. Peirce's Psychophysics: Then and Now 309 Peter J. Behrens 23. Peirce and SelfConsciousness 319 Antoni Gomila 24. The Relevance of Peirce for Psychology 333 Clyde Hendrick 25. Peircean Benefits for Freudian Theory: The Role of Abduction in the 350 Psychoanalytic Enterprise Matthias Kettner 26. The Valuation of the Interpretant 368 James Jakób Liszka 27. The Riddle of Brute Experience: An Argument for a Revision of 382 Psychoanalytic Theory Based on Peircean Phenomenology Alfred S. Silver, M.D. 28. Memory, Morphology, and Mathematics: Peirce and Contemporary 402 Neurostudies George W. Stickel Index 419 Page xi PREFACE The Charles S. Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress opened at Harvard University on September 5, 1989, and concluded on the tenth, Peirce's birthday. The congress had been convened by the Charles S. Peirce Society, following an idea by Michael Shapiro. The organizing institutions were Harvard University and Texas Tech University. Congress headquarters was Sever Hall in Harvard Yard, formerly the site of the residence of Benjamin Peirce, a mathematics professor at Harvard,where his son Charles (18391914) grew to adulthood. During the five days of its existence, the congress was host to approximately 450 scholars from 26 different nations. The present collection is a portion of the papers that were presented at the congress. A group of papers, from which those in this volume have been selected, were assigned to the editor of the present volume by the organizing committee. Other papers have been given to other editors. One of the sustained efforts of Peirce scholars over the years since 1931–36, when the bulk of the Peirce papers was first published, has been to stimulate a wider interest in Peirce's work. Peirce was known to only a few as recently as 1962, when the journal, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, was founded. That journal today has over 550 subscribing members. Papers concerning Peirce's philosophy of science were given at the congress by representatives from Italy, France, Sweden, Finland, Korea, India, Denmark, Greece, Brazil, Belgium, Spain, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United States. Thus a main point of Page xii this present volume is to show how worldwide the interest in Peirce is today. Ernest Nagel of Columbia University wrote in 1959 that "there is a fair consensus among historians of ideas that Charles Sanders Peirce remains the most original, versatile, and comprehensive philosophical mind this country has yet produced." The breadth of topics discussed in the present volume suggests that this is as true today as it was in 1959. The congress was directed by an organizing committee consisting of the following persons: Hilary Putnam (president of the congress), Kenneth Laine Ketner (chairperson of the organizing committee), Hanna BuczynskaGarewicz (USA and Poland), Gerard Deledalle (France), Umberto Eco (Italy), Takashi Fujimoto (Japan), Susan Haack (United Kingdom), Jaako Hintikka (USA and Finland), Christian J. W. Kloesel (USA), Dan Nesher (Israel), Klaus Oehler (Federal Republic of Germany), Nicholas Rescher (USA), David Savan (Canada), Israel Scheffler (USA), and Michael Shapiro (USA). Administrative assistants for the congress were, in Lubbock, Joyce Abbott (Division of Continuing Education), Texas Tech University; and, in Cambridge, Alexandra Collins (Programs in Professional Education), Harvard University. Ms. Collins was in charge of local arrangements. The congress was supported by the following individuals and organizations: Claude Ventry Bridges Memorial Fund (Texas Tech University), National Endowment for the Humanities, Charles S. Peirce Foundation, Charles S. Peirce Society, College of Arts and Sciences (Texas Tech University), Division of Continuing Education (Texas Tech University), Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism (Texas Tech University), Library of Texas Tech University, Department of Philosophy (Harvard University), Programs in Professional Education (Harvard University), Mr. W. B. Rushing (Lubbock, Texas), Mary Baker Rumsey Foundation (Lubbock, Texas), and Society for the Advancement of American Philosophy. The editor of the present volume wishes also to thank the Museum of Natural History at the University of Alabama for providing support for him during the preparation of this volume. Given the interest that Charles Peirce had in all the natural sciences, this support seems particularly appropriate. Tuscaloosa, Alabama Page xiii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The editor acknowledges, with gratitude, the Department of Philosophy at Harvard University for permission to use quotations from the various manuscripts of Charles Peirce in the Widener Library at Harvard and from the eight volumes of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, published by Harvard University Press; the MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, for permission to use the illustration on page 413 from Gary Lynch, ed., Synapses, Circuits, and the Beginnings of Memory; the Royal Society of London for permission to use the illustration on page 80 from David Marr, Proceedings of the Royal Society of London, B 200 (1982), page 269; and the McGrawHill Book Co., New York, N.Y., for permission to use the illustration on page 409 from Francis Jenkins, Fundamentals of Optics (1957), page 575. Page xv ABBREVIATIONS Standard editions of Peirce's works are referred to with the following notations: CP Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, ed. C. Hartshorne, P. Weiss, and A. Burks, 8 vols. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935–58). References are cited by volume and paragraph number: CP 5. 119, for example, refers to volume 5, paragraph 119. HP Historical Perspective on Peirce's Logic of Science, ed. Carolyn Eisele, 2 vols. (The Hague: Mouton, 1985). References give volume and page. MF The Published Works of Charles Sanders Peirce (Bowling Green, Ohio: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1986), a large microfiche edition of all of Peirce's lifetime publications, cataloged in A Comprehensive Bibliography of the Published Works of Charles Sanders Peirce, by K. L. Ketner (with the assistance of C. V. Bridges and A. Stewart), 2d rev. ed. (Bowling Green: Philosophy Documentation Center, 1986). MS The Charles S. Peirce Papers, microfilm edition (Cambridge: Harvard University Library Photographic Service, 1966). References to this film set of Peirce's unpublished papers held in the Houghton Library at Harvard employ the numbering system for manuscripts developed by Richard S. Robin in his Annotated Page xvi Catalogue of the Papers of Charles S. Peirce (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967), as emended by Robin in ''The Peirce Papers: A Supplementary Catalogue," Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 7 (1971):37– 57. For example, MS 325:3 indicates Robin's catalog manuscript number 325, page 3. N Charles S. Peirce: Contributions to The Nation, ed. K. L. Ketner and J. E. Cook, 3 vols. plus an index vol. (Lubbock: Texas Tech University Press, 1975–87). References give volume and page. NEM The New Elements of Mathematics, by Charles S. Peirce, ed. C. Eisele, 4 vols. in 5 (The Hague: Mouton, 1976). References give volume and page.