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PEIRCE-L Digest 1289-- February 7-8, 1998
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From PEIRCE-L Forum, Jan 5, 1998, [name of author of message],
"re: Peirce on Teleology"
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Topics covered in this issue include:
1) Re: What is number?
by "George W. Stickel"
2) Re: string search vs conceptual index
by Joseph Ransdell
3) "gradual/gradually" quotes
by Joseph Ransdell
4) Re: Porphyry: On Aristotle's Categories/The New List (1)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
5) Re: The New List (Paragraph 2)
by BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
6) Re: New List (paragraphs 2 and 3)
by Tom Gollier
7) Re: Heroin and History
by Everdell[…]aol.com
8) Re: string search vs conceptual index
by Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
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Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 17:30:04 -0500
From: "George W. Stickel"
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: What is number?
Message-ID: <1.5.4.32.19980207223004.006774fc[…]pop.mindspring.com>
Alan,
If I missed a response to this forgive me, but I wanted to spend a little
time this weekend on a response.
you wrote: To George Stickel, Thomas Riese, Tom Anderson, Joe Ransdell.
>In response to a comment by George Stickel, that numbers seem to him to be
>thirds rather than seconds: I'm working with the idea that numbers are
>rhematic indexical legisigns, which are not quite the same thing as
>symbols. You may note in Peirce's discussion of his TEN classes of signs
>(2.249-270 or so) that symbols are actually two parts thirdness: symbolic
>legisigns (x33), of which Peirce says there are three types: predicates
>(133), propositions (233), and arguments (333). Numbers are legisigns but
>they are not predicates, propositions, or symbols. Rather, because of
>their inherent connective function (indexical) and their LACK of habitual
>relation with particular kinds of objects (symbolic), numbers are properly
>considered indexes; they have a component of thirdness, yes, but not the
>double component that defines symbols. So, in fullest terms, numbers are
>one part firstness (rhematic, in the relationship between the sign and its
>form), one part secondness (indexical--the part I was focusing on in my
>last post, the nature of the relation between a sign and its object), and
>one part thirdness (legisign, the nature of the relation between a sign and
>its interpretation).
>
>The main lesson in Peirce's ten classes of sign: Firstness, Secondness,
>and Thirdness are not absolute distinctions. Instead, these primitives
>combine and recombine in various ways, like protons, neutrons, and
>electrons, to make various kinds of elements. The ten classes are a kind
>of periodic table of meaningful elements.
I agree that Peirce's Ten Classes is not absolute distinction. I disagree,
however, with your classification of numbers. First, as bits of language,
they are indeed symbols. The mathematical language employs "3," "three,"
"III," "tres," "drei," or "=," with a third line under the last symbol, plus
a host of other symbols to imply a thirdness. If we choose to use any of
those markings to communicate a concept of three, we employ a symbol.
Additionally, employing such a notion suggests an argument at some level, or
at the very least, it is a proposition, e.g., "Baa Baa Black Sheep, have you
any wool? Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full." The speaker is able to use
the "three" to verify some number of bags of product, but only because it is
an "association of general ideas" CP 2.249.
On a different plane, there may be a question about the essence of a
numerical concept below the level of human thought (for at the level of
thought, numerical ideas are generalizations from experiences--individual as
well as cultural). Before human language and community no symbols for the
numbers existed. But numerical relations existed and Peirce believed in
firstness, secondness, and thirdness back to the "first flash." The
quantification of the values for F = ma, existed before Newton "discovered"
them. Before many nanoseconds after the First Flash, numerical relations
were only a possibility. But as soon as physical laws became habits, those
numerical relations were arguments for inertia, gravity, and a host of other
laws that we take for granted. In this sense the numerical concepts were
argument within the mind of the universe.
So, it seems to me that numbers are symbols. However, their degenerative
forms (such as a rhematical indexical legisigns) are permissible as the
signs are possibilities or existential in their relation to an intepretant.
George
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 18:24:35
From: Joseph Ransdell
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: string search vs conceptual index
Message-ID: <3.0.1.16.19980207182435.4c2f1b50[…]pop.ttu.edu>
Response to Thomas Riese, who says:
> I think searching offers
>indeed interesting new possibilities for large text corpora -- well,
>perspectives again;-) It's of course not a substitute for a good
>"handcrafted" index, but it helps immensely to prepare one.
>Anyway, the art of searching certainly is a part of the art of
>inquiry. And it is an art in itself.
The string search is far, far more powerfuL -- and valid -- as a scholarly
tool than is the handcrafted concept-based index, Thomas. I understand why
you say this since it once seemed obvious to me, too, that, of course, the
well-prepared conceptual index is better. After all, it is the product of
intelligence in a sense in which the result of the string search mechanism
is not. Or so it seems. But a closer look reveals something else.
The conceptual index is a theory about the text by whoever constructed the
index, and Peirce's work in particular is far too poorly understood for any
serious scholar to want to work with it on the basis of another scholar's
theory of what is there, if it is possible to access the text itself. It
will be decades before it is well-enough understood for that sort of index
to be taken as a reasonably reliable guide to what is and is not there. A
conceptual index is not a scholar's tool but a scholar's product, primarily
of use to the nonscholar who is willing to take the scholar's word for what
is there, for what is equivalent to what, for what implies what, and so
forth. Perhaps this is not true of a philosopher who is already generally
well-understood -- supposing that there is any such thing -- but this is
what a conceptual index is for anything by Peirce: a last resort, not a
primary philosophical tool.
There is more to it than that, but I don't really understand it myself and
can only express it lamely. But I have found that, in practice, I learn so
much more from even the most superficial and unsophisticated string search
than I do from looking up something in a conceptual index -- whether it be
the index to the rather feebly edited Collected Papers or to the much more
competent editing of the Writings -- that I believe it has something to do
with the fact that, in studying the original text, the ipsissima verba is
capable of moving you through the material in a way that keeps you in vital
contact with the person of the thinker in a way that is lost as soon as you
start to move through it on the basis of a supposedly equivalent conceptual
substitute that an editor has come up with.
Some years ago a colleague of mine read a paper on Hume in which the
concept of the will appeared, and this rather suprised me since Hume works
with a minimum of basic ideas and I had never noted the idea of the will as
smong them. Nevertheless the word does very occasionally appear and it
happened to appear in a quotation of some interest in understanding his
view of moral thinking in particular. The discussion about the issue was
very unsatisfactory because neither of us knew how he otherwise used the
term, but when I went home I did a string search through his whole
philosophical corpus on the word "will", making sure that I avoided all
uses of it as a part of the various English verb forms in which it appears,
and it became as clear as such a thing could possibly be that the use of
the term was only "accidental" in that passage since it could easily be
reworded and there was no passage anywhere else in his writing where it
appeared in a way that supported the idea that it had any real
phuilosophical significance in his thinking.
NOw, the best conceptual index imaginable could not have satisfied me of
that with that kind of conclusiveness because there would be no way for me
to know, in making use of that index, whether the scholar who created it
had used good judgment in examining the context of all of the uses he or
she found of it. There is an important logical gap here. When you want to
understand a philosopher in real depth on a point of importance to you you
want to read that philosopher yourself rather than relying upon somebody
else, regardless of how good you might think of the other scholar as being.
It is a question of direct evidence as opposed to testimony, I suppose,
and they are not the same thing, the essential difference being that an
enormously important gap opens up when testimony is used evidentially. I've
never tried to explicate that logically, but I have a sense that it is of
the first importance.
P.S.: thanks for the tip on the search program. I'll see what I can find
out about it and maybe get back with you and others for advice on it if it
looks feasible.
Joe
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell - joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com
Dept of Philosophy - 806 742-3158 (FAX 742-0730)
Texas Tech University - Lubbock, Texas 79409 USA
http://www.cspeirce.com (Peirce website - beta)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 18:51:18
From: Joseph Ransdell
To: peirce-l[…]TTACS.TTU.EDU
Subject: "gradual/gradually" quotes
Message-ID: <3.0.1.16.19980207185118.0e7f40cc[…]pop.ttu.edu>
====Peirce quotes on "gradual/gradually"=============
Peirce: CP 1.106
106. Let us consider, for example, the evolution of standards of weights
and measures. In order to define the word "pound" in the Century
Dictionary, I made a list of about four hundred pounds which had been in
use in different parts of Europe -- undoubtedly a very incomplete list, for
it was confined in great measure to certain provinces concerning which I
was able to obtain information. Each individual pound or measuring stick is
from time to time copied; and at length the old one becomes destroyed. The
measure of each copy is imperceptibly larger or smaller than its immediate
prototype. If then these variations cannot, by gradual summation, produce a
standard much smaller without that standard being destroyed as inconvenient
while no such destruction would follow upon an increase of the standard,
the average of the standards will slowly grow larger by Darwinian
evolution. If there were a disposition on the part of owners of pounds to
file them down, so as to make them lighter, though not enough to be
noticed, then these filed pounds being copied, and the copies filed, there
would be a gradual lightening of the pound by Lamarckian evolution. But it
is very unlikely that either of these two modes has been a considerable
factor in the actual evolution of weights and measures. As long as their
circumstances are unchanged, human communities are exceedingly
conservative. Nothing short of the despotism of a modern government with a
modern police can cause a change in weights and measures. But from time to
time changes occur which cause trade to take new routes. Business has to be
adapted to new conditions; and under such influences we find all those
habits of communities which are rendered unsuitable by the change become
plastic enough. Then it is that a new pound or a new yard may be made which
is a compromise between a desire to retain old ways and a desire to please
new-comers.
Peirce: CP 1.325
325. The idea of second is predominant in the ideas of
causation and of statical force. For cause and effect are two; and statical
forces always occur between pairs. Constraint is a Secondness. In the flow
of time in the mind, the past appears to act directly upon the future, its
effect being called memory, while the future only acts upon the past
through the medium of thirds. Phenomena of this sort in the outward world
shall be considered below. In sense and will, there are reactions of
Secondness between the ego and the non-ego (which non-ego may be an object
of direct consciousness). In will, the events leading up to the act are
internal, and we say that we are agents more than patients. In sense, the
antecedent events are not within us; and besides, the object of which we
form a perception (though not that which immediately acts upon the nerves)
remains unaffected. Consequently, we say that we are patients, not agents.
In the idea of reality, Secondness is predominant; for the real is that
which insists upon forcing its way to recognition as something other than
the mind's creation. (Remember that before the French word, second, was
adopted into our language, other was merely the ordinal numeral
corresponding to two.) The real is active; we acknowledge it, in calling it
the actual. (This word is due to Aristotle's use of {energeia}, action, to
mean existence, as opposed to a mere germinal state.) Again, the kind of
thought of those dualistic philosophers who are fond of laying down
propositions as if there were only two alternatives, and no gradual shading
off between them, as when they say that in trying to find a law in a
phenomenon I commit myself to the proposition that law bears absolute sway
in nature, such thought is marked by Secondness.
Peirce: CP 1.499
499. By virtue of this, time is a continuum. For since the instants, or
possible events, are as many as any collection whatever, and there is no
maximum collection, it follows that they are more than any collections
whatever. They must, therefore, be individually indistinguishable in their
very existence -- that is, are distinguishable and the parts
distinguishable indefinitely, but yet not composed of individuals
absolutely self-identical and distinct from one another -- that is, they
form a continuum. A continuum cannot be disarranged except to an
insignificant extent. An instant cannot be removed. You can no more, by any
decree, shorten a legal holiday by transferring its last instant to the
work-day that follows that feast, than you can take away intensity from
light, and keep the intensity on exhibition while the light is thrown into
the ash-barrel. A limited line AB may be cut into two, AC and C'B, and its
ends joined, C' to A and C to B. That is to say, all this may be done in
the imagination. We have a difficulty in imagining such a thing in regard
to time. For in order that the time should flow continuously even in
imagination from the end of one day into the beginning of a day that does
historically come next, all the events must be prepared so that the states
of things of these two instants, including states of gradual change, such
as velocity, etc., shall be precisely the same. In the case of a line we do
not think of this, although it is equally true, because we are unaccustomed
to minutely dealing with the facts about single molecules and atoms upon
which the cohesion of matter depends. We, therefore, see no particular
difficulty in joining any end of a line to any other line's end
continuously. This is as true a view as the other. As far as time itself
goes, nothing prevents twenty-four hours being cut out and the day before
joining continuously to the day after, were there any power that could
affect such a result. In such a case, the two instants brought together
would be identified, or made one, which sufficiently shows their want of
individual self-identity and repugnance to all others.
Peirce: CP 2.637
Such formul‘, though very useful as means of describing in general terms
the results of observations, do not take any high rank among scientific
discoveries. The induction which they embody, that expansion by heat (or
whatever other phenomenon is referred to) takes place in a perfectly
gradual manner without sudden leaps or innumerable fluctuations, although
really important, attracts no attention, because it is what we naturally
anticipate. But the defects of such expressions are very serious. In the
first place, as long as the observations are subject to error, as all
observations are, the formula cannot be expected to satisfy the
observations exactly. But the discrepancies cannot be due solely to the
errors of the observations, but must be partly owing to the error of the
formula which has been deduced from erroneous observations. Moreover, we
have no right to suppose that the real facts, if they could be had free
from error, could be expressed by such a formula at all. They might,
perhaps, be expressed by a similar formula with an infinite number of
terms; but of what use would that be to us, since it would require an
infinite number of coefficients to be written down? When one quantity
varies with another, if the corresponding values are exactly known, it is a
mere matter of mathematical ingenuity to find some way of expressing their
relation in a simple manner. If one quantity is of one kind--say, a
specific gravity--and the other of another kind--say, a temperature--we do
not desire to find an expression for their relation which is wholly free
from numerical constants, since if it were free from them when, say,
specific gravity as compared with water, and temperature as expressed by
the Centigrade thermometer, were in question, numbers would have to be
introduced when the scales of measurement were changed. We may, however,
and do desire to find formul‘ expressing the relations of physical
phenomena which shall contain no more arbitrary numbers than changes in the
scales of measurement might require.
Peirce: CP 2.770
770. Quantitative induction approximates gradually, though in an irregular
manner to the experiential truth for the long run. The antecedent probable
error of it at any stage is calculable as well as the probable error of
that probable error. Besides that, the probable error can be calculated
from the results, by a mixture of induction and theory. Any striking and
important discrepancy between the antecedent and a posteriori probable
errors may require investigation, since it suggests some error in the
theoretical assumptions. But the fact which is here important is that
Quantitative Induction always makes a gradual approach to the truth, though
not a uniform approach.
Peirce: CP 2.777
777. Presumption is the only kind of reasoning which supplies new ideas,
the only kind which is, in this sense, synthetic. Induction is justified as
a method which must in the long run lead up to the truth, and that, by
gradual modification of the actual conclusion. There is no such warrant for
presumption. The hypothesis which it problematically concludes is
frequently utterly wrong itself, and even the method need not ever lead to
the truth; for it may be that the features of the phenomena which it aims
to explain have no rational explanation at all. Its only justification is
that its method is the only way in which there can be any hope of attaining
a rational explanation. This doctrine agrees substantially with that of
some logicians; but it is radically at variance with a common theory and
with a common practice. This prescribes that the reasoner should be guided
by balancing probabilities, according to the doctrine of inverse
probability. This depends upon knowing antecedent probabilities. If these
antecedent probabilities were solid statistical facts, like those upon
which the insurance business rests, the ordinary precepts and practice
would be sound. But they are not and cannot, in the nature of things, be
statistical facts. What is the antecedent probability that matter should be
composed of atoms? Can we take statistics of a multitude of different
universes? An objective probability is the ratio of frequency of a specific
to a generic event in the ordinary course of experience. Of a fact per se
it is absurd to speak of objective probability. All that is attainable are
subjective probabilities, or likelihoods, which express nothing but the
conformity of a new suggestion to our prepossessions; and these are the
source of most of the errors into which man falls, and of all the worst of
them. An instance of what the method of balancing likelihoods leads to is
the "higher criticism" of ancient history, upon which the archaeologist's
spade has inflicted so many wounds.
Peirce: CP 4.243
243. But it may be asked whether mathematics, ethics, and logic have not
encountered similar difficulties. Are the doctrines of logic at all
settled? Is the history of ethics anything but a history of controversy?
Have no logical errors been committed by mathematicians? To that I reply,
first, as to logic, that not only have the rank and file of writers on the
subject been, as an eminent psychiatrist, Maudsley, declares, men of
arrested brain-development, and not only have they generally lacked the
most essential qualification for the study, namely mathematical training,
but the main reason why logic is unsettled is that thirteen different
opinions are current as to the true aim of the science. Now this is not a
logical difficulty but an ethical difficulty; for ethics is the science of
aims. Secondly, it is true that pure ethics has been, and always must be, a
theatre of discussion, for the reason that its study consists in the
gradual development of a distinct recognition of a satisfactory aim. It is
a science of subtleties, no doubt; but it is not logic, but the development
of the ideal, which really creates and resolves the problems of ethics.
Thirdly, in mathematics errors of reasoning have occurred, nay, have passed
unchallenged for thousands of years. This, however, was simply because they
escaped notice. Never, in the whole history of the science, has a question
whether a given conclusion followed mathematically from given premisses,
when once started, failed to receive a speedy and unanimous reply. Very few
have been even the apparent exceptions; and those few have been due to the
fact that it is only within the last half century that mathematicians have
come to have a perfectly clear recognition of what is mathematical soil and
what foreign to mathematics. Perhaps the nearest approximation to an
exception was the dispute about the use of divergent series. Here neither
party was in possession of sufficient pure mathematical reasons covering
the whole ground; and such reasons as they had were not only of an
extra-mathematical kind, but were used to support more or less vague
positions. It appeared then, as we all know now, that divergent series are
of the utmost utility.
Peirce: CP 5.404
404. This leads us to undertake an account of the idea of Force in
general. This is the great conception which, developed in the early part of
the seventeenth century from the rude idea of a cause, and constantly
improved upon since, has shown us how to explain all the changes of motion
which bodies experience, and how to think about all physical phenomena;
which has given birth to modern science, and changed the face of the globe;
and which, aside from its more special uses, has played a principal part in
directing the course of modern thought, and in furthering modern social
development. It is, therefore, worth some pains to comprehend it. According
to our rule, we must begin by asking what is the immediate use of thinking
about force; and the answer is, that we thus account for changes of motion.
If bodies were left to themselves, without the intervention of forces,
every motion would continue unchanged both in velocity and in direction.
Furthermore, change of motion never takes place abruptly; if its direction
is changed, it is always through a curve without angles; if its velocity
alters, it is by degrees. The gradual changes which are constantly taking
place are conceived by geometers to be compounded together according to the
rules of the parallelogram of forces. If the reader does not already know
what this is, he will find it, I hope, to his advantage to endeavor to
follow the following explanation; but if mathematics are insupportable to
him, pray let him skip three paragraphs rather than that we should part
company here.
Peirce: CP 5.587
Nobody would dream of contending that because the sun has risen and set
every day so far, that afforded any reason at all for supposing that it
would go on doing so to all eternity. But when I say that there is not the
very slightest reason for thinking that no material atoms ever go out of
existence or come into existence, there I fail to carry the average man
with me; and I suppose the reason is, that he dimly conceives that there is
some reason, other than the pure and simple induction, for holding matter
to be ingenerable and indestructible. For it is plain that if it be a mere
question of our weighings or other experiences, all that appears is that
not more than one atom in a million or ten million becomes annihilated
before the deficiency of mass is pretty certain to be balanced by another
atom's being created. Now when we are speaking of atoms, a million or ten
million is an excessively minute quantity. So that as far as purely
inductive evidence is concerned we are very very far from being entitled to
think that matter is absolutely permanent. If you put the question to a
physicist his reply will probably be, as it certainly ought to be, that
physicists only deal with such phenomena as they can either directly or
indirectly observe, or are likely to become able to observe until there is
some great revolution in science, and to that he will very likely add that
any limitation upon the permanence of matter would be a purely gratuitous
hypothesis without anything whatever to support it. Now this last part of
the physicist's reply is, in regard to the order of considerations which he
has in mind, excellent good sense. But from an absolute point of view, I
think it leaves something out of account. Do you believe that the fortune
of the Rothschilds will endure forever? Certainly not; because although
they may be safe enough as far as the ordinary causes go which engulf
fortunes, yet there is always a chance of some revolution or catastrophe
which may destroy all property. And no matter how little that chance may
be, as far as this decade or this generation goes, yet in limitless decades
and generations, it is pretty sure that the pitcher will get broken, at
last. There is no danger, however slight, which in an indefinite multitude
of occasions does not come as near to absolute certainty as probability can
come. The existence of the human race, we may be as good as sure, will come
to an end at last. For not to speak of the gradual operation of causes of
which we know, the action of the tides, the resisting medium, the
dissipation of energy, there is all the time a certain danger that the
earth may be struck by a meteor or wandering star so large as to ruin it,
or by some poisonous gas. That a purely gratuitous hypothesis should turn
out to be true is, indeed, something so exceedingly improbable that we
cannot be appreciably wrong in calling it zero. Still, the chance that out
of an infinite multitude of gratuitous hypotheses an infinitesimal
proportion, which may itself be an infinite multitude, should turn out to
be true, is zero multiplied by infinity, which is absolutely indeterminate.
That is to say we simply know nothing whatever about it. Now that any
single atom should be annihilated is a gratuitous hypothesis. But there
are, we may suppose, an infinite multitude of atoms, and a similar
hypothesis may be made for each. And thus we return to my original
statement that as to whether any finite number or even an infinite number
of atoms are annihilated per year, that is something of which we are simply
in a state of blank ignorance, unless we have found out some method of
reasoning altogether superior to induction. If, therefore, we should detect
any general phenomenon of nature which could very well be explained, not by
supposing any definite breach of the laws of nature, for that would be no
explanation at all, but by supposing that a continual breach of all the
laws of nature, every day and every second, was itself one of the laws or
habitudes of nature, there would be no power in induction to offer the
slightest logical objection to that theory. But as long as we are aware of
no such general phenomena tending to show such continual inexactitude in
law, then we must remain absolutely without any rational opinion upon the
matter pro or con.
Peirce: CP 5.402 Fn P2 Para 1/3 p 258
^P2 Before we undertake to apply this rule, let us reflect a little upon
what it implies. It has been said to be a sceptical and materialistic
principle. But it is only an application of the sole principle of logic
which was recommended by Jesus; "Ye may know them by their fruits," and it
is very intimately allied with the ideas of the gospel. We must certainly
guard ourselves against understanding this rule in too individualistic a
sense. To say that man accomplishes nothing but that to which his endeavors
are directed would be a cruel condemnation of the great bulk of mankind,
who never have leisure to labor for anything but the necessities of life
for themselves and their families. But, without directly striving for it,
far less comprehending it, they perform all that civilization requires, and
bring forth another generation to advance history another step. Their fruit
is, therefore, collective; it is the achievement of the whole people. What
is it, then, that the whole people is about, what is this civilization that
is the outcome of history, but is never completed? We cannot expect to
attain a complete conception of it; but we can see that it is a gradual
process, that it involves a realization of ideas in man's consciousness and
in his works, and that it takes place by virtue of man's capacity for
learning, and by experience continually pouring upon him ideas he has not
yet acquired. We may say that it is the process whereby man, with all his
miserable littlenesses, becomes gradually more and more imbued with the
Spirit of God, in which Nature and History are rife. We are also told to
believe in a world to come; but the idea is itself too vague to contribute
much to the perspicuity of ordinary ideas. It is a common observation that
those who dwell continually upon their expectations are apt to become
oblivious to the requirements of their actual station. The great principle
of logic is self-surrender, which does not mean that self is to lay low for
the sake of an ultimate triumph. It may turn out so; but that must not be
the governing purpose.
Peirce: CP 6.15
15. The theory of Darwin was that evolution had been brought about by the
action of two factors: first, heredity, as a principle making offspring
nearly resemble their parents, while yet giving room for "sporting" or
accidental variations -- for very slight variations often, for wider ones
rarely; and, second, the destruction of breeds or races that are unable to
keep the birth rate up to the death rate. This Darwinian principle is
plainly capable of great generalization. Wherever there are large numbers
of objects having a tendency to retain certain characters unaltered, this
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X-Listprocessor-version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas
tendency, however, not being absolute but giving room for chance
variations, then, if the amount of variation is absolutely limited in
certain directions by the destruction of everything which reaches those
limits, there will be a gradual tendency to change in directions of
departure from them. Thus, if a million players sit down to bet at an even
game, since one after another will get ruined, the average wealth of those
who remain will perpetually increase. Here is indubitably a genuine formula
of possible evolution, whether its operation accounts for much or little in
the development of animal and vegetable species.
Peirce: CP 6.311
311. Students of the history of mind there be of an erudition to fill an
imperfect scholar like me with envy edulcorated by joyous admiration, who
maintain that ideas when just started are and can be little more than
freaks, since they cannot yet have been critically examined, and further
that everywhere and at all times progress has been so gradual that it is
difficult to make out distinctly what original step any given man has
taken. It would follow that tychasm has been the sole method of
intellectual development. I have to confess I cannot read history so; I
cannot help thinking that while tychasm has sometimes been operative, at
others great steps covering nearly the same ground and made by different
men independently have been mistaken for a succession of small steps, and
further that students have been reluctant to admit a real entitative
"spirit" of an age or of a people, under the mistaken and unscrutinized
impression that they should thus be opening the door to wild and unnatural
hypotheses. I find, on the contrary, that, however it may be with the
education of individual minds, the historical development of thought has
seldom been of a tychastic nature, and exclusively in backward and
barbarizing movements. I desire to speak with the extreme modesty which
befits a student of logic who is required to survey so very wide a field of
human thought that he can cover it only by a reconnaissance, to which only
the greatest skill and most adroit methods can impart any value at all;
but, after all, I can only express my own opinions and not those of anybody
else; and in my humble judgment, the largest example of tychasm is afforded
by the history of Christianity, from about its establishment by Constantine
to, say, the time of the Irish monasteries, an era or eon of about 500
years. Undoubtedly the external circumstance, which more than all others at
first inclined men to accept Christianity in its loveliness and tenderness,
was the fearful extent to which society was broken up into units by the
unmitigated greed and hard-heartedness into which the Romans had seduced
the world. And yet it was that very same fact, more than any other external
circumstance, that fostered that bitterness against the wicked world of
which the primitive gospel of Mark contains not a single trace. At least, I
do not detect it in the remark about the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,
where nothing is said about vengeance, nor even in that speech where the
closing lines of Isaiah are quoted, about the worm and the fire that feed
upon the "carcasses of the men that have transgressed against me." But
little by little the bitterness increases until, in the last book of the
New Testament, its poor distracted author represents that all the time
Christ was talking about having come to save the world, the secret design
was to catch the entire human race, with the exception of a paltry 144,000,
and souse them all in a brimstone lake, and as the smoke of their torment
went up forever and ever, to turn and remark, "There is no curse any more."
Would it be an insensible smirk or a fiendish grin that should accompany
such an utterance? I wish I could believe St. John did not write it; but it
is his gospel which tells about the "resurrection unto condemnation" --
that is of men's being resuscitated just for the sake of torturing them --
and at any rate, the Revelation is a very ancient composition. One can
understand that the early Christians were like men trying with all their
might to climb a steep declivity of smooth wet clay; the deepest and truest
element of their life, animating both heart and head, was universal love;
but they were continually, and against their wills, slipping into a party
spirit, every slip serving as a precedent, in a fashion but too familiar to
every man. This party feeling insensibly grew until by about A.D. 330 the
luster of the pristine integrity that in St. Mark reflects the white spirit
of light was so far tarnished that Eusebius (the Jared Sparks of that day),
in the preface to his History, could announce his intention of exaggerating
everything that tended to the glory of the church and of suppressing
whatever might disgrace it. His Latin contemporary Lactantius is worse
still; and so the darkling went on increasing until before the end of the
century the great library of Alexandria was destroyed by Theophilus, until
Gregory the Great, two centuries later, burnt the great library of Rome,
proclaiming that "Ignorance is the mother of devotion" (which is true, just
as oppression and injustice is the mother of spirituality), until a sober
description of the state of the church would be a thing our not too nice
newspapers would treat as "unfit for publication." All this movement is
shown by the application of the test given above to have been tychastic.
Another very much like it on a small scale, only a hundred times swifter,
for the study of which there are documents by the library-full, is to be
found in the history of the French Revolution.
Peirce: CP 6.473
473. The Probations, or direct Inductive Argumentations, are of two kinds.
The first is that which Bacon ill described as "inductio illa qu‘ procedit
per enumerationem simplicem." So at least he has been understood. For an
enumeration of instances is not essential to the argument that, for
example, there are no such beings as fairies, or no such events as
miracles. The point is that there is no well-established instance of such a
thing. I call this Crude Induction. It is the only Induction which
concludes a logically Universal Proposition. It is the weakest of
arguments, being liable to be demolished in a moment, as happened toward
the end of the eighteenth century to the opinion of the scientific world
that no stones fall from the sky. The other kind is Gradual Induction,
which makes a new estimate of the proportion of truth in the hypothesis
with every new instance; and given any degree of error there will sometime
be an estimate (or would be, if the probation were persisted in) which will
be absolutely the last to be infected with so much falsity. Gradual
Induction is either Qualitative or Quantitative and the latter either
depends on measurements, or on statistics, or on countings.
Peirce: CP 6.573
573. Common sense corrects itself, improves its conclusions. The history
of the science of dynamics is that of gradual correction by inference from
familiar experience (essentially an operation of good sense) of primitive
conceptions of "force" and "matter." There, however, the reasoning was of
the self-conscious kind. But we see social, political, religious common
sense modifying itself insensibly in course of generations, ideas of rights
of man acquiring new meaning, thaumaturgic elements of Christianity
sinking, spiritual rising in religious consciousness.
Peirce: CP 7.115
115. The other line which our studies of the relation of the hypothesis to
experience may pursue, consists in directing our attention, not primarily
to the facts, but primarily to the hypothesis, and in studying out what
effect that hypothesis, if embraced, must have in modifying our
expectations in regard to future experience. Thereupon we make experiments,
or quasi-experiments, in order to find out how far these new conditional
expectations are going to be fulfilled. In so far as they greatly modify
our former expectations of experience and in so far as we find them,
nevertheless, to be fulfilled, we accord to the hypothesis a due weight in
determining all our future conduct and thought. It is true that the
observed conformity of the facts to the requirements of the hypothesis may
have been fortuitous. But if so, we have only to persist in this same
method of research and we shall gradually be brought around to the truth.
This gradual process of rectification is in great contrast to what takes
place with rudimentary induction where the correction comes with a bang.
The strength of any argument of the Second Order depends upon how much the
confirmation of the prediction runs counter to what our expectation would
have been without the hypothesis. It is entirely a question of how much;
and yet there is no measurable quantity. For when such measure is possible
the argument assumes quite another complexion, and becomes an induction of
the Third Order. Inductions of the second order are of two varieties, that
are logically quite distinct.
Peirce: CP 7.185
185. To begin with, let me say that I propose to confine myself
exclusively to the consideration of the proper scientific procedure
concerning the documents in question. I do not propose to touch upon the
question of miracles in so far as it is a practical religious question for
an individual man.^9 This is not from timidity or any indisposition to
express myself, could I have my whole say; but it is because it would
expand this paper beyond all bounds of convenience in all respects. A
practical belief is what a man proposes to go upon. A decision is more or
less pressing. What ought it to be? That must depend upon what the purpose
of his action is. What then, is the purpose of a man? That is the question
of pure ethics, a very great question which must be disposed of before the
logic of practical belief can be entered upon to any good effect. With
science it is entirely different. A problem started today may not reach any
scientific solution for generations. The man who begins the inquiry does
not expect to learn, in this life, what conclusion it is to which his
labors are tending. Strictly speaking, the inquiry never will be completely
closed. Even without any logical method at all, the gradual accumulation of
knowledge might probably ultimately bring a sufficient solution.
Consequently, the object of a logical method is to bring about more
speedily and at less expense the result which is destined, in any case,
ultimately to be reached, but which, even with the best logic, will not
probably come in our day. Really the word belief is out of place in the
vocabulary of science. If an engineer or other practical man takes a
scientific result, and makes it the basis for action, it is he who converts
it into a belief. In pure science, it is merely the formula reached in the
existing state of scientific progress. The question of what rules
scientific inference ought to follow in order to accelerate the progress of
science to the utmost is a comparatively simple one, and may be treated by
itself. The question of how a given man, with not much time to give to the
subject, had best proceed to form his hasty decision, involves other very
serious difficulties, which make it a distinct inquiry. The former
question, taken by itself, will be enough for the present communication.
Peirce: CP 7.284
284. The meaning of this seems to be clear. That is, it possesses the
first grade of clearness of ideas, that of containing no element which
perfect familiarity does not enable us to use with entire confidence. But
that grade of clearness is not sufficient for precision of statement, and
logical security. For that purpose, we must say what we mean by
"gradually." In attempting to state this, it first occurs to us to say that
we mean by a gradual change of hue, such a change that in passing from one
exact hue to another we pass through all intermediate hues. There are two
reflections to be made upon this statement. First, it supposes that the
different hues are so related in our minds that we are able to say what
ones are, and what ones are not, intermediate between any given pair of
hues. That is to say, we must have a precise idea of what it means to say
that the hues are mentally arranged in a line. But if that be so, we need
not introduce the conception of a change in time; for that was only a
device to enable us to describe what we mean by a line of variations of
character. In truth, though the introduction of the idea of time gives
sensuous clearness to our idea, it contributes not in the least to logical
clearness. The second reflection which has to be made upon our attempt to
define gradual change of hue is that the hues form a circle, the so-called
color-circle; so that it is possible to pass from any one to any other by
going either way round the circle; and thus there is no particular hue that
we need pass through. To define a linear arrangement, the line being
permitted to return into itself, it is necessary to speak of four points on
the line.
Peirce: CP 7.413
413. (321) Nowhere in nature is there the slightest reason to believe that
any saltus takes place during changes. The more we learn of physics, the
more we are led to exclude such hypotheses. Nor is there the slightest
appearance of the phenomena of the mind being more sudden than those of
matter. On the contrary the general evidence of experimental psychology is
that mental actions are particularly gradual and gentle.
Peirce: CP 7.488
488. It is true that Space, in so far as it is a continuum, is a mere law,
-- a mere Thirdness.^6 But that does not stand in the way of its being a
thing too. If besides its continuity it presents arbitrary thisness,^7 we
must admit that it is something more than a mere law. The question of the
relativity of motion is a question of the measurement of space, not of the
nature of space itself; and therefore, although motion be not relative, it
would not necessarily follow that space itself is non-relative, however
good the inference may be, considered as a retroduction. But there are
characters belonging to space per se which seem to involve thisness, such
as its having three dimensions, -- which is an arbitrary limitation. Its
cyclosis and periphraxis,^8 whether these be supposed equal to 0 or to 1
are apparently arbitrary Facts. You cannot reduce them to mere formalities
without supposing that space has some kind of topical singularity, -- which
is still more manifestly an arbitrary fact of existence. As to the Fourth
Listing number, all must admit that its value is 1. That is to say, a body
filling all space could not by gradual degrees shrink to a point without
being ruptured, while the slightest explosion which should separate the
body entirely from a single place however small, -- the smallest vacuous
cist in it, -- would suffice to enable the collapse to take place. This I
believe nobody who has carefully considered the matter has doubted or is
likely to doubt, -- at least unless it be supposed that space has modes of
connection of which observation affords not the slightest trace. Here
again, then, is an arbitrary existential fact about Space, which is simply
the way it insists upon being, without any logical necessity. Now
insistence upon being in some quite arbitrary way is Secondness, which is
the characteristic of the actually existing thing. It is its self-willedness.
Peirce: CP 7.267 Fn 8 Para 1/2 p 175
^8 (Ed.) In Lecture V of the series (see 267n7), Peirce says: "For my
part, I am quite sure that, however it may be with the rank and file of the
great army of general readers, those who come here will be interested in
the history of science not as a mere Wonder Book, but as an instance, a
specimen, of how the laws of growth apply to the human mind. As this
Century is drawing to a close, it is interesting to pause and look about us
and to ask ourselves in what great questions science is now most
interested. The answer must be that the question that everybody is now
asking, in metaphysics, in the theory of reasoning, in psychology, in
general history, in philology, in sociology, in astronomy, perhaps even in
molecular physics, is the question How things grow; and by far the most
interesting aspect of the history of science, is that it shows how an
important department of human thought has been developed from generation to
generation, with a view of comparing this growth with the historical
development of art, of religion, of politics, and of institutions
generally, and not only with historical development but also with the
growth of the individual mind, and not only of mind, but of organisms both
in their geological succession and in their individual development, and
with the formation of worlds, and even with the gradual coming into being
and crystallization of the fundamental laws of matter and of mind, -- from
all of which facts taken together we are to expect in the future a grand
cosmogony or philosophy of creation."
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Joseph Ransdell - joseph.ransdell[…]yahoo.com
Dept of Philosophy - 806 742-3158 (FAX 742-0730)
Texas Tech University - Lubbock, Texas 79409 USA
http://www.cspeirce.com (Peirce website - beta)
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 03:12:43 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Porphyry: On Aristotle's Categories/The New List (1)
Message-ID: <34de1f0e.4107645[…]pop3.cris.com>
piat[…]juno.com (Jim L Piat) wrote:
>William Overcamp wrote:
>> §1. This paper is based upon the theory already
>> established, that the function of conceptions is to
>> reduce the manifold of sensuous impressions to unity,
>> and that the validity of a conception consists in the
>> impossibility of reducing the content of consciousness
>> to unity without the introduction of it.
>>When do we move on to paragraph 2? Is there a plan or are we just
>>winging it?
>BugDaddy - why am I amused by this? I think the plan is to wing it like
>bumble bees. Are we ready for #2? Here's my off the cuff summary of
>what I can recall we have tentatively concluded or at least considered
>regarding #1:
In my humble opinion, we ought to have some schedule in mind.
We could continue discussing paragraph 1 for months.
Unfortunately, however, the way these lists works, topics slowly
change, and lose focus. The way to keep things in focus is to
limit the amount of time on one installment before moving to
another.
----------------------------------------------------------
Friend and lover you have taken away. My only friend is darkness.
Psalm 88:18
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
-----------------------------------
Bill Overcamp
-----------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 08 Feb 1998 03:48:59 GMT
From: BugDaddy[…]cris.com (BugDaddy)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: The New List (Paragraph 2)
Message-ID: <34df252f.5677447[…]pop3.cris.com>
It seems that we are moving on...
Tom Burke wrote:
>I guess paragraph 2 does hardly more than pose this question, in the form
>of a claim or thesis that there is some such regress. Paragraph 3 then is
>where Peirce starts to re-do Kant's take on these matters, but ever so
>slowly.
§2. This theory gives rise to a conception of
gradation among those conceptions which are
universal. For one such conception may unite the
manifold of sense and yet another may be required to
unite the conception and the manifold to which it is
applied; and so on.
"This theory gives rise to a conception of gradation among those
conceptions which are universal." Interesting... Here we jump
directly from the "manifold of sensuous impressions" to
"conceptions which are universal" without first considering
conceptions which are particular. I suppose there is no reason
not to make such a jump. But I am surprised by it.
"For one such conception may unite the manifold of sense and yet
another may be required to unite the conception and the manifold
to which it is applied; and so on." Here we seem to contradict
the plan in paragraph 1. There it had been proposed that "the
validity of a conception consists in the impossibility of
reducing the content of consciousness to unity without the
introduction of it;" but instead of unifying the content of
consciousness, we have introduced what now appears to be an
infinite sequence of conceptions, each of which apparently
patches up something that was lacking in the previous one. So
are we making progress or not?
----------------------------------------------------------
Friend and lover you have taken away. My only friend is darkness.
Psalm 88:18
-----------------------------------
Life is a miracle waiting to happen.
http://www.cris.com/~bugdaddy/life.htm
-----------------------------------
Bill Overcamp
-----------------------------------
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 07 Feb 1998 20:43:53 -0800
From: Tom Gollier
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: New List (paragraphs 2 and 3)
Message-ID: <34DD3808.6D3F3614[…]concentric.net>
Tom Anderson writes:
> Peirce's categories at first blush appear to be categories of
> 'conceptions' that would include, I think, both Kant's judgements
> and Aristotle's objects. What he's up to has some relations with
> Aristotle's and Kant's problems (each different from the other)
> ...
and I couldn't agree more. With Section 3 Peirce introduces one of his
universal concepts, "substance," and the way he includes Aristotle's
concept of "substance", while nevertheless radically differentiating
his own from it, is slick. Peirce apparently agrees that:
"Substance, in the truest and primary and most definite sense of
the word, is that which is neither predicable of a subject nor
present in a subject; ..."
but not that it is:
"... for instance, the individual man or horse." {From
Aristotle's "Categories"}
For Peirce "substance" is:
... the act of *attention* ..., the pure denotative power of the
mind, that is to say, the power which directs the mind to an
object, in contradistinction to the power of thinking any
predicate of that object, ...
and the categories are thereby restricted to the conceptual side of
that act of attention. "Substance" is not yet even the denoting of
the individual thing, much less something applicable to the thing
itself, but is rather the universal element of presence any such
denotation requires.
But I don't think we should be too quick to throw in Kant's name
or to start talking about "being" as seems to be occurring in the
discussion now. There's no mention of "being" until Section 4, and
dealing as it does with the proposition, that would seem the proper
place to look at the relation Peirce is taking toward Kant's
categories. I would even say there's a trick, analogous to the one
Peirce is playing on the Aristotleian object here, to be played upon
the Kantian subject there. Just in terms of the concepts
themselves, though, Peirce had some rather harsh words elsewhere:
5.44 ... To say, however, that presentness, presentness as it
is present, present presentness, is abstract, is Pure Being, is
a falsity so glaring, that one can only say that Hegel's theory
that the abstract is more primitive than the concrete blinded
his eyes to what stood before them.
for Hegel confusing "substance" and "being", so I think we should be
careful not to mix the two ourselves.
Tom Gollier
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 10:35:09 -0500 (EST)
From: Everdell[…]aol.com
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: Heroin and History
Message-ID: <980208103509_1651721693[…]mrin51.mx>
Thanks to Ken Ketner for his source article on pharmaco-geschichte. This is
a learner-friendly list, and I'm grateful.
-Bill Everdell, Brooklyn
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 8 Feb 1998 17:21:52 +0100
From: Thomas.Riese[…]t-online.de (Thomas Riese)
To: peirce-l[…]ttacs6.ttu.edu
Subject: Re: string search vs conceptual index
Message-ID:
Dear Joe Ransdell,
I can't thank you enough for your search-postings. That brings a whole
new world of ideas into plain light which I hitherto only had dimly in
to back of my mind: I always had some reasons to believe that 'taking
steps' (gradus) together with the whole accompanying cluster of ideas
including the idea of measurement and the idea of intensity and that
something can be more or less present (growth and decay) and on the
other hand the pure mathematical skeleton of "continuity" strongly
belong together if we want to make a step. But it takes a long time
before one has gathered enough experience in at first apparently
unrelated fields until they perceptibly begin to 'grow together' and
then all of a sudden there is a whole new world. There seems indeed to
be much more to Peirce's continuity than just only his more immediate
papers on continuity, i.e. those with the word 'continuity' in the
title. Especially his empirical work in gravimetry and the measurement
of colors and light are of immediate high importance!
Just one short example: The paper 'On a New Class of Observations,
suggested by the principles of Logic', 1877, (W3, pp.235-237)
logically seems to me to be an important companion text of the New
List!
It's really more than breathtaking to see how Peirce, knowing that
Kant had Newtonian physics in the back of his mind and that Aristotle
had some insight into continuity Newton hadn't to see that Peirce
dives right into the middle of it all right in the second sentence of
the New List. He's an unbelievable genius! If we keep in mind that
more than half a Century later a man like John von Neumann after
having taken many ideas from Peirce complained that logic is such a
clumsy thing because it lacks something like calculus which gives
mathematics its true power. What the hell is here going on ...?! The
only explanation I can offer is conceit: we all tend to be so proud if
we achieve something that works well that we easily forget all the
treasures waiting next door -- getting stiff in anxiously keeping up
what we have.
Well, seems as if I have to spend the next money I get in with theater
appearances for purchasing a copy of the electronic CP:-)
But perhaps, Joe, you could be so kind to do me a favor which has
immediate connection with the above: I know that Peirce spoke in at
least one place of "concrete general(s)" but I am for some time now
without avail trying to recover the reference -- which is somewhere
buried in my notes on paper I made some years ago. I am not even sure
whether it was in the CP. Perhaps it was in the Pape material.
Joe, what you said in your message on the worth of searching brought
up another old idea of mine into consciousness -- a project which
might be worth considering for Arisbe:
The text corpus: "Prolegomena to an Apology for Pragmaticism" is
especially difficult to edit and to understand with the ususal means
since there are seemingly endless new starts, countless variants,
branchings in Peirce's attempts to express himself. Again it was
Helmut Pape (and his publisher's at Suhrkamp) who had the courage to
print part of that labyrinth as labyrithine as it is (Semiotische
Schriften, Band 3).
There usually is of course again this old story that Peirce is somehow
chaotic, disturbed in his writing etc.. -- IT IS NOT SO! -- He is only
doing what he is saying!
Peirce says _in_the_text_(CP 4.533): "When I was a boy, my logical
bent caused me to take pleasure in tracing out upon a map of an
imaginary labyrinth one path after another in hopes of finding my way
to a central compartment. The operation we have just gone through is
essentially of the same sort, and if we are to recognize the one as
essentially performed experimentation upon a diagram, so must we
recognize that the other is performed. The demonstration just traced
out brings home to us very strongly, also, the convenience of so
constructing our diagram as to afford a clear view of the mode of
connection of its parts, and of its composition at each stage of our
operations upon it. Such convenience is obtained in the diagrams of
algebra. In logic, however, the desirability of convenience in
threading our way through complications is much less than in
mathematics, while there is another desideratum which the
mathematician as such does not feel. The mathematician wants to reach
the conclusion, and his interest in the process is merely as a means
to reach similar conclusions. The logician does not care what the
result may be; his desire is to understand the nature of the process
by which it is reached. The mathematician seeks the speediest and most
abridged of secure methods; the logician wishes to make each smallest
step of the process stand out distinctly, so that its nature may be
understood. He wants his diagram to be, above all, as analytical as
possible."
Well, the central piece of what Peirce here is here speaking about as
lybyrinthine is his version of Cantor's Proof (on power sets) which is
Peirce's mathematical gate to the concept of continuity and which has
indeed a very extreme labyrithine structure when one tries to get into
it. So then Peirce's text is intended for all those who react phobic
when seeing mathematical formulas;-)
Peirce here clearly transcends what in a usual (printed) text is
possible. In a sense he anticipated the idea of a "web" with its
labyrinthine structure. But he had no Internet and no Computers. We
have.
Needless to say that above quoted text is full of allusions to
Dedekind's conceptions and indications of what Peirce proposes
instead, with imaginary values and all that ("tracing out upon a map
of an imaginary labyrinth one path after another")
Of course you won't find 'labyrinth' in the index of volume 4 of the
Collected Papers:-)
Just one other short remark for those interested in 'searching' as a
means for probing large text corpora: The Stanford mathematician and
computer scientist Donald E.Knuth (who also invented the idea of what
he calls 'Literate Programming' and developed the world-famous
computer typesetting system 'TeX' and which I mentioned at several
times in other contexts) has written a book with the title: "3:16 --
Bible Texts Illuminated" (A-R Editions; Madison, Wisconsin 1991).
Knuth examines the Bible as a devout christ and at the same time with
the knowledge and methods of a computer scientist and much more. It's
not immediately on "string searching", "regular expressions" and the
like but nevertheless is seems to me very interesting what concerns
"the philosophy of searching" with advanced methods.
Thomas Riese.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Thomas Riese Hedwigstr. 24
Tel. : +49 201 77 94 45 45130 Essen
Fax : +49 201 77 94 81 Germany
email: thomas.riese[…]t-online.de
0201779445-0001[…]t-online.de
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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