#c.s. peirce

[perkwunos]

what I particularly like in chapter 7 is Short’s insistence that Peirce both struggled to expand the range of what could be observed and took observation itself as a particular object of investigation. Here, Short illuminatingly connects a number of Peirce’s peculiar interests which have not been brought together before. One is his 1870s experiment of deliberately training an observer to determine the time of an observation’s onset with as much precision as possible, in the context of astronomical observations which were then still to a large degree based on individual perceptions. Peirce succeeded in training a young man, over a month of practice, to perform such temporal judgment with an error margin less than 1/80 second. The next experiment, much more famous, is the aforementioned one with Jastrow on perceptual discrimination, showing larger accuracy in guesses than the test subjects themselves knew about and thus proving the existence of subliminal sensation. Short does not hesitate to include Peirce’s famous course in the tasting of Médoc red wines by a sommelier during his Paris stay in the 1870s in the same context: this was not at all for pleasure but for experiencing in other sensory modes taste and smell, the fine-grained training of perceptual distinctions—although why should pleasure and theoretical interest exclude each other?—now also involving value judgments. Finally, Peirce’s famous experiment with his Johns Hopkins logic class in 1883: making lists of “Great Men” (including some women) in the West since the Renaissance, exposing the students to short biographies of each of them, and making each student estimate the relevant greatness on a four-grade scale. Peirce analyzed the results statistically and found that there was a surprising degree of agreement in their judgments, taking that as an argument that even such information—qualitative, imprecise, and based only on a narrow empirical basis—was accessible to scientific analysis to yield stable results. Peirce knew well that his students had similar backgrounds, influencing their choices, but still he found their judgments so concurrent as to surpass even common cultural influences (this claim, of course, could not in itself be directly measured). This chapter of Short’s is an instant classic and convincingly unites a number of curious Peircean activities under the headline of inquiry into inquiry.

Frederik Stjernfelt, “An Empiricism with High Metaphysical Ambitions: On Short’s Charles Peirce and Modern Science”

[skoolz-of-thotz]

[afbr1]

Anyone here familiar with C.S. Peirce?

Specifically his work on semiology and mathematics? I'm trying to learn a bit

[fanthropologists]

The Fanthropologists Episode 25: SILENCE BRAND! An Episode on Tiktok Ads

In this episode, Bridgette and Syd discuss advertisements on Tiktok! They go over the different forms the take, what they signal to the consumer, and what they say about the ways companies try to market to young people. For fun, they touch on a bit of Peircean Semiotics along the way.

Listen to the episode here!

Mentioned beloved Tiktok accounts:

Roll for Sandwich: adventuresinaardia

Tinned Fish Recommendations: daywithmei

Bibliography:

Peirce, C.S., 1931–36. The Collected Papers. Volumes 1–6. Eds. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Cambridge M.A.: Harvard University Press.

As cited by: Atkin, Albert, Spring 2023 Edition. "Peirce’s Theory of Signs", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Eds. Edward N. Zalta & Uri Nodelman. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/peirce-semiotics/.

Becker Digital, 2024. "Gen Z Marketing: What's Trust Got to Do with it?". Becker Digital. https://www.becker-digital.com/blog/gen-z-marketing-trust-factor#:~:text=Gen%20Zers%20differ%20significantly%20from,immune%E2%80%9D%20to%20traditional%20advertising%20methods

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

It is extremely difficult to bring our attention to elements of experience which are continually present. For we have nothing in experience with which to contrast them; and without contrast, they cannot excite our attention... The result is that round-about devices have to be resorted to in order to enable us to perceive what stared us in the face with a glare that once noticed, becomes almost oppressive with its insistency.

Charles Sanders Peirce 

[philosopherking1887]

I don’t read a lot of C.S. Peirce -- I’m a William James girl myself -- but I was just reading a paper in which he was quoted as follows: “We believe the proposition we are ready to act upon. Full belief is willingness to act upon the proposition in vital crises, opinion is willingness to act upon it in relatively insignificant affairs. But pure science has nothing at all to do with action. There is thus no proposition at all in science which answers to the conception of belief.”

WTF? Do you think he’d have changed his tune if confronted with climate change? Was he just saying that bullshit to spite James (at a lecture series that James organized to help Peirce with his dire financial difficulties)?

No wonder Peirce is the favored pragmatist among analytic philosophers. He was a bloodless science-fetishist and also a complete asshole.

[perkwunos]

It’s neat how closely this parallels Peirce’s account of Thirdness. The reference to baking a cake made me think of this passage (CP 1.341-342):

Let us examine the idea of generality. Every cook has in her recipe-book a collection of rules, which she is accustomed to follow. An apple pie is desired. Now, observe that we seldom, probably never, desire a single individual thing. What we want is something which shall produce a certain pleasure of a certain kind. To speak of a single individual pleasure is to use words without meaning. We may have a single experience of pleasure; but the pleasure itself is a quality. Experiences are single; but qualities, however specialized, cannot be enumerated. There are some two dozen kinds of metals well known to me. I remember to have examined lumps of those qualities. But it is only the limitation of experience which attaches that number; there is simply no end to the metallic qualities I can imagine. I can imagine an infinite variety between tin and lead, or between copper and silver, or between iron and nickel, or between magnesium and aluminum. An apple pie, then, is desired -- a good apple pie, made of fresh apples, with a crust moderately light and somewhat short, neither too sweet nor too sour, etc. But it is not any particular apple pie; for it is to be made for the occasion; and the only particularity about it is that it is to be made and eaten today. For that, apples are wanted; and remembering that there is a barrel of apples in the cellar, the cook goes to the cellar and takes the apples that are uppermost and handiest. That is an example of following a general rule. She is directed to take apples. Many times she has seen things which were called apples, and has noticed their common quality. She knows how to find such things now; and as long as they are sound and fine, any apples will do. What she desires is something of a given quality; what she has to take is this or that particular apple. From the nature of things, she cannot take the quality but must take the particular thing. Sensation and volition being affairs of action and reaction relate to particular things. She has seen only particular apples, and can take only particular apples. But desire has nothing to do with particulars; it relates to qualities. Desire is not a reaction with reference to a particular thing; it is an idea about an idea, namely, the idea of how delightful it would be for me, the cook's master, to eat an apple pie. However, what is desired is not a mere unattached quality; what is desired is that the dream of eating an apple pie should be realized in Me; and this Me is an object of experience. So with the cook's desire. She has no particular apple pie she particularly prefers to serve; but she does desire and intend to serve an apple pie to a particular person. When she goes into the cellar for the apples, she takes whatever bowl or basket comes handy, without caring what one, so long as it has a certain size, is clean, and has other qualities, but having once selected it, into that particular bowl she intends to put some apples. She takes any apples that are handy and seem good; but having taken them she means to make a pie of those apples. If she chances to see some others in the kitchen, on her return from the cellar, she will not use them for the pie, unless for some reason she changes her mind. Throughout her whole proceedings she pursues an idea or dream without any particular thisness or thatness -- or, as we say, hecceity -- to it, but this dream she wishes to realize in connection with an object of experience, which as such, does possess hecceity; and since she has to act, and action only relates to this and that, she has to be perpetually making random selections, that is, taking whatever comes handiest.

The dream itself has no prominent thirdness; it is, on the contrary, utterly irresponsible; it is whatever it pleases. The object of experience as a reality is a second. But the desire in seeking to attach the one to the other is a third, or medium.

So it is with any law of nature. Were it but a mere idea unrealized -- and it is of the nature of an idea -- it would be a pure first. The cases to which it applies, are seconds.

Building Ontologies With Basic Formal Ontology

[nellygwyn]

BOOK RECS

Okay, so lots of people wanted this and so, I am compiling a list of my favourite books (both fiction and non-fiction), books that I recommend you read as soon as humanly possible. In the meantime, I’ll be pinning this post to the top of my blog (once I work out how to do that lmao) so it will be accessible for old and new followers. I’m going to order this list thematically, I think, just to keep everything tidy and orderly. Of course, a lot of this list will consist of historical fiction and historical non-fiction because that’s what I read primarily and thus, that’s where my bias is, but I promise to try and spice it up just a little bit. 

Favourite fiction books of all time:

The Mermaid and Mrs Hancock // Imogen Hermes Gowar

Sense and Sensibility // Jane Austen

Slammerkin // Emma Donoghue 

Remarkable Creatures // Tracy Chevalier

Life Mask // Emma Donoghue

His Dark Materials // Philip Pullman (this includes the follow-up series The Book of Dust)

Emma // Jane Austen

The Miniaturist // Jessie Burton

Girl, Woman, Other // Bernadine Evaristo 

Jane Eyre // Charlotte Brontë

Persuasion // Jane Austen

Girl with a Pearl Earring // Tracy Chevalier

The Silent Companions // Laura Purcell

Tess of the d’Urbervilles // Thomas Hardy

Northanger Abbey // Jane Austen

The Chronicles of Narnia // C.S. Lewis

Pride and Prejudice // Jane Austen

Goodnight, Mr Tom // Michelle Magorian

The French Lieutenant’s Woman // John Fowles 

The Butcher’s Hook // Janet Ellis 

Mansfield Park // Jane Austen

The All Souls Trilogy // Deborah Harkness

The Railway Children // Edith Nesbit

Favourite non-fiction books of all time

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman // Robert Massie

Love and Louis XIV: The Women in the Life of the Sun King // Antonia Fraser

Madame de Pompadour // Nancy Mitford

The First Iron Lady: A Life of Caroline of Ansbach // Matthew Dennison 

Black and British: A Forgotten History // David Olusoga

Courtiers: The Secret History of the Georgian Court // Lucy Worsley 

Young and Damned and Fair: The Life of Katherine Howard, the Fifth Wife of Henry VIII // Gareth Russell

King Charles II // Antonia Fraser

Casanova’s Women // Judith Summers

Marie Antoinette: The Journey // Antonia Fraser

Mrs. Jordan’s Profession: The Story of a Great Actress and a Future King // Claire Tomalin

Jane Austen at Home // Lucy Worsley

Mudlarking: Lost and Found on the River Thames // Lara Maiklem

The Last Royal Rebel: The Life and Death of James, Duke of Monmouth // Anna Keay

The Marlboroughs: John and Sarah Churchill // Christopher Hibbert

Nell Gwynn: A Biography // Charles Beauclerk

Jurassic Mary: Mary Anning and the Primeval Monsters // Patricia Pierce

Georgian London: Into the Streets // Lucy Inglis

The Prince Who Would Be King: The Life and Death of Henry Stuart // Sarah Fraser

Wedlock: How Georgian Britain’s Worst Husband Met His Match // Wendy Moore

Dead Famous: An Unexpected History of Celebrity from the Stone Age to the Silver Screen // Greg Jenner

Victorians Undone: Tales of the Flesh in the Age of Decorum // Kathryn Hughes

Crown of Blood: The Deadly Inheritance of Lady Jane Grey // Nicola Tallis

Favourite books about the history of sex and/or sex work

The Origins of Sex: A History of First Sexual Revolution // Faramerz Dabhoiwala 

Erotic Exchanges: The World of Elite Prostitution in Eighteenth-Century Paris // Nina Kushner

Peg Plunkett: Memoirs of a Whore // Julie Peakman

Courtesans // Katie Hickman

The Other Victorians: A Study of Sexuality and Pornography in mid-Nineteenth Century England

Madams, Bawds, and Brothel Keepers // Fergus Linnane

The Secret History of Georgian London: How the Wages of Sin Shaped the Capital // Dan Cruickshank 

A Curious History of Sex // Kate Lister

Sex and Punishment: 4000 Years of Judging Desire // Eric Berkowitz

Queen of the Courtesans: Fanny Murray // Barbara White

Rent Boys: A History from Ancient Times to Present // Michael Hone

Celeste // Roland Perry

Sex and the Gender Revolution // Randolph Trumbach

The Pleasure’s All Mine: A History of Perverse Sex // Julie Peakman

LGBT+ fiction I love*

The Confessions of the Fox // Jordy Rosenberg 

As Meat Loves Salt // Maria Mccann

Bone China // Laura Purcell

Brideshead Revisited // Evelyn Waugh

The Confessions of Frannie Langton // Sara Collins

The Intoxicating Mr Lavelle // Neil Blackmore

Orlando // Virginia Woolf

Tipping the Velvet // Sarah Waters

She Rises // Kate Worsley

The Mercies // Kiran Millwood Hargrave

Oranges are Not the Only Fruit // Jeanette Winterson

Maurice // E.M Forster

Frankisstein: A Love Story // Jeanette Winterson

If I Was Your Girl // Meredith Russo 

The Well of Loneliness // Radclyffe Hall 

* fyi, Life Mask and Girl, Woman, Other are also LGBT+ fiction

Classics I haven’t already mentioned (including children’s classics)

Far From the Madding Crowd // Thomas Hardy 

I Capture the Castle // Dodie Smith 

Vanity Fair // William Makepeace Thackeray 

Wuthering Heights // Emily Brontë

The Blazing World // Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle

Murder on the Orient Express // Agatha Christie 

Great Expectations // Charles Dickens

North and South // Elizabeth Gaskell

Evelina // Frances Burney

Death on the Nile // Agatha Christie

The Monk // Matthew Lewis

Frankenstein // Mary Shelley

Vilette // Charlotte Brontë

The Mayor of Casterbridge // Thomas Hardy

The Tenant of Wildfell Hall // Anne Brontë

Vile Bodies // Evelyn Waugh

Beloved // Toni Morrison 

The Murder of Roger Ackroyd // Agatha Christie

The History of Tom Jones, A Foundling // Henry Fielding

A Room With a View // E.M. Forster

Silas Marner // George Eliot 

Jude the Obscure // Thomas Hardy

My Man Jeeves // P.G. Wodehouse

Lady Audley’s Secret // Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Middlemarch // George Eliot

Little Women // Louisa May Alcott

Children of the New Forest // Frederick Marryat

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings // Maya Angelou 

Rebecca // Daphne du Maurier

Alice in Wonderland // Lewis Carroll

The Wind in the Willows // Kenneth Grahame

Anna Karenina // Leo Tolstoy

Howard’s End // E.M. Forster

The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 // Sue Townsend

Even more fiction recommendations

The Darling Strumpet // Gillian Bagwell

The Wolf Hall trilogy // Hilary Mantel

The Illumination of Ursula Flight // Anne-Marie Crowhurst

Queenie // Candace Carty-Williams

Forever Amber // Kathleen Winsor

The Corset // Laura Purcell

Love in Colour // Bolu Babalola

Artemisia // Alexandra Lapierre

Blackberry and Wild Rose // Sonia Velton

The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories // Angela Carter

The Languedoc trilogy // Kate Mosse

Longbourn // Jo Baker

A Skinful of Shadows // Frances Hardinge

The Black Moth // Georgette Heyer

The Far Pavilions // M.M Kaye

The Essex Serpent // Sarah Perry

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo // Taylor Jenkins Reid

Cavalier Queen // Fiona Mountain 

The Winter Palace // Eva Stachniak

Friday’s Child // Georgette Heyer

Falling Angels // Tracy Chevalier

Little // Edward Carey

Chocolat // Joanne Harris 

The Watchmaker of Filigree Street // Natasha Pulley 

My Sister, the Serial Killer // Oyinkan Braithwaite

The Convenient Marriage // Georgette Heyer

Katie Mulholland // Catherine Cookson

Restoration // Rose Tremain

Meat Market // Juno Dawson

Lady on the Coin // Margaret Campbell Bowes

In the Company of the Courtesan // Sarah Dunant

The Crimson Petal and the White // Michel Faber

A Place of Greater Safety // Hilary Mantel 

The Little Shop of Found Things // Paula Brackston

The Improbability of Love // Hannah Rothschild

The Murder Most Unladylike series // Robin Stevens

Dark Angels // Karleen Koen

The Words in My Hand // Guinevere Glasfurd

Time’s Convert // Deborah Harkness

The Collector // John Fowles

Vivaldi’s Virgins // Barbara Quick

The Foundling // Stacey Halls

The Phantom Tree // Nicola Cornick

The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle // Stuart Turton

Golden Hill // Francis Spufford

Assorted non-fiction not yet mentioned

The Dinosaur Hunters: A True Story of Scientific Rivalry and the Discovery of the Prehistoric World // Deborah Cadbury

The Beauty and the Terror: An Alternative History to the Italian Renaissance // Catherine Fletcher

All the King's Women: Love, Sex, and Politics in the life of Charles II // Derek Jackson

Mozart’s Women // Jane Glover

Scandalous Liaisons: Charles II and His Court // R.E. Pritchard

Matilda: Queen, Empress, Warrior // Catherine Hanley 

Black Tudors // Miranda Kaufman 

To Catch a King: Charles II's Great Escape // Charles Spencer

1666: Plague, War and Hellfire // Rebecca Rideal

Henrietta Maria: Charles I's Indomitable Queen // Alison Plowden

Catherine of Braganza: Charles II's Restoration Queen // Sarah-Beth Watkins

Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses // Helen Rappaport

Aristocrats: Caroline, Emily, Louisa and Sarah Lennox, 1740-1832 // Stella Tillyard 

The Fortunes of Francis Barber: The True Story of the Jamaican Slave who Became Samuel Johnson’s Heir // Michael Bundock

Black London: Life Before Emancipation // Gretchen Gerzina

In These Times: Living in Britain Through Napoleon’s Wars, 1793-1815

The King’s Mistress: Scandal, Intrigue and the True Story of the Woman who Stole the Heart of George I // Claudia Gold

Perdita: The Life of Mary Robinson // Paula Byrne

The Gentleman’s Daughter: Women’s Lives in Georgian England // Amanda Vickery

Terms and Conditions: Life in Girls’ Boarding School, 1939-1979 // Ysenda Maxtone Graham 

Fanny Burney: A Biography // Claire Harman

Aphra Behn: A Secret Life // Janet Todd

The Imperial Harem: Women and the Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire // Leslie Peirce

The Fall of the House of Byron // Emily Brand

The Favourite: Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough // Ophelia Field

Night-Walking: A Nocturnal History of London // Matthew Beaumont, Will Self

Jane Austen: A Life // Claire Tomalin

Beloved Emma: The Life of Emma, Lady Hamilton // Flora Fraser

Sentimental Murder: Love and Madness in the 18th Century // John Brewer

Henrietta Howard: King’s Mistress, Queen’s Servant // Tracy Borman

City of Beasts: How Animals Shaped Georgian London // Tom Almeroth-Williams

Queen Anne: The Politics of Passion // Anne Somerset 

Charlotte Brontë: A Life // Claire Harman 

Goddess: The Secret Lives of Marilyn Monroe // Anthony Summers

Queer City: Gay London from the Romans to the Present Day // Peter Ackroyd 

Elizabeth I and Her Circle // Susan Doran

African Europeans: An Untold History // Olivette Otele 

Young Romantics: The Shelleys, Byron, and Other Tangled Lives // Daisy Hay

How to Create the Perfect Wife // Wendy Moore

The Sphinx: The Life of Gladys Deacon, Duchess of Marlborough // Hugo Vickers

The Life and Death of Anne Boleyn // Eric Ives

Dancing in the Streets: A History of Collective Joy // Barbara Ehrenreich

A is for Arsenic: The Poisons of Agatha Christie // Kathryn Harkup 

Mistresses: Sex and Scandal at the Court of Charles II // Linda Porter

Female Husbands: A Trans History // Jen Manion

Ladies in Waiting: From the Tudors to the Present Day // Anne Somerset

Ghostland: In Search of a Haunted Country // Edward Parnell 

A Cheesemonger’s History of the British Isles // Ned Palmer

The Butchering Art: Joseph Lister’s Quest to Transform the Grisly World of Victorian Medicine // Lindsey Fitzharris

Medieval Woman: Village Life in the Middle Ages // Ann Baer

The Husband Hunters: Social Climbing in London and New York // Anne de Courcy

The Voices of Nîmes: Women, Sex, and Marriage in Reformation Languedoc // Suzannah Lipscomb

The Daughters of the Winter Queen // Nancy Goldstone

Mad and Bad: Real Heroines of the Regency // Bea Koch

Bess of Hardwick // Mary S. Lovell

The Royal Art of Poison // Eleanor Herman 

The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte, and the Hanoverians // Janice Hadlow

Palaces of Pleasure: From Music Halls to the Seaside to Football; How the Victorians Invented Mass Entertainment // Lee Jackson

Favourite books about current social/political issues (?? for lack of a better term)

Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power // Lola Olufemi

Revolting Prostitutes: The Fight for Sex Worker Rights // Molly Smith, Juno Mac

Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race // Reni Eddo-Lodge

Trans Britain: Our Journey from the Shadows // Christine Burns

Me, Not You: The Trouble with Mainstream Feminism // Alison Phipps

Trans Like Me: A Journey For All Of Us // C.N Lester

Brit(Ish): On Race, Identity, and Belonging // Afua Hirsch 

The Brutish Museums: The Benin Bronzes, Colonial Violence, and Cultural Restitution // Dan Hicks

Things No One Will Tell Fat Girls: A Handbook for Unapologetic Living // Jes M. Baker

Hood Feminism: Notes from the Women White Feminists Forgot // Mikki Kendall

Denial: Holocaust History on Trial // Deborah Lipstadt

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape // Jessica Valenti, Jaclyn Friedman

Don’t Touch My Hair // Emma Dabiri

Sister Outsider // Audre Lorde 

Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen // Amrou Al-Kadhi

Trans Power // Juno Roche

Breathe: A Letter to My Sons // Imani Perry

The Windrush Betrayal: Exposing the Hostile Environment // Amelia Gentleman

Happy Fat: Taking Up Space in a World That Wants to Shrink You // Sofie Hagen

Diaries, memoirs & letters

The Diary of a Young Girl // Anne Frank

Renia’s Diary: A Young Girl’s Life in the Shadow of the Holocaust // Renia Spiegel 

Writing Home // Alan Bennett

The Diary of Samuel Pepys // Samuel Pepys

Histoire de Ma Vie // Giacomo Casanova

Toast: The Story of a Boy’s Hunger // Nigel Slater

London Journal, 1762-1763 // James Boswell

The Diary of a Bookseller // Shaun Blythell 

Jane Austen’s Letters // edited by Deidre la Faye

H is for Hawk // Helen Mcdonald 

The Salt Path // Raynor Winn

The Glitter and the Gold // Consuelo Vanderbilt, Duchess of Marlborough

Journals and Letters // Fanny Burney

Educated // Tara Westover

Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading // Lucy Mangan

Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? // Jeanette Winterson

A Dutiful Boy // Mohsin Zaidi

Secrets and Lies: The Trials of Christine Keeler // Christine Keeler

800 Years of Women’s Letters // edited by Olga Kenyon

Istanbul // Orhan Pamuk

Henry and June // Anaïs Nin

Historical romance (this is a short list because I’m still fairly new to this genre)

The Bridgerton series // Julia Quinn

One Good Earl Deserves a Lover // Sarah Mclean

Nine Rules to Break When Romancing a Rake // Sarah Mclean

The Lady’s Guide to Celestial Mechanics // Olivia Waite

That Could Be Enough // Alyssa Cole

Unveiled // Courtney Milan

The Craft of Love // EE Ottoman

The Maiden Lane series // Elizabeth Hoyt

An Extraordinary Union // Alyssa Cole

Slightly Dangerous // Mary Balogh

Dangerous Alliance: An Austentacious Romance // Jennieke Cohen

A Fashionable Indulgence // KJ Charles

[thammit]

The starting point for our line-up is quite playful: a tweet posted by David Graeber in November 2019 in which he rated his favourite philosophers on a scale of 0-5. We are planning to have a public lecture for each of the philosophers ranked below. 

Whitehead 4
C.S. Peirce 3
Bhaskar 5
M.B. Kacem 4
Spinoza 5
Diogenes 3.2

[azspot]

This hardwiring has hardly seemed a limitation. In the late 19th century, the American philosopher C.S. Peirce deduced that AND-OR-NOT could be used to compute the essential truth of anything: “mathematics, ethics, metaphysics, psychology, phonetics, optics, chemistry, comparative anatomy, astronomy, gravitation, thermodynamics, economics, the history of science, whist, men and women, wine, meteorology.” And in our own time, Peirce’s deduction has been bolstered by the advent of machine learning. Machine learning marshals the ALU’s logic gates to perform the most astonishing feats of artificial intelligence, enabling Google’s DeepMind, IBM’s Watson, Apple’s Siri, Baidu’s PaddlePaddle, and Amazon’s Web Services to reckon a person’s odds of getting sick, alert companies to possible frauds, winnow out spam, become a whiz at multiplayer video games, and estimate the likelihood that you’d like to purchase something you don’t even know exists.

[perkwunos]

Logic, from logos, meaning word and reason, embodies the Greek notion that reasoning cannot be done without language. Reason, from the Latin ratio, originally meaning an account, implies that reasoning is an affair of computation, requiring, not words, but some kind of diagram, abacus, or figures. Modern formal logic, especially the logic of relatives, shows the Greek view to be substantially wrong, the Roman view substantially right. Words, though doubtless necessary to developed thought, play but a secondary role in the process; while the diagram, or icon, capable of being manipulated and experimented upon, is all-important. Diagrams have constantly been used in logic, from the time of Aristotle; and no difficult reasoning can be performed without them.

C.S. Peirce, Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Vol. 8

[gillesmalapert]

“There is a kink in my damned brain that prevents me from thinking as other people think.”

– C.S. Peirce

[seeprogramme]

Marcos Pereira Barretto

Scientific Entrepreneurship

We approach entrepreneurship as Science. We did not find this foundation in the classical scientific methods of deduction and induction. The deductive method moves from a general statement or hypothesis to particular cases. The inductive method derives general conclusions from the study of specific cases.

Did you see the word “new” in either of the last two sentences? No!

Entrepreneurship and innovation have to do with iterative processes whose conclusions emerge from cycles of testing and learning. We found in the the abductive method developed by C.S. Peirce, a framework to anchor the construction of our methodology. Like Peirce, we believe there are no primordial certainties but only hypotheses to be tested experimentally. Also like Peirce, we believe the chain of hypotheses evolves as the experiments proceed and hence is not born fixed, immutable or predetermined. The hypothesis and the chain of experiments change as the experiments go on. New ideas flow as a possible and welcome result of the process.

Change is on the nature of things.

Spanish poet Antonio Machado* wrote:

Wanderer, your footsteps are

the road, and nothing more;

wanderer, there is no road, the road is made by walking.

(Caminante, no hay camino  Se hace camino al andar)

Walking makes the road, and turning to look behind you see the path that you will never tread again Wanderer, there is no road,  only foam trails on the sea

(from my book “Shell for early stage startups”)

[thethoughtnetwork]

Bibliography

Web Sources

Doruff, S. (2008) Diagrammatic Praxis https://www.ahk.nl/fileadmin/download/ahk/Lectoraten/doruff-diagrammatic-praxis.pdf [19 October 2019]

Kenning, D. (2012) Metallurgy of the Subject https://www.academia.edu/2269562/Metallurgy_of_the_Subject[14th May 2019]

Montgomery, N. (2019) Summary: Vibrant Matter by Jane Bennetthttps://cultivatingalternatives.com/2013/11/28/summary-vibrant-matter-by-jane-bennett/ [18th October 2019]

Shin, S. Lemon, O. Mumma, J. (2018) Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Diagrams https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/diagrams/ [11th November 2019]

Latour, B. (2014) Opening Plenary, Digital Humanities 2014 (DH2014), available from http://dh2014.org/videos/opening-night-bruno-latour/

Journal and Article Sources

Ansell-Pearson, K. (2005) The Reality of the Virtual: Bergson and Deleuze MLN 120 (5) [online] Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3840700

Dwiartama, A. Rosin, C. (2014) Exploring Agency Beyond Humans: The Compatibility of Actor Network Theory (ANT) and Resilience Thinking Ecology and Society 19 [online] Available at: https://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol19/iss3/art28/

Frichot, H. (2014) On the becoming-indiscernible of the diagram in societies of control Journal of Space Syntax5 (1) 1-14 [online] Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/a54c/8de58820694a63c06602db665a4ef9cb86f9.pdf

Hanley, C. (2019) Thinking with Deleuze and Guattari: An Exploration of Writing as Assemblage Educational Philosophy and Theory 51 (4) 413-423 [online] Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/00131857.2018.1472574

Johnston, J. (1999) Mechanic Vision Critical Enquiry 26 (1) 27-48 [online] Available at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1344144?seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents

O’Sullivan, S. (2005) Four Moments/Movements for an Expanded Art Practice (following Deleuze, following Spinoza) Issues in Contemporary Aesthetics 67-69 [online] Available at: https://www.simonosullivan.net/art-writings/four-moments.pdf

Rodda, M. (2014) The Diagrammatic spectator Ephemera theory & politics in organization 14 (2), 221-244 [online] Available at: http://www.ephemerajournal.org/contribution/diagrammatic-spectator

Sayes, E. (2013) Actor-Network Theory and methodology: just what does it mean to say that nonhumans have agency? Social Studies of Science 44 [online] Available at: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0306312713511867

Teyssot, G. (2012) The Diagram as Abstract Machine V!RUS 5 [online] Available at: https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/833c/71403c79675fd83be6785ca9195c87aca447.pdf

Vellodi, K. (2014) Diagrammatic Thought: Two Forms of Constructivism in C.S Peirce and Gilles Deleuze Parrhesia 19 79-95 [online] Available at: http://parrhesiajournal.org/parrhesia19/parrhesia19_vellodi.pdf [02 December 2019

Books

Bennett, J. (2010) Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things London: Duke University Press

Cixous, H. (1993) Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. New York: Columbia University Press.

Deleuze, G. (1988) Foucault London: Athlone

Deleuze, G. Guattari, F. (1987) A Thousand Plateaus London: University of Minnesota Press

O’Sullivan, S. (2016) On the Diagram (and the Practice of Diagrammatics) New York: Dominque Levy

O’Sullivan, S. Morgan, A. (ed) (2017) The Finite-Infinite Relation: A Conversation with Simon O’SullivanNewcastle: Bigg Books

Latour, B. (1972) Network: A Concept, Not a Thing Out There Networks: Documents of Contemporary ArtLondon: MIT Press

Massumi, B. (2011) Semblance and Event: Activist Philosophy and the Occurent Arts. Cambridge: MIT Press

Dewey, J. (1934) Art As Experience. New York: The Berkley Publishing Group

Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the social: An introduction to actor-network-theory. Oxford: Oxford University Press

Ambrožič, M. & Vettese, A. (2013) Art as Thinking Process: Visual forms of Knowledge Production. New York, Sternberg Press

Saper, C. (2014) Networked Art Networks: Documents of Contemporary Art London: MIT Press.

Simondon, G. (1958) On the Mode of Existence of the Technical Object. Paris: Aubier.

Krysa, J. (2006) Curating Immateriality: The Work of the Curator in the Age of Network Systems. Poland: LEGA.

Lecture Notes

Bennett, J. (2011) Powers of the Hoard: Artistry and Agency in a World of Vibrant Matter Lecture notes. Vera List Center for Art and Politics, delivered 13th September 2011. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q607Ni23QjA

Kenning, D. (2019) Exploratory Diagrams Lecture notes. Diagramming Research, Plymouth University, Delivered 13th May 2019.

Rosser, L. 2019. Diagrammatic Misadventures Lecture notes. University of Plymouth, Delivered: Wednesday 13th March 2019.

[the-ephemeral-ethereal]

Reality depends on the ultimate decision of the community.

from Some Consequences of Four Incapacities by C.S. Peirce

[architecture-ljmu]

Luminary Lecture Series

SHARON MORRIS

Poet and Artist

Wed 12 Feb at 5 – 6.30 pm Auditorium (lower ground) LSAD, LJMU *             Booking not required. Starts with refreshments at 5 pm.

The Moon is Shining on My Mother: words and images

Sharon Morris will present the relationship between words and images in her artworks including photography, video, film, installation and live performance-readings, and her poetry collections False Spring, 2007, and Gospel Oak, 2013 published by Enitharmon Press.  Her metaphorical and symbolic images address the theme of place, for example the site of Gospel Oak as a discursive relation between Hampstead Heath and the City of London.  Her live performance-readings include ‘For the Oak’, e-and-eye, Tate Modern; PolyPly; and Crazy Wisdom, King’s Place, London; Camden Arts Centre, and Rowing Gallery.  Her artists’ book, The Moon is Shining on My Mother, Enitharmon Editions, 2017, commissioned and exhibited by Glynn Vivian Art Gallery, is in collections including the V&A; British Library; National Poetry Library; Stanford University; National Library of Wales.  Set in west Wales, this work looks to geology, archaeology, myth and histories, as a way of understanding the contemporary. The work reflects her interest in macaronic forms, that is the juxtaposition of languages, in this case English and Welsh in relation to the photographic image.

 Using the philosophy of C.S. Peirce and psychoanalytic theory her critical writings include: 'Peirce and the Image: the Work of Art and the Sign', Università degli Studi di Urbino, 2007; 'Bild, Imagismus und das Kunstwerk', in Bilder BeSchreiben, Kassel University Press, 2009; 'Open the Page', Inside the View: Helen Sear.  Ffotogallery, Wales, 2012; ‘The Contemporary Macaronic Poem: English and Welsh, the visual and the verbal’ in Critical Creativity: Artistic Form and Cultural Agency in Comparative Literature, forthcoming 2020. Sharon Morris is a Professor at UCL Slade School of Fine Art.