Talk:Charles Sanders Peirce/Archive 5

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Jon Awbrey's edits

Why were they rejected? Ceebaby (talk) 10:47, 9 February 2012 (UTC)

Suggested merge of Charles Sanders Peirce with Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce

Oppose merge. The two articles are not duplicates even though they are about the same person. The article "Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce," about biographical issues relating to his adoption of the middle name "Santiago," is a spin-off from "Charles Sanders Peirce" because of length. Once begun, the "Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce" article increased in its own length. There are already a number of C. S. Peirce spin-off articles; there is yet another biographical spin-off, Juliette Peirce, who is notable only for her being Charles's second wife and especially for the troubles that his traveling with Juliette while separated from his first wife and his marrying Juliette when he did caused in his professional life. Spin-off articles are allowed and even encouraged at Wikipedia. See the Bertrand Russell article. The Tetrast (talk) 16:57, 8 March 2012 (UTC).

  • redirect Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce is looking like a WP:POVFORK. We don't need a whole article discussing whether he chose a particular name or not, a paragraph is about the right length and indeed we have one, so there is nothing to merge.--Salix (talk): 17:10, 8 March 2012 (UTC)
    • It is not a POV fork since, as can be seen upon actually examining it, it does not evade neutrality guidelines, nor is it redundant. It is an allowed spinout, see Wikipedia:POVFORK#Article_spinouts:_.22Summary_style.22_articles. It is not about "whether he chose a particular name or not." It is about when and why he took the name, which numerous scholars such as John Deely, Peirce's biographer Joseph Brent, and James Hoopes took as throwing significant light on his relations with William James. It is about a long-persisting and widespread error in Peirce scholarship which was discovered by Joseph M. Ransdell of Texas Tech, recounted by Kenneth Laine Ketner of Texas Tech, in His Glassy Essence, and also pursued by Jaime Nubiola, head of the Grupo de Estudios Peirceanos at University of Navarra, Spain. The subject continually interests scholars and readers because of the unresolved questions. The information in the article is not all in one place anywhere else on the Internet or in a single article or book. The Tetrast (talk) 17:55, 8 March 2012 (UTC).
      I should add that the article expands beyond the discussion merely of the name "Santiago." It becomes also a biographical review, energized by the name issue, of the acts of friendship, alliance, gratitude, and opposition between Peirce and James. The Tetrast (talk) 18:30, 8 March 2012 (UTC).
      I endorse Tetrast's explanation of the use of a spin-off article on biographical question of little relevance to Peirce's philosophical, scientific, logical, and mathematical contributions.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:52, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

Oppose -At first glance, these appeared to me to be duplicate articles, and my original thinking was that rather than merging, one should be deleted. After a more thorough examination, these appear to be seperate noteworthy topics, each deserving of its own article. Joefromrandb (talk) 21:27, 21 March 2012 (UTC)

  • oppose a reasonable and notable spinnoff article.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 21:30, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
  • Oppose per The Tetrast and Maunus.  Kiefer.Wolfowitz 21:52, 21 March 2012 (UTC)
I'm gratified by the support for the separate CSSP article. I don't know the template removal policy, but see no reason to remove the merge template during the next few weeks. Say, Kiefer, you surely noticed here and in other wikis the removal of the claim about Peirce's introduction of logistic regression. The remover's remarks are still on the talk page. I googled around for some support of the claim but found none. In the Peirce text that you cited elsewhere, I didn't find the phrase "logistic regression," and I lack the statistics background to recognize it described in other terms. Is the cause lost? The Tetrast (talk) 05:32, 23 March 2012 (UTC).
  • Oppose - I added a hat note and edited the lead to better identify the topic as Peirce's adopted middle name. I think it's a valid stand-alone topic. Jojalozzo 01:14, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Well, we've given it plenty of time. I propose removal of the merge template. If nobody responds during the next week or so, I'll just remove it. The Tetrast (talk) 04:31, 2 May 2012 (UTC).

No further comment having arrived in the last 12 days, I've gone and done it, removed the merge template. The Tetrast (talk) 05:02, 14 May 2012 (UTC).

Truncation of Peirce infobox template - why not just revert?

Thumperward has revised the whole infobox template system for the Peirce articles. This was completely unnecessary since Template:C. S. Peirce articles was set up so that any part of it could be omitted for a given article by choosing parameters. One consequence has been the omission of the abbreviations key, which had been helpfully located in the info box. Please discuss here why I shouldn't just put the whole thing back the way it was. The Tetrast (talk) 02:54, 31 May 2012 (UTC). Okay, the abbreviations are there but should be unhidden and they look like a mess. I am VERY inclined to just put everything back the way it was. The Tetrast (talk) 02:58, 31 May 2012 (UTC).

Revert and then discuss at Template talk:C. S. Peirce articles, per WP:BRD. Jojalozzo 11:35, 31 May 2012 (UTC)
It would require reversions of considerable changes here at the main Peirce article as well as at that Peirce template, and also some lesser reversions at other Peirce articles. So the discussion could properly take place either here at the main Peirce article's talk page, or at the template's talk page. Therefore the remaining question is, where will the most editors see it? That would be here, at the main Peirce article's talk page. Notices and links to the discussion here should be placed at that template's talk page if not in all the Peirce articles where some reversion might be needed (Thumperward will have already seen it here since he made changes to the main Peirce article here in connection with the changes at the template; otherwise I would have already placed a notice at the template's talk page). Frankly, though, right now I lack the time and energy, though I may neaten up the template's abbreviation key in the meantime. The Tetrast (talk) 01:42, 3 June 2012 (UTC). Inserted a sentence. The Tetrast (talk) 01:45, 3 June 2012 (UTC).
I would still argue for discussing the changes on the template's talk page since that's the core of the issue, with links to it on talk pages of any article that will be impacted. However, this is question is moot if there's no one to do it. Jojalozzo 20:33, 3 June 2012 (UTC)
I could revert but I'm not prepared right now to get into a discussion energized by the urgent feeling spurred by reversions. I was hoping that Thumperward would discuss it unprompted by reversions. I'll get to it though. As for the discussion's location, hardly anybody watch-lists that template, so I'd prefer it here at the main Peirce wiki, with update notifications inclusively reaching the much larger audience of editors who have watch-listed the main Peirce wiki, many of whom may look at their watchlists only once a week or less and thus may never notice the discussion. The Tetrast (talk) 06:52, 5 June 2012 (UTC)

One easy way to ensure that I've seen a discussion is to drop me a note about it. It's not guaranteed that I'll pick up on something on talk if I'm not notified. The question should really be not "why shouldn't I revert" but "what's wrong with the new code". The previous system was vastly overengineered, containing a large amount of conditional support for situations which happened on only one article (originally a pair, but Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce is not a biography and thus shouldn't have a biographical infobox). It is vastly preferable that we not have templates which are impossible for inexpert readers (or the authors of said templates) to edit, which was the case there. The code is now only ~30% of its original size and is both consistent with other such sidebars and more maintainable, based as it is on the prevailing meta-template system under which the majority of such templates now operate.

If there's anything that really needs further discussion IMO, it's the inclusion of an abbreviations section in the template. Deployed as it is on less than a dozen pages, it may be best simply expanding any uses of these abbreviations in the references where they're used. There are no other examples of citations being abbreviated using a key located in a navigation template to my knowledge. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:53, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

Regarding the overengineeredness of the previous system, good point, I have to agree with that, I overdid it in learning how to do it.
As to the abbreviations, special problems require special solutions. The expansion of abbreviations in the references would reduce readability and add significantly to the KB of the article. Abbreviations have been used in this article for many years, since well before I started editing it, and there are reasons. They are a convenience special to Peirce's vast corpus of writings, the need for multitudinous references, and the way in which relevant text may be scattered through the publications. The abbreviations CP, W, EP are so standard and widespread in Peirce literature that any student of Peirce picks them up and they are useful to know. The use of the same key via a template across articles assures consistency into the future. The placement of the abbreviation key is in order that readers will see it and know where it is at the start. I have limited the number of abbreviations to five, those of the titles of the most referenced publications in the article (an abbreviation for The New Elements of Mathematics used to be included).
Unfortunately I'm still occupied with other things and will be able to be more engaged in a week or so. The Tetrast (talk) 19:29, 10 June 2012 (UTC).
I should add that the "Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce" article is in fact biographical and is not merely the story of his name. See right above this section on this talk page the section "Suggested merge of Charles Sanders Peirce with Charles Santiago Sanders Peirce". The Tetrast (talk) 19:52, 10 June 2012 (UTC).
My impression of the merge discussion was that it was closed without consensus to merge precisely because the subjects are different (one is a biography, while the other uses as its subject a persona or pseudonym). While the article in question may be biographical (it is about Peirce's life), it is not a biography as such and there is therefore no need to duplicate the infobox there. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:32, 11 June 2012 (UTC)

His length of the meter suggestion

"Also in 1877, he proposed measuring the meter as so many wavelengths of light of a certain frequency,[27] the kind of definition employed from 1860 to 1883"

Something is wrong with this... as written one has to assume that his suggestion was made during a time when that is what was already done. (I.E. 1877 is between 1860 and 1883) I don't know the facts to know what part of the sentence needs correcting, but something is obviously wrong here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 155.98.206.65 (talk) 20:03, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Racism

I think it is pretty well known that Charles Sanders Peirce was a racist [1], believing in the inferiority of coloured people and Irish. This was a belief, he shared with many of his contemporaries and possibly a cause for his work in logic. Why is that not mentioned at all ? Leaving the less pleasant aspects of a great man out creates more of hagiography than a biography. ClausVind (talk) 10:32, 21 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your WP:BRD trigger Bold, which I have duly Reverted, and now Discuss.
His Boston Brahmin family favored the Confederacy during the Civil War, and you could buy your way out of the draft at the time, but the immigrant Irish underclasses couldn't.
I don't understand why you re-phrased the 'coloured and Irish' to 'black' in your series of edits. Is this to make your contribution acceptable?
Not at all, but in fairness I couldn't document that fact about the Irish - his father, though, apparently believd the Irish were inferior ("Charles Sanders Peirce, a life" p.34, Joseph Brent (Indiana Univ.Press 1993) ClausVind (talk) 13:27, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Do you have a citation for the logic motivation? Perhaps a quotation? I don't understand the connection. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 11:33, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
I will find the appropriate page number and citation in "the Metaphyiscal Club" and add it tomorrow (I haven't got it handy at my office), then I will "unrevert" the page ClausVind (talk) 13:27, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
There is Help:Wiki_markup fwiw. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 14:36, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. was apparently a member of The Metaphysical Club and a Civil War veteran ("Our hearts were touched with fire."). How might this have squared with any Confederate sympathizers in the club? --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 18:34, 21 December 2014 (UTC)
ClausVind, and anonymous, thank you for your contributions. I find that the syllogism calls into question non-intuitionistic logic; Peirce's law does not hold for intuitionistic or constructivist logic. Thus there are some parts of classical logic which do not apply; i.e., intuitionistic logic is more usable, for me. Intuitionist or constructivist logic are the basis for computer science, especially for type theory. I do not think I am alone. For me, it does not follow that Peirce was racist; another formulation might be that he learned to be circumspect. Another way to state what I just said is that 'equality is constructed.', or that 'system creates reality' (I would have to Google those statements to get their sources). --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 01:18, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "The Metaphysical Club " by Louis Menand (Farrar, Strauss and Girous, 2000)

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C. S. Peirce writing on mechanics

I just bought a copy of Science of Mechanics by Ernst Mach, 2nd English edition 1902, and the translator, Thomas J. McCormack notes that Peirce rewrote Section 8 of the chapter on Units and Measures. Apparently the previous edition included the units used in Germany, which were not common to the USA. 2601:280:C480:7AB0:6CEC:1D92:559C:CE3C (talk) 18:36, 29 August 2017 (UTC) D. Needham

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Employed at Harvard or not?

The article claims: "This opinion proved fateful, because Eliot, while President of Harvard 1869–1909 — a period encompassing nearly all of Peirce's working life — repeatedly vetoed Harvard's employing Peirce in any capacity."

But a little while later, it says that Peirce *was* employed at Harvard! GeneCallahan (talk) 21:34, 12 July 2018 (UTC)

A racist example, but it is an example of a logically incorrect reasoning

The text cited:

All Men are equal in their political rights.
Negroes are Men.
Therefore, negroes are equal in political rights to whites.

(See: Peirce's law#Other proofs of Peirce's law)

The problem of that example is not the conclusion that negroes are equal in political rights to whites. but the way in which it relates with the premises.

That example has a racist language, and Pierce may have been racist, but Pierce also noted that the classical example:

All Men are mortal.
Socrates is a Man.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

with the same structure of the racist one, is wrong, due to it's form, the syntactic structure of the example. The reason is that the conclusion is already contained in the first quantified statement. I don't have this example fresh enough to explain it better now, but it is a fact that he developed a different logic that excluded that kind of examples, due to its form, not the semantic (meaning) content.

I do not know his life enough to assert if he was or not a racist, although the language in that example points to that, it is (formally) true that the structure of such inference is wrong.

I have not read his work directly, I only know about it in some books related to the field of Knowledge Base Systems. Where he is also credited as the author of the logical notation that we use now.

It is hard for me to believe that he was racist, but being a bright logician is not a warranty of being ethical. Other example is Gentzen who had correspondence with Fraenkel in Israel but at the same time was an enthusiast Nazi. He died killed for that reason at the end of the war. Frege also was racist. Logic do not blind against racism, but empower the ambitious slavers in their sinister propaganda.

I personally avoid to cite such people, first because they don't deserve it, and because I can't believe that they were honest enough to not take others work without credit. At least with the work of Gentzen. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2806:107E:C:587:218:DEFF:FE2B:1215 (talk) 04:59, 16 April 2019 (UTC)

Why has this section been added? Are you going to put a 'racist' section in every single wikipedia article of every single figure from history? Maybe Caesar was racist? Maybe Genghis Kahn was racist? Maybe Plato was racist? To what end? How does putting this section in here help anybody understand the reasons why CS Peirce is one of the greatest thinkers in the United States' history? Pretty much everybody from his time, including Northerners, had a dim view of other races. Everybody knows this, and had you lived then, you would've been a racist too. Having a number of standard views of his time is exactly the thing that makes Peirce generic, and therefore is not noteworthy. This kind of stuff belongs in a general article about the era. It seems to me, all you are doing is asserting your own moral superiority over the past, wasting everybody's time. Consider deleting this section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.184.238.250 (talk) 23:01, 21 July 2020 (UTC)

How many racist bohemians do you know?

I agree with the previous poster that there must be some kind of agenda behind any 'racism' references being included in Wikipedia articles about Charles S. Peirce. I have read everything I can get my hands on about him and his writings, and it is my perspective that he was a white man living in a culture and time that clearly did not align with his brilliance and insight. I have no doubt that he was not understood, and I clearly see that continuing to this day. In his writings, I have picked up on his wit, and his outwardly frustrated but inwardly gentle tones. He described himself as a 'bohemian', and his reclusive nature also speaks to his difficulty fitting in with mainstream culture. As was often the case with many prominent men of his time, I see no sign of him flaunting exceptionalism. On the contrary, he struggled with the socially accepted demands of his day. He used examples in his writings and teaching that he felt would connect with the audience of the time, and using that example of poor logic was most likely meant to connect with some of the thinking of the time, and to point out the flaws in the syntactic structure. Anyone who has REALLY studied Peirce knows that there is a nominalist agenda to discredit his brilliance and legacy, but it's important to remember that he was a human being, and I can only imagine how difficult it must have been for him to be so unique. Take the letter to his mother, for example. ..[1] ... He was traveling to many different countries alone, and commenting on the things he had seen and experienced. This was the perfect opportunity for his true nature to express itself. If he were racist, one would expect to read judgmental and criticizing comments about skin color, but that was not the case. He was excited and awestruck, clearly a young man who wanted to understand the intricacies of life and all of the diversity that comes with it. Honestly, I am quite offended by the fact that nominalists persist in wanting that reference to racism in online articles and papers about Charles S. Peirce. Synechist1 (talk) 14:35, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ https://www.unav.es/gep/Chambery16.11.70En.html
User:The Tetrast was heavily involved with the Peirce articles until he was called to work on the Peirce society website. I'm pretty sure he would have stood up for Peirce. Tetrast occasionally returns to the encyclopedia. You might talk with him then. --Ancheta Wis   (talk | contribs) 21:36, 20 April 2021 (UTC)

Sun-Joo Shin

This article has an illustration about "Adding and Article to Wikipedia". This reminded me that there should be an article for Sun-Joo Shin, who is mentioned in this article on Peirce. ---Dagme (talk) 17:50, 13 January 2022 (UTC)

I started a draft for her: Draft:Sun-Joo Shin Thriley (talk) 20:34, 13 January 2022 (UTC)
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