Abstract
Since I intend to argue analogically, through difference and similarity, from Peirce’s idea of scientific creativity to his idea of artistic creativity, it is important that I begin with a thorough description of Peircean scientific creativity. That Peirce believed in scientific creativity seems indisputable; indeed, at times it seemed the idea that most held his attention in studying the ways of scientific inquiry. In 1896 Peirce wrote the following note:
When a man desires ardently to know the truth, his first effort will be to imagine what that truth can be He cannot prosecute his pursuit long without finding that imagination unbridled is sure to carry him off the track. Yet nevertheless, it remains true that there is, after all, nothing but imagination that can ever supply him an inkling of the truth. He can stare stupidly at phenomena; but in the absence of imagination they will not connect themselves together in any rational way. Just as for Peter Bell a cowslip was nothing but a cowslip, so for thousands of men a falling apple was nothing but a falling apple; and to compare it to the moon would by them be deemed ‘fanciful’ (1.46).
Logic will not undertake to inform you what kind of experiments you ought to make in order to best determine the acceleration of gravity, or the value of the Ohm; but it will tell you how to proceed to form a plan of experimentation (7.59).
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Notes
William Davis, Peirce’s Epistemology ( The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1972 ), p. 22.
Ross translates this as “reduction.” See W. D. Ross, The Works of Aristotle (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1963), vol. 1.
Ross, Aristoteles: Prior and Posterior Analytics ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965 ), p. 490.
K.T. Fann, Peirce’s Theory of Abduction ( The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1970 ).
Fann, p. 32. Arthur Burks, “Peirce’s Theory of Abduction,” Philosophy of Science, 13 (1946), p. 303.
See James K. Feibleman, An Introduction to the Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce ( Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Press, 1969 ), p. 322.
Francis E. Reilly, Charles Peirce’s Theory of Scientific Method ( New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1970 ), pp. 52–53.
This example, as others Peirce uses, involves some difficulty. If gravity is present in the universe in 1600, it should also be in 1905. This is understandable if “Einsteinian gravity” incorporates “Newtonian gravity” as a special case. If not, however, then Peirce would have to say that the law, as a concept, was implicit in the history of ideas and not that gravity, as a real force, was present in nature.
Nicholas Rescher provides a schematism which nicely describes Reilly’s view. However, his discussion of the issue makes the necessary distinctions and thus overcomes the problem of the schematism itself. What the source of his model is is not clear. Rescher, Peirce’s Philosophy of Science (Notre Dame, Indiana: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1978 ), p. 41.
Davis, p. 25. See Justus Buchler, Charles Peirce’s Empiricism ( New York: Octagon Press, 1966 ).
Karl Popper, Conjectures and Refutations ( New York: Harper and Row, 1965 ), pp. 43–46.
Popper, The Logic of Discovery ( New York: Harper and Row, 1968 ), p. 31.
Harry Frankfurt, “Peirce’s Notion of Abduction,” The Journal of Philosophy, 55 (1958), p. 594.
In 1893 Peirce gave an account of inference in which he argued that an inference may have only one premiss. If one wants to argue that the interpretation we are examining reduces abduction to one premiss, a view N.R. Hanson suggests, such a claim need not conflict with the belief that abduction is still an inference (2.442). Hanson, “Notes Toward a Logic of Discovery,” in Perspectives on Peirce, ed. Richard Bernstein (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1965 ).
Joseph Esposito, Evolutionary Metaphysics ( Athens, Ohio: Ohio Univ. Press, 1980 ), p. 195.
Peter Skagestaad, The Road to Inquiry ( New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1981 ), p. 184.
Thomas Goudge, The Thought of C.S. Peirce ( Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1950 ), p. 196.
Carl Hausman, “Eros and Agape in Creative Evolution: A Peircean Insight,” Process Studies, 4 (1974), pp. 11–25.
To be sure, the historical context of all creative abductions is important. History of science suggests that Newton’s concept of gravity evolves from related predecessors. Nevertheless, Newton is generally held as founder of the specific theory of gravity, and even if it were argued that someone else is the source, the important point of the creation of a new idea might still obtain. A similar problem attends to attributing Darwin with the discovery of biological evolution.
Of course, Peirce did extensive work on the nature of induction and this should not be overlooked in any comprehensive study of his philosophy of science.
“Quasi-experimentation,” for Peirce, consisted of “the entire operation of producing or searching out a state of things to which the conditional predictions deduced from hypotheses shall be applicable and of noting how far the prediction is fulfilled” (7.115, n. 27).
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© 1987 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Anderson, D.R. (1987). Scientific Creativity. In: Creativity and the Philosophy of C.S. Peirce. Martinus Nijhoff Philosophy Library, vol 27. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7760-1_2
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