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RADICAL_MINUS

Gaillie, writing about Peirce:

    "... Peirce criticizes Berkeley's opinion that
    the only way of deciding what distinctive
    meaning-- if any-- an abstract term or formula
    possesses, is to ask: Can we frame an idea (by
    which Berkeley seems always to have meant an
    image of mental picture) corresponding to it?  If
    we cannon, Berkeley maintained, then the term or
    formula in question is without meaning, and
    whatever usefulness it may appear to possess is
    spurious."

    "Peirce counter-argues against this view by
    pointing out that if it had '... prevailed in
    mathematics (and Berkeley was equally strenuous
    in advocating it there), and if everything about
    negative quantities, the square root of minus            I_SQUARE
    terms, and infinitesimals had been excluded from
    the subject on the ground that we can form no
    idea of such things, the science would have been
    simplified no doubt, simplified by never
    advancing to more difficult matters.' "

                 W.B. Gallie,
                 "Peirce and Pragmatism" (1952)
                 Chapter 1, "Introductory: Pragmatism
                 and Pragmatists", p. 14

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