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THE_PEIRCE_HABIT

                                             August 29, 2010


Peirce has a habit of using the
word habit in a very strange way.

      "Induction infers a rule.
       Now, the belief of a rule is a habit.
       That a habit is a rule active in us, is evident.
       That every belief is of the nature of a habit,
       in so far as it is of a general character, has
       been shown in the earlier papers of this series.
       Induction, therefore, is the logical formula
       which expresses the physiological process of
       formation of a habit."

               -- Charles S. Peirce, in
                  "Deduction, Induction, Hypothesis"


  He begins with notions like
  "habitual behaviors" or
  "habitual ideas", and then
  veers off to begin using
  "habit" to mean almost anything
  that persists over time...                            ESSENCE_OF_MAN

  One might say that "the sun has a
  habit of rising in the morning" but
  it's not clear how saying that makes     It has a touch of
  anything clearer.                        animism about it that's
                                           interesting, though.

                                                Did Peirce
                                                swing that way?



   The author of the Stanford Encylopedia of
   Philosophy entry suggests that Peirce used
   "habit" in opposition to the idea of
   "deterministic law", because all actual           ABDUCTED_LOGIC
   measurement is probabilistic, and there's no
   reason to presume there's some idealized
   perfect "law" underlying the scatter of data.   Further, in a fine example
                                                   of contrarian impulse,
                                                   Peirce presumed that like
                                                   human habits, the habits of
                                                   Nature might change and
                                                   "evolve".

                                                       (Not that there's
                                                       any actual evidence
                                                       for that.)



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