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ESSENCE_OF_MAN
April 5, 2010
An essay with a title like:
"Man's Glassy Essence" Published Oct 1892, in the "The Monist"
Sounds like a silly stunt, someone
working up a woozy metaphor-- img_7326-img_7339
Peirce's version is full of
equations. He's talking about A glass, as opposed to a crystal,
"glass" as a thermodynamic state, is a very disordered state.
and he may be engaging in a woozy Window glass is like a liquid
metaphor, but it's a metaphor frozen in place without crystallizing.
grounded in a much more detailed
grasp of "glass" than you would It's commonly claimed
expect... not just "transparent that old window glass
and fragile". has a rippled look
because it's really
As with, say a liquid that's been
"Seymour slowly flowing over
Glass" or... the centuries.
GLASS_KEY It's also commonly
(July 22, 2010) stated that this is
really a myth: older
"Man's Glassy Essence" is a glass appears rippled
fascinating review of the state of simply because it was
scientific knowledge at the time, made made by more
moving through the discoveries about primitive techniques.
matter from the study of gasses to
attempts to make inferences about
"protoplasm", i.e. the stuff that
living beings are made of.
He sketches out many things that are
easily recognizable as true in
retrospect (the immense size and E.g. protoplasm cannot be melted,
complexity of biological molecules), because the amount of heat
and yet also over-reaches the state needed breaks it up into simpler,
of knowledge of his time, and constituent molecules.
discusses how it is that protoplasm
is capable of "feeling":
He was trying to pin
down how consciousness (It's a little difficult
arises from protoplasm! for a modern reader to see
precisely *what* he's saying,
In retrospect, we can see it were if only because of unusual
best to hold off on questions like language... e.g. he has a habit
that without better understanding of using the word "habit"
of the basics-- 'tis a virtue of in a peculiar way. It
the "scientific method": it may almost seems like he means
encourage an obsession with any sort of recurrent
(apparently) meaningless trivia, behavior... or any mental
but it reigns you in from characteristic that persists
metaphysical questions that may over time...)
seem exciting and important, but
are literally useless to delve into "The consciousness of a habit
without the mental and/or physical involves a general idea. In
tools to ground them in reality. each action of that habit
certain atoms get thrown out
of their orbit, replaced by
others. Upon all the
Toward the end of this essay different occasions it is
the speculation gets, shall we different atoms that are
say, highly speculative. thrown off, but they are
analogous from a physical point
It looks like he's drawing an of view, and there is an
analogy between molecules splitting inward sense of their being
off molecules, and humans splitting analogous."
off ideas.
THE_PEIRCE_HABIT
He raises the subject of
spontaneous sympathetic action, His suggestion that
independent parallel invention. there should be some
way to investigate this
(The kind of thing that a phenomena to test his
more simple-minded person theories is an admirable
might confuse with telepathy. sentiment, but...
Peirce clearly does not.)
He also speculates about "hive-minds",
a kind of over-mind that might form
out of constituent human minds
(e.g. national character, religious
character).
"None of us can fully realize what the
minds of corporations are, any more than
one of my brain-cells can know what the
whole brain is thinking."
"The consciousness of a general
idea has a certain 'unity of the
ego,' in it, which is identical
when it passes from one mind to
another. It is, therefore, quite
analogous to a person; and,
indeed, a person is only a
particular kind of general idea."
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