The Commens Dictionary

Quote from ‘Harvard Lectures on the Logic of Science. Lecture I’

Quote: 

The first and simplest kind of truth is the resemblance of a copy. It may be roughly stated to consist in a sameness of predicates. Leibniz would say that carried to its highest point, it would destroy itself by becoming identity. Whether that is true or not, all known resemblance has a limit. Hence, resemblance is always partial truth. On the other hand, no two things are so different as to resemble each other in no particular. Such a case is supposed in the proverb that Dreams go by contraries, - an absurd notion, since concretes have no contraries. A false copy is one which claims to resemble an object which it does not resemble. But this never fully occurs, for two reasons; in the first place, the falsehood does not lie in the copy itself but in the claim which is made for it, in the superscription for instance; in the second place, as there must be some resemblance between the copy and its object, this falsehood cannot be entire. Hence, there is no absolute truth or falsehood of copies.

Date: 
1865
References: 
W 1:169-170
Citation: 
‘Copy [in Semeiotic]’ (pub. 05.05.13-18:42). Quote in M. Bergman & S. Paavola (Eds.), The Commens Dictionary: Peirce's Terms in His Own Words. New Edition. Retrieved from http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-harvard-lectures-logic-science-lecture-i.
Posted: 
May 05, 2013, 18:42 by Sami Paavola
Last revised: 
Jan 07, 2014, 00:57 by Commens Admin