New Elements (Kaina Stoicheia) -- Commentary

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NEKS.  Commentary Note 1

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Re: NEKS 1. http://stderr.org/pipermail/inquiry/2012-July/003920.html

Peircers,

I've been trying to feel my way into the mind and mood of Charles S. Peirce as he wrote this piece, and having a tough 
time doing it, mostly on account of its affective tone and the difficulty of sifting the intellectual substance of what 
he is writing apart from that.  The man is clearly laboring under the onus of a severe disappointment, compounded by a 
sense of loss and even betrayal, and it colors his prologue with notes of futility and near despair about the chances of 
getting what he's labored to learn about logic and mathematics all his life through to his prospective audience.

So I settled down in my easy chair with a cup of peppermint tea and read aloud the opening section of the piece to Sue, 
in hopes of gaining a fresh perspective on the problematics of the piece.  She really loved the part about the "densely 
stupid and unspeakably indolent young lady as she skims its pages while looking out of the window to be admired", but 
when I finally coaxed her back into the room we made a very fruitful foray into the themes and undertones of Peirce's 
less than usually censored thoughts on the teaching of mathematics and other scientific subjects.

Peirce's overture to yet another unfinished symphony touches on themes that recur throughout his work, however much he 
tries to tailor his style to the intended interpreters of the moment, all too often without immediate or resounding 
success, as we well know.

Here's a few phrases that strike me as expressing salient themes of the piece:

CSP: "New Elements of Mathematics" ... was written in the strictest mathematical style

CSP: I have lost the power of writing about logic in mathematical style

CSP: In losing the power of writing this style, I have equally lost my admiration of it.

CSP: I beg permission to offer a criticism of the mathematical style in logic.

CSP: I say in "logic", because it is only with a view of presenting the
      logic of the subject that mathematicians employ the Euclidean style.
      When they are simply intent on the solution of difficult problems
      they forget all about it.

In speaking of style we enter the province of rhetoric, concerned with forms of argument that "consider the audience", 
in other words, that make the properties of interpreters explicit factors in the analysis and design of arguments.  And 
there we find the connection with pragmatism and pedagogy, both of which put the consideration of interpreters back into 
the process of using signs to learn and reason.

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