Re: Hypostatic And Prescisive Abstraction

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HAPA.  Note 2

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| Another characteristic of mathematical thought is the extraordinary
| use it makes of abstractions.  Abstractions have been a favorite
| butt of ridicule in modern times.  Now it is very easy to laugh
| at the old physician who is represented as answering the question,
| why opium puts people to sleep, by saying that it is because it
| has a dormative virtue.  It is an answer that no doubt carries
| vagueness to its last extreme.  Yet, invented as the story was
| to show how little meaning there might be in an abstraction,
| nevertheless the physician's answer does contain a truth
| that modern philosophy has generally denied:  it does
| assert that there really is in opium 'something' which
| explains its always putting people to sleep.  This has,
| I say, been denied by modern philosophers generally.
| Not, of course, explicitly;  but when they say that
| the different events of people going to sleep after
| taking opium have really nothing in common, but
| only that the mind classes them together -- and
| this is what they virtually do say in denying
| the reality of generals -- they do implicitly
| deny that there is any true explanation of
| opium's generally putting people to sleep.
|
| C.S. Peirce, CP 4.234, "The Simplest Mathematics",
| Chapter 3 of the "Minute Logic", Jan-Feb 1902.

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