Re: Hypostatic And Prescisive Abstraction

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HAPA.  Note 6

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| But the highest kind of synthesis is what the mind is compelled to make neither
| by the inward attractions of the feelings or representations themselves, nor by
| a transcendental force of necessity, but in the interest of intelligibility,
| that is, in the interest of the synthesizing "I think" itself;  and this
| it does by introducing an idea not contained in the data, which gives
| connections which they would not otherwise have had.  This kind of
| synthesis has not been sufficiently studied, and especially the
| intimate relationship of its different varieties has not been
| duly considered.  The work of the poet or novelist is not so
| utterly different from that of the scientific man.  The artist
| introduces a fiction;  but it is not an arbitrary one;  it exhibits
| affinities to which the mind accords a certain approval in pronouncing
| them beautiful, which if it is not exactly the same as saying that the
| synthesis is true, is something of the same general kind.  The geometer
| draws a diagram, which if not exactly a fiction, is at least a creation,
| and by means of observation of that diagram he is able to synthesize and
| show relations between elements which before seemed to have no necessary
| connection.  The realities compel us to put some things into very close
| relation and others less so, in a highly complicated, and in the [true?]
| sense itself unintelligible manner;  but it is the genius of the mind,
| that takes up all these hints of sense, adds immensely to them, makes
| them precise, and shows them in intelligible form in the intuitions
| of space and time.  Intuition is the regarding of the abstract in
| a concrete form, by the realistic hypostatization of relations;
| that is the one sole method of valuable thought.  Very shallow
| is the prevalent notion that this is something to be avoided.
| You might as well say at once that reasoning is to be avoided
| because it has led to so much error;  quite in the same philistine
| line of thought would that be;  and so well in accord with the spirit
| of nominalism that I wonder some one does not put it forward.  The true
| precept is not to abstain from hypostatization, but to do it intelligently ...
|
| C.S. Peirce, CP 1.383, "A Guess at the Riddle",
| circa 1890, 'Collected Papers', CP 1.354-416.

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