Do not block the way of inquiry.

There is no point in asking for terms of relations which are not themselves relations, for everything that can serve as the term of a relation can be dissolved into another set of relations, and so on forever. There are, so to speak, relations all the way down and all the way out in every direction; you never reach something which is not just one more nexus of relations. The system of natural numbers is a good model of the universe because in that system it is obvious, and obviously harmless, that there are no terms of relations which are not simply clusters of further relations.

The system of natural numbers is a good model of the universe because in that system it is obvious, and obviously harmless, that there are no terms of relations which are not simply clusters of further relations.
PasAA p.88
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Panrelationalism

...since history does not occur in the void, includes the earth and the physical relatives of man.” -John Dewey, “Appendix 2: 1. Experience and Philosophic Method” (1925 LW 1:370)

Happy Earth Day from the Center for Dewey Studies!

“When we say that experience is one point of approach to an account of the world in which we live, we mean then by experience something at least as wide and deep and full as all history on this earth, a history which...

But the disputants are one and all men who cannot discuss any mathematical problem without betraying their want of mathematical power and their gross ignorance of mathematics at every step.

Incessant disputations have, indeed, been kept up by a horde of undisciplined minds about quadratures, cyclotomy, the theory of parallels, rotation, attraction, etc.

Thoughts?
#philosophy

Any ideas?
#philosophy

And yet that which seems the most arbitrary in the ideas created by the two men are one and the same form. This phenomenon is not an isolated one; it characterizes the mathematics of our times, as is, indeed, well known.

Riemann had apparently never heard of his contemporary Listing. The latter was a naturalistic geometer, occupied with the shapes of leaves and birds' nests, while the former was working upon analytical functions.

Dr. Dianda’s Lyceum address was excellent, effectively making the Jamesian point that a complex and multi-relational self is rarely “fractured” beyond repair.

While whatever is true of a species will form a datum for the discovery of the wider truth which holds of the whole genus.

So far as the sciences can be arranged in such a scale, these relationships must hold good. For if anything is true of a whole genus of objects, this truth may be adopted as a principle in studying every species of that genus.

that the sciences may be arranged in a series with reference to the abstractness of their objects; and that each science draws regulating principles from those superior to it in abstractness, while drawing data for its inductions from the sciences inferior to it in abstractness.
/2x

This double assertion, first, that logic ought to draw upon mathematics for control of disputed principles, and second that ontological philosophy ought in like manner to draw upon logic, is a case under a general assertion which was made by Auguste Comte, namely,
/2

I feel confident [my] book would make a serious impression much deeper and surer than Bergson's, which I find quite too vague.

even if they be grossly mistaken, can not but be highly serviceable for the ultimate discovery of truth. Meantime, sentiment can say "Oh well, philosophical science has not by any means said its last word yet; and meantime I will continue to believe so and so."
/2x

It is far better to let philosophy follow perfectly untrammeled a scientific method, predetermined in advance of knowing to what it will lead. If that course be honestly and scrupulously carried out, the results reached, even if they be not altogether true,
/1

At this point, I hope, you will conclude that, whatever sorts of things may have intrinsic natures, numbers do not—that it simply does not pay to be an essentialist about numbers. Pan-relationalism holds that it also does not pay to be essentialist about tables, stars, electrons, human beings, academic disciplines, social institutions, or anything else. We suggest that you think of all such objects as resembling numbers in the following respect: there is nothing to be known about them except an infinitely large, and forever expansible, web of relations to other objects.

It simply does not pay to be an essentialist about numbers. Pan-relationalism holds that it also does not pay to be essentialist about tables, stars, electrons, human beings, academic disciplines, social institutions, or anything else.
PasAA p.88
#Pragmatism
#Rorty
#Panrelationalism

In addition to that, in philosophy we have prejudices so potent that it is impossible to keep one's sang-froid if we allow ourselves to dwell upon them at all.

“… every work of science great enough to be well remembered for a few generations affords some exemplification of the defective state of the art of reasoning of the time when it was written; and each chief step in science has been a lesson in logic.” — @charlespeirce.bsky.social

Introducing Dr. Dianda (As I'll do later this afternoon.) Welcome to our Applied Philosophy Lyceum, which we’ve been hosting for 34 years now. Thanks to Dean Lyons...

jposopher.blogspot.com/2026/04/intr...

and extreme cases can so readily be found by which to test the accuracy of the processes, that when attention has once been directed to a process of reasoning suspected of being faulty, it is soon put beyond all dispute either as correct or as incorrect.
/2x

Hence, although his proceeding is not infallible,—which is shown by the comparative frequency with which mistakes are committed and allowed,—yet it is so easy to repeat the inductions upon new instances, which can be created at pleasure,
/1

Nor is the reason for this immunity of mathematics far to seek. It arises from the fact that the objects which the mathematician observes and to which his conclusions relate are objects of his mind's own creation.

Not only does this account for the many cases of contemporaneous but
independent discoveries of similar matters, such as the calculus, but it covers the more mundane claim that independent repetitions of the same experiment with similar results tend to confirm a hypothesis over time.
/2x

Such occurrences suggest that discoveries become
virtually inevitable when prerequisite kinds of knowledge and tools accumulate in man’s cultural store and when the attention
of an appreciable number of investigators becomes.
/1

somebody else had made years before.
/2x

The pages of the history of science record thousands of instances of similar discoveries having been made by scientists working independently of one another. Sometimes the discoveries are simultaneous or almost so; sometimes a scientist will make anew a discovery which, unknown to him,
/1

Do not block the way of inquiry.