Kelly A.

Parker
Dept. of Philosophy
Grand Valley State University
Allendale, MI 49401-9403
email: parkerk@gvsu.edu
The Ascent of Soul to Nos: Charles S. Peirce as Neoplatonist
To Real Being we go back, all that we have and are. . . (Enn. VI 5 [23] 7)
If there is one project definitive of recent Western philosophy, it may be the search for
an alternative to the materialistic metaphysics that has come to prominence with the
rise of science. While some insist that the end of metaphysics is the only valid
alternative, others call instead for a thorough reconstruction of metaphysics. Such a
reconstructed metaphysics must both accommodate the insights of modern science
and account for the deeply felt sense that non-material mind or spirit is a real aspect of
the cosmos.
The task of reconstructing metaphysics along these lines is enormous. There are only
two directions in which to look for the kind of insights that will guide such a project: we
may look outside the West to other religious and philosophical traditions, or we may
look back into the West to religious and philosophical thought that has been eclipsed
by materialism. This last approach inevitably brings one to examine Neoplatonic
thought. The question arises, though, how Neoplatonism can accord with modern
science. The work of the American philosopher Charles S. Peirce (1839-1914) may be
seen in part as an attempt to place the enterprise of modern science into a
philosophical framework that is properly (though not exhaustively) described as
Neoplatonic.
Part I of this paper traces lines of possible Neoplatonic influences on Peirce's thought.
Though there are no obvious direct influences, there are sufficient indirect connections
to justify a reading of Peirce as a modern Neoplatonic philosopher. Part II presents
some "Neoplatonic" features of Peirce's philosophical system. Part III elaborates these
features by comparing Peirce's cosmology to that of Plotinus. Part IV identifies
additional significant similarities and differences between Peirce and Plotinus, and
proposes further consideration of Peirce's philosophy as a model for "scientific
Neoplatonism."
I. Neoplatonic Influences on Peirce's Thought
At the beginning of what is probably his most "Neoplatonic" work, "The Law of Mind,"
published in the Monist in 1892, Peirce offers the following apologia for what he is
about to spring upon his readers:
I may mention, for the benefit of those who are curious in studying mental
biographies, that I was born and reared in the neighborhood of Concord -- I
mean in Cambridge -- at the time when Emerson, Hedge, and their friends
were disseminating the ideas that they had caught from Schelling, and
Schelling from Plotinus, from Boehm, or from God knows what minds stricken
with the monstrous mysticism of the East. But the atmosphere of Cambridge
held many an antiseptic against Concord transcendentalism; and I am not
conscious of having contracted any of that virus. Nevertheless, it is probable
conscious of having contracted any of that virus. Nevertheless, it is probable
that some cultured bacilli, some benignant form of the disease was implanted
in my soul, unawares, and that now, after long incubation, it comes to the
surface, modified by mathematical conceptions and by training in physical
investigations. (CP 6.102)
Peirce's disparaging tone in this passage offers a hard beginning to our search for
Neoplatonic sources in his thought. This is amplified by the fact that the index of the
eight volume Collected Papers reveals no other places where he refers to Plotinus by
name. Likewise, a search of Peirce's unpublished papers turned up no signs of direct
Plotinian influence.
The late Max Fisch, whose word on these matters is nearly infallible, writes only that
the influence of Plotinus and other Neoplatonists on Peirce's mature philosophy is
"largely indirect" (Fisch 241-42). Indirect influences can be as powerful as direct ones,
of course, and my position is that "some benignant form" of Neoplatonism did animate
his work. Peirce devoted most of sixty years to articulating a system of knowledge,
based on a rigorous logic and methodology of inquiry, that would encompass all that is
humanly knowable about reality. The capstone of his system -- and in his estimation,
the highest ambition of the human mind -- are a metaphysics and religious philosophy
that reconcile the spirit of modern science with the spirit of ancient philosophy. In
evaluating his own relationship to the tradition, Peirce characterized Aristotelianism as
"a special development" of Platonic philosophy, and counted himself "an Aristotelian of
the scholastic wing, approaching Scotism, but going much further in the direction of
scholastic realism" (CP 5.77n1).
This reminds us that what appears as a Neoplatonic influence on Peirce may as easily
be the result of influences common to Peirce and Neoplatonism. Indeed, Peirce was a
careful student of the works that shaped Neoplatonism. He asserts that by 1894 he
had "read and thought more about Aristotle than about any other man" (MS 1604,
quoted in Fisch 240). He later turned to the serious study of Plato -- a study he began
by copying the Greek texts of key dialogues into notebooks and making his own
interlinear translations. He came to consider the Parmenides and the Theaetetus as
Plato's greatest works, and went so far as to reconstruct the chronology of the
dialogues in the course of a survey of ethical concepts. This exercise notably shaped
Peirce's conception of the summum bonum, the Good that defines the telos of all
activity in the cosmos (Fisch 240-41). Peirce also investigated Pythagoras' life as a test
case for his own logic of drawing history from ancient documents (MSS 476, 1277-78,
1582), and characterized Pythagoras' as "the sublimest of all human biographies"
(Fisch 239). On the other hand, Peirce's principle of tychism (absolute chance), which
runs so strongly against Neoplatonic principles, was clearly inspired by his reflections
on Aristotle and Epicurus (Fisch 231).
It must be noted that Peirce's reading of ancient philosophy was inevitably colored by
the traditional interpretation of the texts, and that the traditional interpretation is itself
largely Neoplatonic. This effect of the received interpretation of the ancient texts is
then the first likely source of indirect Neoplatonic influence on Peirce's thought.
As for traceable Neoplatonic influences, there is an obvious line of contact that needs
to be explored further. Peirce was above all a logician, and had read widely in the
available Neoplatonic and Stoic sources. References to Porphyry are frequent. All such
references that I have checked, however, seem confined strictly to logical concerns,
even where the originals clearly carry a metaphysical burden. Peirce would not have
even where the originals clearly carry a metaphysical burden. Peirce would not have
been incognizant of that burden, though, so we have here a second likely source of
indirect influence.
Finally, Peirce was of course conversant in more recent philosophy. He knew and
respected the work of such latter-day Neoplatonists as Leibniz and Herbert Spencer.
They must not be overlooked as likely sources of Neoplatonic themes in Peirce's work.
I suggest that the notable similarities between the Peircean and Neoplatonic
philosophies are due not primarily to particular direct or indirect Neoplatonic
influences, but rather to the philosophers' similar aims, to shared ancient sources, and
to the residual effects Neoplatonism had on the traditional interpretation of these
sources. For these reasons it is legitimate to consider Peirce as a metaphysician and
cosmologist working within the Neoplatonic tradition, though perhaps he did not do so
self-consciously.
II. Plotinian Themes in Peirce's Philosophy
The signature feature of Peirce's philosophy is his theory of three irreducible and
universal categories. The categories appear in different guises depending on the area
of thought under consideration. In mathematics and logic they are forms of relation; in
phaneroscopy (the analysis of phenomena) they are elements of any experience; in
metaphysics they are modes of being. Since these universal categories first appear in
mathematics, and because they "are best defined in terms of numbers," Peirce
sometimes calls them the "kainopythagorean categories" (CP 7.528). He defines the
phaneron as "the collective total of all that is in any way or in any sense present to the
mind, quite regardless of whether it corresponds to any real thing or not" (CP 1.284).
All three categories are inevitably to be found in any phaneron. They are thus similar
to the five genera or categories identified in Plato's Sophist (254-55), categories which
Plotinus took to be the primary categories of the intelligible world (Enn. 6 [43] 8). The
closest parallel to Peirce's categories in Plotinus is probably the identification of Being,
Life, and Thought as aspects of Nos (Armstrong 246).
Peirce's first attempt to identify the categories, based on the analysis of propositions,
produced a list of five: Being, Quality, Relation, Representation, and Substance (W
2:49-59). Peirce shortly revised the list to three categories, on the basis that Being and
Substance are the unthinkable limits of cognition, and hence have no meaning in
thought. He also later renamed the three remaining categories as generically as
possible.
Firstness is the monadic mode -- uncaused, irrational possibility; spontaneous
occurrence. Secondness is the dyadic mode -- the brute fact that something just is, as
it is, in relationship to others. Thirdness is the triadic mode -- the meaning of a
phaneron for a mind; the habit, law, or pattern that emerges as unifying many
particular actions for an observer; the general idea that encompasses an infinite
number of individuals under a class (CP 1.284-353, 5.41-119). In discussing the three
categories, it is crucial to note an implicit principle that emerges in the tension of
Firstness' spontaneity and Secondness' stability: the world manifests change and stasis
everywhere, at all levels. The fractal images discussed in David Fideler's contribution to
this volume nicely represent this interplay between Firstness and Secondness, and
Peirce would likely point to the fact that we so quickly learn to look for a recurring
pattern in these chaotic sets as an illustration of Thirdness in our interpretation of the
images.
images.
Peirce's pragmatism stipulates that the meaning of any idea consists in "our concept of
what our conduct would be upon conceivable occasions" in which the idea might enter
(CP 8.208). This is the definition of meaning that led him to amputate the "false
categories" of Being and Substance from his list: these terms name modalities beyond
the limits of relation, and hence beyond conception. With respect to Plotinus's
hierarchy, Peirce would no doubt eliminate both matter and the One for the same
reason. Of the Plotinian cosmos, then, Nos, Soul, and Bodies would remain for
Peirce's philosophical consideration. This does not necessarily imply that the One is
unreal in Peirce's scheme, but perhaps only that the ineffable is ineffable and that
discourse and thought have no dealings There: philosophy, for Peirce, is evidently a
dialectical activity of the soul. Within the remaining Plotinian realms, each of Peirce's
three categories would be found. The most obvious correlation, to my eyes, is that in
Nos, where Life exemplifies Firstness, Being exemplifies Secondness, and Thought
exemplifies Thirdness. This correlation, however, is merely an illustration of how
Peirce's categories relate to Plotinus' hypostases. For real insight, we turn to Peirce's
own words on cosmology.
III. Peirce and Plotinus on Cosmology
Peirce's philosophy emphasizes the principles of continuity and process. His semeiotic,
or general theory of signs, is an all-purpose model of continuous process. I cannot here
go into the details of Peirce's semeiotic, but will only note that in his system
metaphysics and cosmology are based upon the results of logic, where logic is
conceived as semeiotic. His metaphysics, for which he preferred the name synechism,
combines logical realism with metaphysical idealism. Mind, which is not an individual
thing for Peirce, "lives, and moves, and has its being" in the continuum of symbols
(NEM 4:344). The cosmos embodies a logic that our own can only approximate, and
the whole of what there is can be seen as the unfolding of an evolutionary process
describable as cosmic semeiosis: "all this universe is perfused with signs, if it is not
composed exclusively of signs" (CP 5.448n1). Signs are teleological. By implication, so
is the universe, and Peirce ventures to state the telos of the universe in these terms:
The purpose of every sign is to express "fact," and by being joined with other
signs, to approach as nearly as possible to determining an interpretant which
would be the perfect Truth, the absolute Truth, and as such . . . would be the
very Universe. Aristotle gropes for a conception of perfection, or entelechy,
which he never succeeds in making clear. We may adopt the word to mean
the very fact, that is, the ideal sign which should be quite perfect. . . . The
entelechy of the Universe of being, then, the universe qu fact, will be that
Universe in its aspect as a sign, the 'Truth' of being. (NEM 4:239-40)
The universe is an argument of vast scope, whose end is not a determinate conclusion
statable in a proposition (since propositions serve the higher end of expressing truth),
but is rather the living idea that is reality. The universe is an ever-growing continuum
in which thought, matter, and feeling are coming to be welded together into a harmonic
state of "concrete reasonableness."
Peirce writes that "Synechism is founded on the notion that the coalescence, the
becoming continuous, the becoming governed by laws, the becoming instinct with
general ideas, are but phases of one and the same process of the growth of
reasonableness" (CP 5.4). One might well ask why Peirce thought the cosmos is
striving toward greater reasonableness. The answer is that his best hypothesis as to
the origin of the cosmos indicates that it must necessarily be doing so, in the long run.
Peirce's cosmology, or "mathematical metaphysics" (CP 6.213) aims to show "how law
is developed out of pure chance, irregularity, and indeterminacy" (CP 1.407). The
account, outlined in the accompanying chart, unfolds as follows.
If we are to proceed in a logical and scientific manner, we must, in order to
account for the whole universe, suppose an initial condition in which the
whole universe was non-existent, and therefore a state of absolute nothing.
. . .
But this is not the nothing of negation. . . . The nothing of negation is the
nothing of death, which comes second to, or after, everything. But this pure
zero is the nothing of not having been born. There is no individual thing, no
compulsion, outward nor inward, no law. It is the germinal nothing, in which
the whole universe is involved or foreshadowed. As such, it is absolutely
undefined and unlimited possibility -- boundless possibility. There is no
compulsion and no law. It is boundless freedom.
Now the question arises, what necessarily resulted from that state of things?
But the only sane answer is that where freedom was boundless nothing in
particular necessarily resulted.
. . .
I say that nothing necessarily resulted from the Nothing of boundless
freedom. That is, nothing according to deductive logic. But such is not the
logic of freedom or possibility. The logic of freedom, or potentiality, is that it
shall annul itself. For if it does not annul itself, it remains a completely idle
and do-nothing potentiality; and a completely idle potentiality is annulled by
its complete idleness. (CP 6.215-219)
Thus the principle that the logic of the universe is at least as sophisticated as our own -
- that it therefore includes retroduction or abduction, the spontaneous form of
inference that initiates a stream of inference -- leads us to an account of the first
stirrings of determination in the utter indeterminacy of Nothing. This is the first
appearance of a mode of positive possibility, different from the mere absence of
determination that characterizes the initial zero-state.
I do not mean that potentiality immediately results in actuality. Mediately
perhaps it does; but what immediately resulted was that unbounded
potentiality became potentiality of this or that sort -- that is, of some quality.
Thus the zero of bare possibility, by evolutionary logic, leapt into the unit of
some quality. (CP 6.220)
The potentiality of a quality, in Peirce's metaphysics, is analogous to the Platonic Form
or Idea, in that it is a timeless, self-subsisting possibility that serves as the
metaphysical ground of the world of actual existence.
The evolutionary process is, therefore, not a mere evolution of the existing
universe, but rather a process by which the very Platonic forms themselves
have become or are becoming developed. (CP 6.194)
have become or are becoming developed. (CP 6.194)
Peirce says that the very earliest stages of cosmological evolution are characterized by
extreme vagueness of form (CP 6.191). Our hypothetical single, spontaneously
emerging qualitative possibility is not sharp-edged; the process of determination as yet
consists only in a lone arbitrary determination within the zero-state. This is the
possibility of a quality, indeed, but a quality that is not distinct from any other
qualities: it thus brings a whole continuum of immediately connected possible qualities
into being. The process has to unfold further before qualities can meaningfully be
considered distinct.
[W]e must not assume that the qualities arose separate and came into
relation afterward. It was just the reverse. The general indefinite potentiality
became limited and heterogeneous. (CP 6.199)
The evolution of forms begins or, at any rate, has for an early stage of it, a
vague potentiality; and that either is or is followed by a continuum of forms
having a multitude of dimensions too great for the individual dimensions to
be distinct. It must be by a contraction of the vagueness of that potentiality
of everything in general, but of nothing in particular, that the world of forms
comes about. (CP 6.196)
With the emergence of the continuum of positive possibility, the first of the three
"universes of experience," the Universe of Ideas or Possibility, is established (CP
6.455).
There is, however, an element of Secondness in the emergence of the continuum of
forms where there was only indefinite nothingness before, and an element of Thirdness
in the continuity and eternal subsistence of those forms. As the evolution continues,
Secondness comes to the fore. Nascent relations of identity and difference emerge in
and among parts of the continuum of forms, and qualities thereby come to be
differentiated.
The second element we have to assume is that there could be accidental
reactions between those qualities. The qualities themselves are mere eternal
possibilities. But these reactions we must think of as events. Not that Time
was. But still, they had all the here-and-nowness of events. (CP 6.200)
The next milestone in the evolution of the cosmos is the appearance of enduring
existence, the Universe of Brute Actuality of things and facts (CP 6.455). The
evolutionary shift from the first universe to the second, however, is not abrupt: what
Peirce is describing is a continuous process of beginning. The designation of the
different universes only indicates stages in the process. As the development of
relations progresses, through several stages of evolution by chance occurrence, time
and space emerge.
Out of the womb of indeterminacy we must say that there would have come
something, by the principle of Firstness, which we may call a flash. Then by
the principle of habit there would have been a second flash. Though time
would not yet have been, this second flash was in some sense after the first,
because resulting from it. Then there would have come other successions
ever more and more closely connected, the habits and the tendency to take
them ever strengthening themselves, until the events would have been
bound together into something like a continuous flow. (CP 1.412)
This continuous "quasi-flow" represents the headwaters of the almost perfectly
continuous temporal stream that we experience.
The quasi-flow which would result would, however, differ essentially from
time in this respect, that it would not necessarily be in a single stream.
Different flashes might start different streams, between which there should
be no relations of contemporaneity or succession. So one stream might
branch into two, or two might coalesce. But the further result of habit would
inevitably be to separate utterly those that were long separated, and to make
those which presented frequent common points coalesce into perfect union.
Those that were completely separated would be so many different worlds
which would know nothing of one another; so that the effect would be just
what we actually observe. (CP 1.412)
Space develops in a similar fashion, through the spontaneous occurrence of pairs of
events that tend to become ever more regular under the influence of the principle of
habit. Substance, the distinguishing feature of an enduring thing, develops out of the
establishment of habits within such pairings.
Pairs of states will also begin to take habits, and thus each state having
different habits with reference to the different other states will give rise to
bundles of habits, which will be substances. Some of these states will chance
to take habits of persistency, and will get to be less and less liable to
disappear; while those that fail to take such habits will fall out of existence.
Thus substances will get to be permanent. (CP 1.414)
In the nascent time and space, then, organized bundles of habits come to embody
particular qualities that are distinguishable from other bundles of habits embodying
other qualities. Those bundles of habits that tend to persist, which happen to acquire
the habit of enduring, come to dominate the universe in the form of existing things or
actualities. Thus the cosmos develops into a state where Secondness predominates,
and this Peirce calls the Universe of Actuality (CP 6.455).
Peirce next turns to the principle of habit-taking, and its most dramatic effect on the
evolving cosmos:
all things have a tendency to take habits. . . . [For] every conceivable real
object, there is a greater probability of acting as on a former like occasion
than otherwise. This tendency itself constitutes a regularity, and is
continually on the increase. . . . It is a generalizing tendency; it causes
actions in the future to follow some generalizations of past actions; and this
tendency itself is something capable of similar generalizations; and thus, it is
self-generative. (CP 1.409)
The principle of habit-taking, operative but feeble in the first two stages of cosmic
evolution, begins to come to prominence once actuality is well established. Actuality is
characterized by reactions among enduring things. The character of such things, and
consequently the relations and modes of interaction among them, would be extremely
irregular at first. The principle of habit-taking has the effect of making events in the
Universe of Actuality more stable and regular. It underlies the emergence of permanent
substances, as we have seen. Beyond this, it has the effect of stabilizing the kinds of
reaction which tend to occur among different substances. Nothing forces there to be a
tendency toward regularity in the Universe of Actuality, for the notion of force implies
necessity, an advanced variety of the regularity we are trying to explain (CP 1.407).
necessity, an advanced variety of the regularity we are trying to explain (CP 1.407).
Regularity, like possibility and particularity, must appear in the evolving cosmos by
chance. But just as we have seen the tendency to take habits operate on Firstness to
establish the Universe of Ideas and on Secondness to establish the universe of
Actuality, so does it operate on Thirdness, on itself, to establish a universe dominated
by Thirdness, lawfulness, order, and reasonableness.
The element of habit-taking has a peculiarity about it: it is the only possibility that,
once occurring, "can grow by its own virtue" (CP 6.101). Thus it operates in the
respective universes with increasing efficiency. In the Universe of Actuality it serves to
establish regularity in the various substances, both in their internal nature and in their
external relations to one another. It gives rise, in short, to the regularities we recognize
as the laws of nature. According to Peirce's cosmology, "each law of nature would
consist in some permanence, such as the permanence of mass, momentum, and
energy. In this respect, the theory suits the facts admirably" (CP 1.415). As the
principle of habit-taking operates to promulgate its own influence, events in the actual
world become more regular, more predictable. Necessity -- as embodied, for example,
in the idea of necessary connection which Hume rightly said is absent from the
observable realm of existent things -- emerges in the form of laws that govern events.
Necessity is the support of actuality by reason, the generalization of the particular
events in the Universe of Actuality (MS 277, p. 123).
As law takes hold, the evolving cosmos can be seen wending its way toward a Universe
of Necessity, in which law would be perfect. This Universe is the completely reasonable
state of things that is identified (in Peirce's esthetics) as an ideal. This universe is on
the one hand unrealizable in principle, since it would imply the complete eclipse of
Possibility and Haecceity, which are as fundamental as Necessity; on the other hand, it
is the regulative ideal toward which self-controlled thought and action aim. The
increase of reasonable thought and action, in the context of all three universes, is
accordingly the summum bonum in Peirce's philosophy.
This rather lengthy account of Peirce's cosmology should suggest a number of things to
the reader already familiar with Plotinus' account of creation. At the most general level,
it is notable that Peirce, like Plotinus, sees the origin of the universe as the result of a
spontaneous (i.e. uncaused) act of creation. This act of creation proceeds through
stages, and both philosophers see the realm of existent bodies as an imperfect
reflection of the realm of Forms that is the proper object of knowledge. Though the
pregnant Nothing of the zero-state bears some affinities to the Plotinian One, there is
apparently no room in Plotinus for Peirce's doctrine of tychism, his insistence on
irrational chance as the driving force behind creation. The Plotinian One is the ground
of creativity and necessity. Peirce separates these two principles. Creativity is
Firstness, the generative principle, while necessity is Thirdness, the end toward which
events in the universe are drawn. Given the role of indeterminacy in modern scientific
explanations, it may be that Peirce's approach is to be preferred.
IV. Conclusion
Like Plotinus, Peirce sees the Platonic Forms as teeming and seething with life (Enn. VI
7 [43] 12), but for Peirce this implies that the Forms develop, evolve, and change.
Peirce and Plotinus both reject the Platonic notion that the laws of nature are "laid
down in advance and then applied" (Armstrong 253). Plotinus holds that they appear
fully perfected in Nature when Soul contemplates Nos; Peirce sees them as imperfect,
and perfecting them is itself the telos of the existent universe. Peirce's philosophy,
moreover, banishes the One from metaphysics: there is no completed perfection with
which we might in fact be (re)united. Peirce does mention belief in a God who is in and
yet transcends the cosmos (CP 6.452), but except so far as its immanent
manifestations are explored under other areas, this God is not a possible object of our
knowledge. The entelechy of the universe is an ideal to be approximated through the
infinite, ongoing effort of mind acting in the world we inhabit. For that reason, Peirce
does not denigrate material body: the Universe of Existence is for him an indispensable
positive aspect of reality, and not a flawed reflection of reality. In a problematic
passage, Porphyry says that Plotinus "seemed ashamed of being in the body;" Peirce
might ask just how he would ever accomplish much without a body.
Where Peirce and Plotinus are in sympathy, the possibilities are exciting indeed. I will
mention only three such areas. First is Peirce's mathematical analysis of the continuum
as an infinitely divisible plenum, in which every part has the same properties as the
whole. Second is his modelling of this principle of continuity in a theory of signs, which
allows us to view the universe as a process of continuous and reflexive semeiosis,
every part of which potentially carries us a fragment of greater Truth. Finally, Peirce's
related work on the mathematics of transfinite sets (work which diverged from Georg
Cantor's in metaphysically important ways) may help resolve some difficulties in
Plotinus' conception of infinity.
Peirce's account of the summum bonum, the disciplined development of mind toward a
state of perfect order, lawfulness, and concrete reasonableness, seems almost a
perfect adaptation of the Plotinian idea that Soul seeks contemplation and union with
Nos. The difference is that Peirce makes refinement of the process, and not its
completion, the telos of the activity. In Peirce's philosophy, this process of deliberate
and self-correcting pursuit of Truth, the ascent of soul to Nos, is nothing other than
scientific inquiry.
Peirce's metaphysical doctrine of synechism is his account of how things are with us
that this progression is possible. For Peirce, we are of the same stuff as the cosmos.
Not just materially, but also at the higher level of Form: the human person, in one
facet, is a symbol and hence already is a part of that elevated reality. This accords with
Plotinus' doctrine that the higher part of the soul already participates in Nos. This
effective continuity of soul and idea, a central corollary of synechism, in fact appears
capable of accomodating Plotinus's account of the efficacy of prayer and magic (CP
6.516; Enn. IV 4 [28] 40-41).
As we approach the close of the twentieth century, philosophy, science, and religious
thought stand in need of a metaphysics and cosmology that do justice to the full
human encounter with reality. This encounter includes not only our experience of the
ordinary, but also our most advanced scientific inquiries and our most elevated spiritual
experiences. The ancient Neoplatonic thinkers sought to express the mystery of our
relation to Being itself in their accounts of the soul's journey toward higher reality. In
what is here referred to as the "scientific Neoplatonism" of Peirce's metaphysics, this
highest human ambition is characterized as the deliberate effort to enter into and
express Truth. Peirce urges us to see that this human endeavor is commensurate with,
and contributes to, the unfolding of the cosmos itself. Perhaps the account of reality we
seek has been here all along, then, in the form of a Neoplatonism that has continued to
seek has been here all along, then, in the form of a Neoplatonism that has continued to
develop even in the shadow of modern science -- its "cultured bacilli" carried into this
century by philosophers such as Charles S. Peirce.
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Mouton Publishers, 1976. References to this edition are given in the form (NEM 4:239-
40), where the first number indicates volume and the second indicates page(s).
________. Writings Of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition. 5 vols. to date. Ed.
Edward Moore, Christian J. W. Kloesel, et al. Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
1982--. References to this edition are given in the form (W 2:49-59), where the first
number indicates volume and the second indicates page(s).
Plato. Sophist.
Plotinus. The Enneads. Trans. S. MacKenna. Burdett, New York: Larson Publications,
1992. References to this volume are given in the form (Enn. IV 4 [28] 40-41), where
the Roman numeral indicates Ennead, first Arabic numeral indicates treatise, the
bracketed number indicates position in Porphyry's chronology, and the last Arabic
numeral indicates chapter.
Peirce's Cosmology, or Mathematical Metaphysics



Zero-State Nothingness (Absolute Indeterminacy) The indeterminate is
unstable
____________
Firstness
Universe of
Possibility
____________
Secondness
Universe of
Actuality or
Existence


____________
Thirdness
Universe of
Necessity or
Reason
____________
End-State
Unbounded Potentiality
________________________________
Spontaneous "Flash"
Emergence of Bounded Potentiality
Potentiality of Some Quality =>
Development of Forms
________________________________
Emergence of Relations among Forms
(e.g. Identity and Difference)
Enduring Distinct Qualities: Substance
Temporal and Spatial Relations, Material
Universe(s) Emerge
________________________________
Possibility of Regular Relations and
Reactions among Existent Individuals
Laws of Nature Evolve
Reason Grows, becomes Self-
Controlling => Mind
________________________________
Perfect Reasonableness,
Absolute Necessity
Unreachable Ideal serves as telos
unstable
_________________
One potential but
vague quality entails
a continuum of
potential qualities
_________________
A system of relations
develops among the
forms, concretizes
into determinacy,
oppositions
established
_________________
The possibility of
order applies to its
own possibility, and
is thus self-
increasing


_________________
Summum bonum is
the growth toward
greater order, not its
attainment