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Single Idea 19107

[filed under theme 11. Knowledge Aims / B. Certain Knowledge / 3. Fallibilism ]

Full Idea

Inquiry is not standing upon a bedrock of fact. It is walking up a bog, and can only say, this ground seems to hold for the present. Here I will stay until it begins to give way.

Gist of Idea

Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog

Source

Charles Sanders Peirce (works [1892], CP 5.589), quoted by Gottfried Leibniz - Letter to Newton 4

Book Ref

'New Pragmatists', ed/tr. Misak,Cheryl [OUP 2009], p.83


A Reaction

[I don't know which article this lovely quote comes from]


The 11 ideas from 'works'

Super-ordinate disciplines give laws or principles; subordinate disciplines give concrete cases [Peirce, by Atkin]
Pragmatic 'truth' is a term to cover the many varied aims of enquiry [Peirce, by Misak]
Peirce did not think a belief was true if it was useful [Peirce, by Misak]
If truth is the end of enquiry, what if it never ends, or ends prematurely? [Atkin on Peirce]
Bivalence is a regulative assumption of enquiry - not a law of logic [Peirce, by Misak]
The real is the idea in which the community ultimately settles down [Peirce]
Peirce's later realism about possibilities and generalities went beyond logical positivism [Peirce, by Atkin]
The possible can only be general, and the force of actuality is needed to produce a particular [Peirce]
Peirce and others began the mapping out of relations [Peirce, by Hart,WD]
Inquiry is not standing on bedrock facts, but standing in hope on a shifting bog [Peirce]
Pure mathematics deals only with hypotheses, of which the reality does not matter [Peirce]