Pynchon & Politics( Lacey essay)

[alice wellintown]

>> Peirce developed the idea that inquiry depends on real doubt, not mere
>> verbal or hyperbolic doubt

>
> Rules out Descartes.

Well, it certainly argues that there is a plurality of methods.

And, the fact that Descartes and Peirce make **Method** the subject of
 their texts piques my interest.

For Descartes' text is a discourse on method, and  Peirce's text, a
search for method, and here is a difference worth noting.

A discourse, in Descartes text, is logistic in method.

That is, in Descartes we find that the method of logic, that is the
parts determine the whole, so validity is met by conclusions that
follow from premises. Invalid arguments, we all recall from our first
course in logic, may be persuasive, invalid ones, unpresuasive. And,
when we place Descartes into the history of thought,  there we find
that wonderful constellation of minds that includes Newton, Locke,
Leibniz, Hobbes, and Descartes defines, quite clearly the method, the
rules, in expository  prose, the directions, the recipe, that if a
person follows these, he will not suppose that something is true or
false, but will, with efficient use of mind, increase his knowledge
and gains true knowledge of all things "to which his power is
adequate" (Descartes Rule for the Direction of Understanding).

Now, here we have a difference again, in that Aristotle sez, that the
limits are set by the subject, not by the mind or powers of an
individual mind, and that a wise man knows the limits of such inquiry
and a wise man keeps each to a seperate discipline, and does claim
truth for all the others, but only for the science he is applying his
method to.

That method, is not logic.

But wait a minute, Alice, get your head out of the semantic gutter,
and we all know that Aristotle gave us logic....and....back to Peirce
now we go...

But a Search in Peirce's text is an investigation, **inquiry** or
analytic (to use Aristotle's term) or a disentanglement (a rough
translation from his Greek), a progressive un-knotting from.