12/2/11

Approximation to reality and absolute reality itself are two different things

From "Intended Characters of this Treatise," ch. 1 of the "Minute Logic" (1902).
Quoted under "The logician and the real" by Joseph Ransdell

http://www.cspeirce.com/rsources/quotes/quotes.htm

CP 2.64

Whether or not there is, at all, any such thing as Reality, the logician need not decide. He cannot hide from himself, any more than another man can, that objects very nearly like real things there are; and he cannot pretend to doubt it. But he sees, perhaps more clearly than other men, that approximation to reality and absolute reality itself are two different things. The mathematicians' _i_, of which the square is negative unity, _approximates_ to reality. All that it is incumbent upon the logician to learn is what inferential habits are conducive to knowledge, and to positive knowledge, in case there be any reality of which it is possible to have positive knowledge, and are conducive to such semblance of positive knowledge as we can have, in case there is no perfect reality or in case otherwise true positive knowledge is impossible. But in order to solve even that problem, he has first to ascertain, in case there be any successful quest for knowledge, what the nature of knowledge would be; and for his purpose, knowledge may be something written down in a book.

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