In the Way of Inquiry • Obstacles 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/07/in-the-way-of-inquiry-obstacles-2/

❝Upon this first, and in one sense this sole, rule of reason, that in order to learn you must desire to learn, and in so desiring not be satisfied with what you already incline to think, there follows one corollary which itself deserves to be inscribed upon every wall of the city of philosophy:

❝Do not block the way of inquiry.❞

C.S. #Peirce, Collected Papers, CP 1.135–136.
From an unpaginated ms. “F.R.L.”, c. 1899.

#Inquiry

In the Way of Inquiry • Obstacles 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/07/in-the-way-of-inquiry-obstacles-2/

Often the biggest obstacle to learning more is the need to feel one already knows. And yet there are things a person knows, at least, in comparison to other things, and it makes sense to use what one already knows best in order to learn what one needs to know better. The question is, how does one know which is which? What test can tell what is known so well it can be trusted in learning what is not?

#Peirce #Inquiry #Uncertainty

In the Way of Inquiry • Obstacles 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/07/in-the-way-of-inquiry-obstacles-2/

One way to test a supposed knowledge is to try to formulate it in such a way that it can be taught to other people. A related test, harder in some ways but easier in others, is to try to formalize it so completely that even a computer could go through the motions that are supposed to be definitive of its practice.

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry
#Semiotics #Semeiotics #SignRelations

In the Way of Inquiry • Obstacles 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/07/in-the-way-of-inquiry-obstacles-2/

Both ways of testing a supposition of knowledge depend on putting knowledge in forms which can be communicated or transported from one medium or system of interpretation to another. Knowledge already in a concrete form takes no more than a simple reformation or transformation, otherwise it takes a more radical metamorphosis, from a wholly disorganized condition to the first inklings of a portable or sharable form.

#Peirce #Inquiry

In the Way of Inquiry • Initial Unpleasantness 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/08/in-the-way-of-inquiry-initial-unpleasantness-2/

Clouds and thunder:
The image of Difficulty at the Beginning.
Thus the superior man
Brings order out of confusion.

— I Ching ䷂ Hexagram 3

Inquiry begins in doubt, a debit of certainty and a drought of information, never a pleasant condition to acknowledge, and one of the primary obstacles to inquiry may be reckoned as owing to the onus one naturally feels on owning up to that debt.

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry

In the Way of Inquiry • Initial Unpleasantness 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/08/in-the-way-of-inquiry-initial-unpleasantness-2/

Human nature far prefers to revel in the positive features of whatever scientific knowledge it already possesses and the mind defers as long as possible the revolt it feels arising on facing the uncertainties that still persist, the “nots” and “not yets” it cannot as yet and ought not deny.

Reference —

I Ching, or Book of Changes, R. Wilhelm and C.F. Baynes (trans.), Foreword by C.G. Jung, Princeton, 1950, 1961, 1967.

In the Way of Inquiry • Justification Trap 1
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/10/in-the-way-of-inquiry-justification-trap-2/

There is a particular type of “justification trap” a person can fall into, of trying to prove the scientific method by solely deductive means, that is, of trying to show the scientific method is a good method by starting from the simplest possible axioms, principles everyone would accept, about what is good.

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod

In the Way of Inquiry • Justification Trap 2
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/10/in-the-way-of-inquiry-justification-trap-2/

Often this happens, in spite of the fact one really knows better, simply in the process of arranging one's thoughts in a rational order, say, from the most elementary and independent to the most complex and derivative, as if for the sake of a logical and summary exposition.

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod

In the Way of Inquiry • Justification Trap 3
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/10/in-the-way-of-inquiry-justification-trap-2/

But when does that rearrangement cease to be a rational reconstruction and start to become a destructive rationalization, a distortion of the genuine article, and a falsification of the authentic inquiry it attempts to recount?

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod

In the Way of Inquiry • Justification Trap 4
• https://inquiryintoinquiry.com/2023/01/10/in-the-way-of-inquiry-justification-trap-2/

Sometimes people express their recognition of this trap and their appreciation of the factor it takes to escape it by saying there is really no such thing as the scientific method, that the very term “scientific method” is a misnomer and does not refer to any kind of method at all.

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod