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

❝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.

Often the biggest obstacle to learning more is the need to feel you already know. And yet there are some things you know, at least, compared to other things, and it makes sense to use what you already know well enough to learn what you need to know better. The question is, how do you know which is which? What test can tell what is known so well it can be trusted in learning what is not?

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

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 #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry

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

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. 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 —

The I Ching, or Book of Changes, R. Wilhelm and C.F. Baynes (trans.), Foreword by C.G. Jung, Bollingen Series 19, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ. 1st edition 1950, 2nd edition 1961, 3rd edition 1967.

Overview —
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles —
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry

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

There is a particular type of “justification trap” a person can fall into, of trying to prove the scientific method by deductive means alone, 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.

Often this happens, despite 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. 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?

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 uniform method at all. As they see it, the development of knowledge cannot be reduced to any fixed method because it involves in an essential way such a large component of non‑methodical activity. If one's idea of what counts as method is fixed on the ideal of a deductive procedure then it's no surprise one draws that conclusion.

Overview
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Overview

Obstacles
• https://oeis.org/wiki/Inquiry_Driven_Systems_%E2%80%A2_Part_5#Obstacles

#Peirce #Inquiry #InquiryIntoInquiry #InquiryDrivenSystems
#Semiotics #SignRelations #Semiositis #ObstaclesToInquiry
#Logic #Abduction #Deduction #Induction #ScientificMethod