You wrote: “In science – according to Peirce and Popper, at least – this means conducting an experiment which would conclusively refute the hypothesis if it is in fact false. It’s true that even in science, such an ideally definitive experiment is rarely attained; and the kind of crossing we can do in everyday life is often even further from that ideal. Nevertheless, the genuine seeker of truth lives the whole of her time experimentally.”
Yes. And I agree that this happens not only in science, but in art (as the Gombert quotations would have it), and in ordinary life.
I had a mini-surprise in reading the Peirce quote in the passage you linked to, that is, this snippet: “At one time a ship is sailing along in the trades over a smooth sea, the navigator having no more positive expectation than that of the usual monotony of such a voyage, when suddenly she strikes upon a rock.”
It made me wonder for a moment, by “she” was Peirce referring to the navigator (having a woman navigator in the 19th century would be highly unlikely) or to the ship (ships often referred to as ‘she’ in that era and even ours)? Many thoughts followed including some relating to Peirce’s attitude towards women (esp. in relation to his wives and to Lady Welby, all of whom he respected and found intelligent), the way in which authors then (and now) still tend to use the male pronoun generically, that is, in many if not most cases, the attitudes of men then and now towards women, etc.
Since I finally decided in rereading the passage that Peirce most likely meant ‘she’, the ship, it may not be exactly the kind of ‘surprise’ you were pointing to. But it did change my “habit of thought’, even if for a moment, and I think I learned something in the process.
You wrote: “In science – according to Peirce and Popper, at least – this means conducting an experiment which would conclusively refute the hypothesis if it is in fact false. It’s true that even in science, such an ideally definitive experiment is rarely attained; and the kind of crossing we can do in everyday life is often even further from that ideal. Nevertheless, the genuine seeker of truth lives the whole of her time experimentally.”
Yes. And I agree that this happens not only in science, but in art (as the Gombert quotations would have it), and in ordinary life.
I had a mini-surprise in reading the Peirce quote in the passage you linked to, that is, this snippet: “At one time a ship is sailing along in the trades over a smooth sea, the navigator having no more positive expectation than that of the usual monotony of such a voyage, when suddenly she strikes upon a rock.”
It made me wonder for a moment, by “she” was Peirce referring to the navigator (having a woman navigator in the 19th century would be highly unlikely) or to the ship (ships often referred to as ‘she’ in that era and even ours)? Many thoughts followed including some relating to Peirce’s attitude towards women (esp. in relation to his wives and to Lady Welby, all of whom he respected and found intelligent), the way in which authors then (and now) still tend to use the male pronoun generically, that is, in many if not most cases, the attitudes of men then and now towards women, etc.
Since I finally decided in rereading the passage that Peirce most likely meant ‘she’, the ship, it may not be exactly the kind of ‘surprise’ you were pointing to. But it did change my “habit of thought’, even if for a moment, and I think I learned something in the process.