Tonight I stumbled upon an old love, Charles S. Peirce, and I couldn´t let him go. 8-]

It is impressive how much impact he had in me, more than I was aware of by the time I discovered him at college. Semiotics ('semiology', semeiology', 'semantics', all about the same: 'the sign'... it all about the sign =) was my prefered subject, and the greatest contribution to my education I owe to Communication Sc. Looking in retrospective, it left a seed, draw a blueprint in my head. Although it´s years since I don´t read anything from him -and at collage it was not much bibliography, most from the 'linguistic' side- I see, now, discovering material in the Net by chance, that he was into so many of the things I am today making my way... willing to understand, too. =)

If you haven´t heard about this gentleman, Charles Sander Peirce, american, here you have 2 interesting links. Btw, I´d like to know if at scientific careers as Biology, Engineering, Maths, Cognitive Scs., Computer Scs., Programming, etc... Did you have this author in the programs? Curious about it.

* Stanford University´s phylosophy website on Charles Pierce
On Abduction: "Let us now go further and see what happens if, from the deduction AAA-1, we form a new argument by interchanging the conclusion (the Result) with the minor premise (the Case). The resultant argument becomes: All M's are P's (Rule); All S's are P's (Result); therefore, All S's are M's (Case). This is the invalid syllogism AAA-2. But let us now regard it as pertaining to sampling theory. The argument becomes: All balls in this urn are red; All balls in this particular random sample are red; therefore, All balls in this particular random sample are taken from this urn. What we have here is nothing at all like an argument from population to sample or an argument from sample to population: it is a form of probable argument entirely different from both deduction and induction. This new type of argument Peirce called abduction (also, retroduction, and also, hypothesis)."

* A semiotical reflection on biology, living signs and artificial life.
"It is argued, that theory of signs, especially in the tradition of the great philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) can inspire the study of central problems in the philosophy of biology. Three such problems are considered: 1. The nature of biology as a science, where a semiotically informed pluralistic approach to the theory of science is introduced. 2. The peculiarity of the general object of biology, where a realistic interpretation of sign- and information-concepts is required to see sign-processes as immanent in nature. 3. The possibility of an artificial construction of life, hereby discussed as a conceptual problem in the present form of the artificial life project and its implied definition of life."