Category Archives: Information Theory

Re: Ontolog Forum • Bruce Schuman When I was first learning information theory, one of my favorite tag lines was: Redundancy is the Essence of Information It’s a bit tongue-in-cheek but none-the-less apt. Although I had happened on hints of … Continue reading →

Selection 3 showed how it was possible to combine symbols in such a way as to end up with species of representation outside the class of genuine symbols and introduced the concepts of conjunctive terms and disjunctive terms to describe … Continue reading →

Re: Ontolog Forum • Azamat Abdoullaev As I see it, the semiotics or theory of signs handed down by Aristotle, Augustine, the Medieval Scholastics, Locke, and others took a significant leap toward a truly scientific theory with the work of … Continue reading →

Selection 3 opens with Peirce remarking a critical property of genuine symbols — the class of symbols is not closed under combinations.  In particular, there are logical conjunctions of symbols and logical disjunctions of symbols which are not themselves genuine … Continue reading →

Over the course of Selection 1 Peirce introduces the ideas he needs to answer stubborn questions about the validity of scientific inference.  Briefly put, the validity of scientific inference depends on the ability of symbols to express superfluous comprehension, the … Continue reading →

Our first text comes from Peirce’s Lowell Lectures of 1866, titled “The Logic of Science, or, Induction and Hypothesis”.  I still remember the first time I read these words and the light that lit up the page and my mind. … Continue reading →

Re: Ontolog Forum • Mihai Nadin Here’s an article of mine bearing on the present topic, namely, the relationship between Peirce’s theory of triadic sign relations and his theory of inquiry.  It also gives a smattering of historical context, bracketing … Continue reading →

Re: Structural Modeling • Joseph Simpson Links to previous Selections, Comments, and Discussions on this topic can be found here.  See especially the section on I = C × E. My plan going forward is to review this material in … Continue reading →

Three summers ago I hit on what struck me as a new insight into one of the most recalcitrant problems in Peirce’s semiotics and logic of science, namely, the relation between “the manner in which different representations stand for their … Continue reading →