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Home > Quote from "Lowell Lectures on The Logic of Science; or Induction and Hypothesis: Lecture VII"

Commens
Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce
‘Interpretant’ (pub. 21.08.17-20:34). Quote in M. Bergman & S. Paavola (Eds.), The Commens Dictionary: Peirce's Terms in His Own Words. New Edition. Retrieved from http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-lowell-lectures-logic-science-or-induction-and-hypothesis-lecture-vii-3.
Term: 
Interpretant
Quote: 

…the process of getting an equivalent for a term, is an identification of two terms previously diverse. It is in fact, the process of nutrition of terms by which they get all their life and vigor and by which they put forth an energy almost creative since it has the effect of reducing the chaos of ignorance to the cosmos of science. Each of these equivalents is the explication of what there is wrapt up in the primary – they are the surrogates, the interpreters of the original term. They are new bodies, animated by that same soul. I call them the interpretants of the term. And the quantity of these interpretants, I term the information or implication of the term.

Source: 
Peirce, C. S. (1866). Lowell Lectures on The Logic of Science; or Induction and Hypothesis: Lecture VII. MS [W] 129; MS [R] 356, 345, 919, 1571.
References: 
W 1:464-465
Date of Quote: 
1866
URL: 

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-lowell-lectures-logic-science-or-induction-and-hypothesis-lecture-vii-3