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Home > Quote from "Minute Logic: Chapter II. Prelogical Notions. Section I. Classification of the Sciences (Logic II)"

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Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce
‘Natural Classification’ (pub. 09.05.15-12:06). 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-minute-logic-chapter-ii-prelogical-notions-section-i-classification-scienc-16.
Term: 
Natural Classification
Quote: 

All classification, whether artificial or natural, is the arrangement of objects according to ideas. A natural classification is the arrangement of them according to those ideas from which their existence results. No greater merit can a taxonomist have than that of having his eyes open to the ideas in nature; no more deplorable blindness can afflict him than that of not seeing that there are ideas in nature which determine the existence of objects. The definitions of Agassiz will, at least, do us the service of directing our attention to the supreme importance of bearing in mind the final cause of objects in finding out their own natural classifications.

Source: 
Peirce, C. S. (1902). Minute Logic: Chapter II. Prelogical Notions. Section I. Classification of the Sciences (Logic II). MS [R] 427.
References: 
EP 2:128-9; CP 1.231
Date of Quote: 
1902
URL: 

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