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

Commens
Digital Companion to C. S. Peirce
‘Final Causation’ (pub. 23.07.15-15:41). 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-25.
Term: 
Final Causation
Quote: 

Final causality cannot be imagined without efficient causality; but no whit the less on that account are their modes of action polar contraries. The sheriff would still have his fist, even if there were no court; but an efficient cause, detached from a final cause in the form of a law, would not even possess efficiency: it might exert itself, and something might follow post hoc, but not propter hoc; for propter implies potential regularity. Now without law there is no regularity; and without the influence of ideas there is no potentiality.

Source: 
Peirce, C. S. (1902). Minute Logic: Chapter II. Prelogical Notions. Section I. Classification of the Sciences (Logic II). MS [R] 427.
References: 
EP 2:121; CP 1.213
Date of Quote: 
1902
URL: 

http://www.commens.org/dictionary/entry/quote-minute-logic-chapter-ii-prelogical-notions-section-i-classification-scienc-25