Creativity Between Experience and Cosmos

Abstract

The book investigates the topic of creativity by focusing on C.S. Peirce’s and A.N. Whitehead’s accounts of novelty. It is divided into three parts. The first part considers the problem of novelty from a philosophical point of view and examines the historical and theoretical connections between the two authors. The second and third parts explore, respectively, Peirce’s and Whitehead’s thoughts on novelty, analyzing their views from three different perspectives – phenomenological, gnoseological, and cosmological. Finally, their thoughts are compared in order to show their contributions to the issue of novelty.

The Dismissal of ‘Substance’ and ‘Being’ in Peirce’s Regenerated Logic

“…Overall, NL aims to make a new list of the indispensable categories needed for reducing the content of consciousness to unity. One of the most controversial topics of NL is the method adopted for deducing these categories, 7 whereas it is generally accepted that the later Peirce will never abandon the three "intermediary categories" [W2, p. 55, 1867] -that is "Quality (Reference to a Ground), Relation (Reference to a Correlate), Representation (Reference to an Interpretant)" [W2, p. 54], as well as his theory of signs. 8 As for the previous drafts, Peirce in NL introduces 'substance' and 'being' as the universal categories that represent "the beginning and end of all conception" [W2, p. 50], and he again refers to both concepts at two different levels: as categories in general, and with reference to propositions.…”

“…Whether or not it really represents the most valuable work of Peirce's in logic, as well as the apex of his philosophical production, has been put into question (see [42, p. 66], [54]). 7 On the debate about what kind of deduction Peirce is performing, whether it is transcendental, metaphysical, or how to define it [see also 11,16,28,41].…”