The cosmology of Charles Peirce has traditionally been amongst the least celebrated aspects of his thought. It is typically considered far too anthropomorphic to be a serious contribution to our understanding of the evolution of reality. While this anthropomorphism may or may not disqualify the cosmology from serious scientific consideration, it is possible that the cosmology does offer philosophical insights about the very human experience that inspired it. My intent is to look to the Peircean cosmology not for insights about the growth of the cosmos as such, but for insights about the growing self. Specifically, the paper attempts to apply Peirce's thoughts about abduction and the growth of cosmic ideas to the growth of the self. Taking cue from Peirce's three-fold distinction between models of evolutionary growth in "Evolutionary Love," I contrast authentic growth of the self with two models of degenerate growth.
It looks to me as though the investigation we are undertaking is no ordinary thing, but one for a man who sees sharply. Since we're not clever men... we should make this kind of investigation of it: if someone had, for example, ordered men who don't see very sharply to read little letters from afar and then someone had the thought that the same letters are somewhere else also, but bigger and in a bigger place, I suppose it would look like a godsend to be able to consider the littler ones after having read these first, if, of course, they do happen to be the same.

The macrocosm and the microcosm in Plato's Republic do, of course, "happen to be the same," at least in an essential respect. The inference from the one to the other is justified by the reality of the Idea of justice, by that which makes justice justice in both the city and the soul. And so Socrates goes on to construct the perfectly just polis by which he infers, analogously, the structure of the perfectly just soul. This strategy yields a compelling account of the harmonious soul and the benefits of virtue. Socrates looks to the macrocosm and learns about the human.
In the Peircean cosmology we have a macrocosm of significantly larger scope. The cosmology was intended by Peirce to be a unified theory of all reality -- mental and physical, possible, actual and general -- with implications for every branch of human learning. Indeed, it would, Peirce hoped, be in its book-long formulation "one of the births of time." It has, in fact, turned out be perhaps the least celebrated aspect of his thought, famously referred to as the "black sheep or white elephant" of Peirce's philosophy by W.B. Gallie in 1966. The considered, though not unanimous, verdict on Peirce's cosmology is that it is far too anthropomorphic a description of reality to be thought of as a serious scientific hypothesis. But while Peirce's infusion of final causality, feeling and consciousness into the physical world has alienated many scholars seeking a scientifically satisfactory cosmology per se, these features of Peirce's cosmology can only be an occasion for intrigue for those of us who may be interested in the human as such. The phenomenon that is writ large across the growing Peircean cosmos is, after all, human growth. And so, with a strategy similar to that of Socrates, I suggest that we consider looking to the Peircean macrocosm for wisdom about the microcosm. In this article I offer a "reclaiming" of the anthropomorphic Peircean cosmology. I attempt, in some small fashion, to take back what is ours. Specifically, I intend to apply a number of Peirce's suggestions about cosmic growth to our understanding of the growth of the Peircean self.

Laws of Variation

On November 24th 1859, there was a publication that changed the face of science and blew the notion of a unique human species in an unchanging hierarchy out of the water. The Publication of “Origin of Species” laid the foundation for most of the ideas of modern Biology. In fact most of what we believe in Biology would not be feasible if it weren’t for evolution and natural selection. Evolution is for the greater sense of the term, not a theory but a fact. Over 140 years of scientific data and research have nearly confirmed the original hypothesis. The theory of evolution is no different than theories such as atomic theory, cell theory and Einstein’s theory of relativity; which have amassed sufficient data to be accepted scientists and theologians alike. Regardless of the disputative connotations that evolution brings, there is little doubt that these ideas brought forth in the the enlightenment of humans conscious evolution have changed our view of the world. Of the main points drawn out by Darwin are the “Laws of Variation”. Darwin stated that “When a variation is of the slightest use to a being, we cannot tell how much of it to attribute to accumulative action of natural selection, and how much to the conditions of life.”(Darwin 117) One thing is for certain he did believe more acutely that natural selection played a vital role. The laws of variation set out to explain the differences in species across several continents with the same or similar natural climates and those that have similar traits across areas of opposite climates. The laws of variation are composed of Effects of use and Disuse, Acclimatization, and Correlation of Growth.

Effects of Use and Disuse are simply as it implies in the title, the use and diminishing of certain traits of an organism for survival and reproduction. This modification that enables an organism to drop a certain trait or to pick up a necessary one is inherited. We have no direct observation of continual use and disuse over parent generations because we do not know the parent forms. Nonetheless there are animals that can be explained by the effects of disuse. In “Origin”, Darwin explains how birds seem to have variations in capabilities of flight. He claims that the changes in abilities such as flight might be attributed to a lack of “beast of prey”, as they no longer needed to migrate or flee danger the ability of flight was discarded as it was no longer needed. Another remarkable fact as discovered by Professor Wollaston in 1859 was that of a certain species of beetle in the island of Madeira. These beetles’ wings seem to be so deficient at flight that they can no longer sustain themselves in air. The evidence showed that beetles in this part of the world very frequently get blown to sea and perish, so they adapted to lie concealed until the winds subsided and the sun shined; another function of disuse.

Acclimatization is at times more closely related to plants and algae. Each species is adapted to its home climate, yet there are species that seem to adapt to changing climates. The evidence of this in plants id overwhelming we see this everyday as individuals grow palm trees in Georgia and even the Carolinas. A very good point is brought up by Professor Thomas Henry Huxley aptly named Darwin’s bulldog for his advocacy of Charles Darwin’s Evolutionary theories. He pointed out the resiliency in survival and reproduction of domesticated animals in different climates around the world. “Animals such as cows, sheep, goats and horses have been found to adapt to their surroundings in order to survive, and these traits are inherently passed through generations.”(Huxley 192). In short acclimatization can be found in varying species around the world and the functions of the Laws of Variation are intertwined and not self sufficient.

Perhaps the most important subject is that of Correlation of Growth. Simply put, when the process of natural selection produces variations other parts are also modified. For example the differences in the shape of the pelvis in birds correlate significantly to the remarkable changes in the size of their kidneys. In humans this is also distinguishable, it is believed that when humans were evolving and developing larger brains, mothers needed to have enlarged pelvises in order to give birth safely. This evolutionary change in the size of the human brain led to subsequent changes in the size and proportions of the mothers body, a function of Correlation of Growth. There must be caution when attempting to attribute correlation of growth features that are common to an entire group of species, and that have been handed down from an ancient progenitor. Once fact is for certain, that if a variation arises and is superfluous to the organization of the organism then it will only be temporary.

Biomedics and Anthropology

Public acceptance will play a major role in determining whether modern agricultural biotechnology continues to expand .The "public" is not monolithic. There are several "publics," ranging from scientists involved in agricultural biotechnology research to those opposed to anything science has to offer. Additionally, views on biotechnology in general differ by country, region, and socioeconomic group .Consumer acceptance can be influenced by education, government responses to biotechnology issues, and the efforts of activist groups opposed to biotechnology, the last probably being the most influential .That consumers need background information is illustrated by survey results showing a significant fraction of respondents holding to the belief that a nontransgenic tomato does not have genes .Effective communication is vital to the development of rational oversight of technology. Laws are made by elected officials, not scientists, and politicians are easily swayed by their perceptions of public opinion. Political decisions are not always rational, since public emotions can easily be influenced by irrational arguments. Vagueness, anxiety, fear, or abhorrence often prevails over rational judgment. Incorrect or hostile commentary about certain kinds of research spreads quickly. Key to promoting wise political decisions about scientific matters is improved understanding of science among public leaders, the general population, and the media.

Wisdom?

I really like the "love of wisdom" definition of philosophy. This definition always inspires the follow-up question: "What is wisdom?" I like Plato's definition of wisdom from the Republic: perception of goodness. This answer in turn inspires the further question: "What is goodness?" In the Republic, Socrates says he cannot answer this question directly, but must do so indirectly, via analogies. This is the very famous passage where he then describes the analogies of the sun, the line, and the cave.It is the analogy of the sun that provides what I regard as the clearest answer to the question of goodness (and hence, wisdom). The sun here represents goodness itself, shining down like light on everything. Ordinary knowledge (perhaps basic factual knowledge) is just to perceive what is illuminated by light. But wisdom adds awareness of the play of light and color.Wisdom is to know not just the factual nature of things, but also to be aware of the play of values over all that we know. Value shines upon everything like light. What gets illuminated? What gets cast into shadow? What colors are brought out by which kinds of values, in what ways?

Plato was right: it is like a light that shines down so ever-presently that we take it for granted. It makes things visible, and yet itself largely remains "invisible." We mostly tend not to turn our attention to the light itself or pay attention to how it informs and colors our vision of other things.

Painfull Feelings

There is nothing more depressing and ominous as the narrative of conscious life. The emergence of a being from ignorant innocence, to the poignant understanding that life grievances are without reason or structure. We have developed as a species many ways in order to better interpret the world, and how best to survive in it. One of our heaviest burdens is the ever present inevitability of death, and the rush to enhance our seemingly banal existence through meaningless financial gains. Often referred to as the elusive “American Dream”, the true driving force within most of the world’s economy. Where dark alley backdrops and destructive urban squalor leads many to be defined not by the man but by his social and economic standing. We are a world obsessed; we strive for our neighbors inanimate possessions with greedy eyes, constantly bombarded by every protagonist’s obstacle in life -self doubt-. Never at rest we sleep less; read less; eat less; feel less; love less; experience less; share less; live less; yet we still find time to hate more; work more; envy more; and just plain forget, we always seem to forget.

Environmental Ethics

Suppose that putting out natural fires, culling feral animals or destroying some individual members of overpopulated indigenous species is necessary for the protection of the integrity of a certain ecosystem. Will these actions be morally permissible or even required? Is it morally acceptable for farmers in non-industrial countries to practise slash and burn techniques to clear areas for agriculture? Consider a mining company which has performed open pit mining in some previously unspoiled area. Does the company have a moral obligation to restore the landform and surface ecology? And what is the value of a humanly restored environment compared with the originally natural environment? It is often said to be morally wrong for human beings to pollute and destroy parts of the natural environment and to consume a huge proportion of the planet's natural resources. If that is wrong, is it simply because a sustainable environment is essential to (present and future) human well-being? Or is such behaviour also wrong because the natural environment and/or its various contents have certain values in their own right so that these values ought to be respected and protected in any case? These are among the questions investigated by environmental ethics. Some of them are specific questions faced by individuals in particular circumstances, while others are more global questions faced by groups and communities. Yet others are more abstract questions concerning the value and moral standing of the natural environment and its nonhuman components.
In the literature on environmental ethics the distinction between instrumental value and intrinsic value (meaning "non-instrumental value") has been of considerable importance. The former is the value of things as means to further some other ends, whereas the latter is the value of things as ends in themselvesregardless of whether they are also useful as means to other ends. For instance, certain fruits have instrumental value for bats who feed on them, since feeding on the fruits is a means to survival for the bats. However, it is not widely agreed that fruits have value as ends in themselves. We can likewise think of a person who teaches others as having instrumental value for those who want to acquire knowledge. Yet, in addition to any such value, it is normally said that a person, as a person, has intrinsic value, i.e., value in his or her own right independently of his or her prospects for serving the ends of others. For another example, a certain wild plant may have instrumental value because it provides the ingredients for some medicine or as an aesthetic object for human observers. But if the plant also has some value in itself independently of its prospects for furthering some other ends such as human health, or the pleasure from aesthetic experience, then the plant also has intrinsic value. Because the intrinsically valuable is that which is good as an end in itself, it is commonly agreed that something's possession of intrinsic value generates a prima facie direct moral duty on the part of moral agents to protect it or at least refrain from damaging it (see O'Neil 1992 and Jameson 2002 for detailed accounts of intrinsic value).
Many traditional western ethical perspectives, however, are anthropocentric or human-centered in that either they assign intrinsic value to human beings alone (i.e., what we might call anthropocentric in a strong sense) or they assign a significantly greater amount of intrinsic value to human beings than to any nonhuman things such that the protection or promotion of human interests or well-being at the expense of nonhuman things turns out to be nearly always justified (i.e., what we might call anthropocentric in a weak sense). For example, Aristotle (Politics, Bk. 1, Ch. 8) maintains that "nature has made all things specifically for the sake of man" and that the value of nonhuman things in nature is merely instrumental. Generally, anthropocentric positions find it problematic to articulate what is wrong with the cruel treatment of nonhuman animals, except to the extent that such treatment may lead to bad consequences for human beings. Immanuel Kant ("Duties to Animals and Spirits", in Lectures on Ethics), for instance, suggests that cruelty towards a dog might encourage a person to develop a character which would be desensitized to cruelty towards humans. From this standpoint, cruelty towards nonhuman animals would be instrumentally, rather than intrinsically, wrong. Likewise, anthropocentrism often recognizes some non-intrinsic wrongness of anthropogenic (i.e. human-caused) environmental devastation. Such destruction might damage the well-being of human beings now and in the future, since our well-being is essentially dependent on a sustainable environment (see Passmore 1974, Bookchin 1990, Norton, Hutchins, Stevens, and Maple (eds.) 1995).
When environmental ethics emerged as a new sub-discipline of philosophy in the early 1970s, it did so by posing a challenge to traditional anthropocentrism. In the first place, it questioned the assumed moral superiority of human beings to members of other species on earth. In the second place, it investigated the possibility of rational arguments for assigning intrinsic value to the natural environment and its nonhuman contents.
It should be noted, however, that some theorists working in the field see no need to develop new, non-anthropocentric theories. Instead, they advocate what may be called enlightenedanthropocentrism (or, perhaps more appropriately called, prudentialanthropocentrism). Briefly, this is the view that all the moral duties we have towards the environment are derived from our direct duties to its human inhabitants. The practical purpose of environmental ethics, they maintain, is to provide moral grounds for social policies aimed at protecting the earth's environment and remedying environmental degradation. Enlightened anthropocentrism, they argue, is sufficient for that practical purpose, and perhaps even more effective in delivering pragmatic outcomes, in terms of policy-making, than non-anthropocentric theories given the theoretical burden on the latter to provide sound arguments for its more radical view that the nonhuman environment has intrinsic value (cf. Norton 1991, de Shalit 1994, Light and Katz 1996). Furthermore, some prudential anthropocentrists may hold what might be called cynicalanthropocentrism, which says that we have a higher-level anthropocentric reason to be non-anthropocentric in our day-to-day thinking. Suppose that a day-to-day non-anthropocentrist tends to act more benignly towards the nonhuman environment on which human well-being depends. This would provide reason for encouraging non-anthropocentric thinking, even to those who find the idea of non-anthropocentric intrinsic value hard to swallow. In order for such a strategy to be effective one may need to hide one's cynical anthropocentrism from others and even from oneself.

Logical Povitism

Just as the empiricists thought that complex ideas had meaning because they were compounded out of simple ideas, and that simple ideas had meaning because they had a direct connection with experience (namely being copies of it), so the positivists thought that some sentences had meaning because they were definable in terms of other sentences, and that at the "bottom" one would find basic sentences, sentences which had their meaning because of their direct connection with experience (in this case being reports of it rather than copies of it). For the positivists these basic sentences were observation sentences. The connection between the world and language thus boils down to a connection between observation sentences, on the one hand, and experiences--the observations reported by observation sentences--on the other. Of course, there is more to the world than experience, and more to language than observation sentences, but the idea is that the world is connected to language only via experience, and experience is connected to the rest of language only via observation sentences.

Unconcious spender

Through glass towers we grow from the road.
Developing tight, skies lights and corrodes.
Painfull, abashfull, continue the trend.
Greedy eyes and skewed shadows only befriend.
American dream!! depth of economys plight.
Dying in dreams we wont dare take flight.
The green eyes shine bright with candid splendor.
Enjoy what life brings; Unconcious spender.