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artistic imagination, mere dreaming of opportunities for gain. The scien–
tific imagination dreams of explanation and laws (1.46-8).
Cuvier said that Metaphysics is nothing but Metaphor. ... If metaphor
be taken literally to mean an expression of a similitude when the sign of
predication is employed instead of the sign of likeness - as when we say
this man
is
a fox instead of this man is like a fox, - I deny entirely that
metaphysicians are given to metaphor .. . but if Cuvier was only using a
metaphor himself, and meant by metaphor broad comparison on the
ground of characters of a formal and highly abstract kind, - then, indeed,
metaphysics professes to be metaphor ... (7.590).
RR: [A] philosopher ... like myself ... thinks of himself as auxiliary to the
poet rather than to the physicist.... Interesting philosophy is ... a contest
between an entrenched vocabulary which has become a nuisance and a half–
formed new vocabulary which vaguely promises great things. (CIS, pp.7-9).
SH:
But I don't think Mr. Peirce would deny the importance of linguis–
tic innovation ...
CSP:
Every symbol is a living thing, . . . its meaning inevitably grows,
incorporates new elements and throws off old ones.... Science is contin–
ually gaining new conceptions; and every new
scientific
conception should
receive a new word.... Different systems of expression are often of the
greates t advantage (2.222).
RR: It is a feature of ... science that the vocabulary in which problems
are posed is accepted by all those who count as contributing to the sub–
ject. The vocabulary may be changed, but that is only because a new
theory has been discovered... . The vocabulary in which the
explicanda
are
described has to remain constant (CP, pp.141 -2).
CSP:
How much more the word
electricity
means now than it did in the
days of Franklin; how much more the term planet means now than it did
in the time of Hipparchus. These words have acquired information ...
(7.587).
Symbols grow. .. . In use and in experience, [the] meaning [of a sym–
bol] grows. Such words as
force, law, wealth, marriage,
bear for us very different
meanings from those they bore to our barbarous ancestors (2.302).
SH:
I gather, Professor Rorty, from your references to "irony" and "play–
fulness," that you disapprove of too solemn an attitude to philosophy as a
profession . . .
RR: I would welcome a culture dominated by "the Rich Aesthete, the
Manager and the Therapist" so long as
everybody
who wants to gets to be
