Perhaps a little numerology. This is an exploration—something I’m trying to figure out, not something I’m proposing.
What is it about “3?”
- Three points define a plane
- Three legs make a stable stool
- At least three data points are needed to perform meaningful statistics
- Songs should have at least three verses
- At least three elevation measurements are needed to draw a contour map
- Thesis, antithesis, synthesis
- Three dimensions of space
- Sign, object, interpretant
- Father, Son, Holy Ghost
- Chemicals, cells, organisms
I acknowledge this list is impressionistic, idiosyncratic, and personal, but I think there may be a common theme or intuition that connects them. Three in gives a sense of stability, settledness, resolution.
What leads me here is a struggle of sorts to figure out what Charles Peirce was describing when he discussed triadic logic. That’s something that has been discussed on the forum in the past. It started out with his theory of signs with the ideas of sign, object, and interpretant. I won’t go into it in any depth because I don’t get it. Beyond that though, growing out of that I guess, he developed his ideas about a general triadic logic as opposed to our normal dyadic, i.e. two factor, logic.
Peirce is identified as a pragmatist and a colleague of William James, whose ideas I find satisfying and helpful, so it seems like there must be something there. Here’s what Peirce wrote about his triadic system:
Firstness is the mode of being that of which is such as it is, positively and without reference to anything else.
Secondness is the mode of being that which is such as it is, with respect to a second but regardless of any third.
Thirdness is the mode of being that which is such as it is, in bringing a second and third into relation to each other.
This is from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Peirce:
Merely to say that Peirce was extremely fond of placing things into groups of three, of trichotomies, and of triadic relations, would fail miserably to do justice to the overwhelming obtrusiveness in his philosophy of the number three. Indeed, he made the most fundamental categories of all “things” of any sort whatsoever the categories of “Firstness,” “Secondness,” and “Thirdness,” and he often described “things” as being “firsts” or “seconds” or “thirds.” For example, with regard to the trichotomy “possibility,” “actuality,” and “necessity,” possibility he called a first, actuality he called a second, and necessity he called a third. Again: quality was a first, fact was a second, and habit (or rule or law) was a third. Again: entity was a first, relation was a second, and representation was a third. Again: rheme (by which Peirce meant a relation of arbitrary adicity or arity) was a first, proposition was a second, and argument was a third. The list goes on and on…
…If Peirce had a general technical rationale for his triadism, Peirce scholars have not yet made it abundantly clear what this rationale might be. He seemed to base his triadism on what he called “phaneroscopy,” by which word he meant the mere observation of phenomenal appearances. He regularly commented that the phenomena in the phaneron just do fall into three groups and that they just do display irreducibly triadic relations. He seemed to regard this matter as simply open for verification by direct inspection.
Although there are many examples of phenomena that do seem more or less naturally to divide into three groups, Peirce seems to have been driven by something more than mere examples in his insistence on applying his categories to almost everything imaginable…
…It is difficult to imagine even the most fervently devout of the passionate admirers of Peirce, of which there are many, saying that his account (or, more accurately, his various accounts) of the three universal categories is (or are) absolutely clear and compelling.
As usual in my discussions, soon enough I get around to bringing the Tao Te Ching into the discussion. This is from Verse 42, Paul Lin’s translation.
Tao begets One.
One begets Two.
Two begets Three.
Three begets all things.
This is a verse I’ve wrestled with too. This is what Wang Bi, a Chinese commentator from about 250 CE wrote about it. It’s also translated by Lin.
Myriad things have myriad shapes but return to the One. How can they become One? Because they are from nothingness. From nothingness comes One; this One may be called nothingness. Once it is called “One,” how can it not be described? Having One and describing it, are there not two? Having One and two, then there is three. From non-being to being, the numbers end here. From this point on, nothing flows from Tao.
Therefore regarding the birth of myriad things, I know their master [Tao]. Though with myriad shapes, they blend breaths into one. People have their hearts, different states have different customs, but One is obtained so kings and dukes become their masters. With One as their master, how can it be forsaken? The more One multiplies, the further are the people from it: to be diminished is to be near the One; to be diminished to the utmost is to reach the ultimate. Though it has been called “One,” it adds up to three. Those whose roots are more than One, can they be close to Tao? “To diminish it in order to augment it.” Are these merely words?
I recognize this post is somewhat scattershot, but that just reflects my own thinking on the issue. There is something about “3” that I’ve always felt and that I’m interested in beyond any specific philosophical purpose. Somehow I keep thinking it comes back to the three-legged stool.