Comment: Theories of Difference in the 20th Century: Spencer-Brown's Contribution

摘要

Spencer-Browns Calculus of Forms is based on an elementary operation, distinction. Reading this effort as a contribution to philosophy, means to concentrate on the concept of distinction. In this perspective, the first step must be to question the abstraction of a form of distinction. Our practices of distinguishing are manifold and at least four practices of distinguishing play an elementary role in common sense and scientific life: first distinguishing in a narrower sense as contrasting two or more sides, second dividing, third determining and fourth differentiating. The article shows, that Spencer-Brown identifies the form of distinction with the practice of determining. This procedure is dependent on a philosophical development of the net of practices of distinguishing, their interrelations and dependencies. The theories of difference and their most important philosophical sources, like Platos Sophist, provide arguments for this task.