Charles Sanders Peirce
Charles Sanders Peirce (1839 â 1914)[1] was an American logician, mathematician, philosopher, scientist and Polymath. William James and other pragmatists credited Peirce as Pragmatism's founder. Peirce eventually distinguished his own version as "Pragmaticism". He held that a conception's meaning is general and does not boil down to its actual consequences (or "cash value") but consists in the conceived object's conceivable practical consequences. He disagreed with other Pragmatists over what he called their "angry hatred of strict logic" and their views that, among other things, "truth is mutable" and "infinity is unreal".[2]. For a while he was a professor at the new graduate university, Johns Hopkins. There he taught logic to John Dewey, who became a leader of the liberal wing of pragmatism. Peirce himself was quite conservative when it came to social and economic issues.[3]
Career
Peirce was home-schooled by his father, Benjamin Peirce, a Harvard professor and the nation's leading mathematician. Benjamin especially taught Charles how to solve increasingly complex math and logic problems. He graduated from Harvard College in 1859 with mediocre grades; he later earned degrees in chemistry and biology with distinction. He became a research scientist with the United States Coast Survey, 1861-1891, doing research on gravity. At the same time he taught and did research at Harvard in logic and astronomy.
His erratic behavior meant that he was unable to obtain permanent academic appointments. He and his second wife Juliette lived in a remote area near Milford, Pennsylvania.
Logic
In logic Peirce was the first American to take up George Boole's program to find the mathematical laws of logic--a program that began modern logic. Peirce made numerous major contributions from 1866 to 1914. His technical papers of 1867 to 1885 established him as the greatest formal logician in the world, and the influential in the period from Boole to Ernst Schroeder. Peirce's papers were extremely difficult, but Schroeder explicated them and they became well known in the field.
Peirce radically modified, extended, and transformed Boolean algebra, making it applicable to propositions, relations, probability, and arithmetic. Following De Morgan, Peirce laid the foundations of the logic of relations, the key technique for the logical analysis of mathematics. He invented the copula symbol of inclusion, the most important symbol in the logic of classes. Peirce invented two new logical algebras, two new systems of logical graphs, discovered the link between the logic of classes and the logic of propositions, was the first to give the fundamental principle for the logical development of mathematics, and made fundamental contributions to probability theory, induction, and the logic of scientific methodology. Peirce wrote an elaborate book on advanced logic but could not get it published.
Pragmatism
Pragmatism allows ideas to have any origin; what matters is not where we got an idea from but where we can go with it. In the case of science the usefulness of an idea includes reliability and fruitfulness. "Fruitfulness" does not mean practical utility but, rather, the opening up of original lines of successful research.As reliability is to truth, so fruitfulness is to depth and breadth of understanding. The test of truth and fruitfulness lies in the future. Truth, for the pragmatist, depends on our developing the implications of ideas so that we can find ways of applying them experimentally.[4]
Further reading
- Brent, Joseph. Charles Sanders Peirce: A Life (1998) excerpt and text search
- Houser, Nathan. "Charles S. Peirce", the Peirce Edition Project, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis online edition.
- Peirce Edition Project editors, "Chronology" (of Peirce's life), Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, online edition.
- Short, Thomas. "The Conservative Pragmatism of Charles Peirce," Modern Age Volume 43, Number 4; Fall 2001 online edition pdf. Non-pdf online edition at First Principles.
- Weiss, Paul. "Peirce, Charles Sanders" Dictionary of American Biography (1935)
Primary sources
- Peirce, Charles Sanders. Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotics (1991) excerpt and text search
- Peirce, Charles Sanders. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings, 1893-1913 ed. Nathan Houser, and Jonathan R. Eller (2vol 1992-98) excerpt and text search; online edition
- Peirce, Charles Sanders. Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (6 vol.) electronic version
Notes
- â pronounced "purse"
- â Peirce, C.S. (1908), "A Neglected Argument for the Reality of God", Hibbert Journal vol. 7, pp. 90-112. Reprinted in Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce vol. 6, paragraphs 452-485 and The Essential Peirce vol. 2, pp.434-450.
- â See Short (2001)
- â See Short (2001)