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Charles Sanders Peirce 1839–1914

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Vincent G. Potter SJ
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Extract

I am honoured and pleased to address you this evening on the life and work of an extraordinary American thinker, Charles Sanders Peirce. Although Peirce is perhaps most often remembered as the father of the philosophical movement known as pragmatism, I would like to impress upon you that he was also, and perhaps, especially, a logician, a working scientist and a mathematician. During his life time Peirce most often referred to himself, and was referred to by his colleagues, as a logician. Furthermore, Peirce spent thirty years actively engaged in scientific research for the US Coast Survey. The National Archives in Washington, DC, holds some five thousand pages of Peirce's reports on this work. Finally, the four volumes of Peirce's mathematical papers edited by Professor Carolyn Eisele eloquently testify to his contributions to that field as well.

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Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 19: American Philosophy , March 1985 , pp. 21 - 41
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1985

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References

1 See Fisch, Max H., ‘Peirce as Scientist, Mathematician, Historian, Logician and Philosopher’, Proceedings of the C. S. Peirce Bicentennial International Congress, No. 23 Graduate Studies (Lubbock: Texas Tech University, 09 1981), 13–34.Google Scholar I want to thank Professor Fisch for his help in preparing this talk. His suggestions and leads to material, historical and philosophical, were invaluable. See Eisele, Carolyn, Studies in the Scientific and Mathematical Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce, Martin, Richard M. (ed.) (The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton, 1979), 386 pp.Google Scholar See The New Elements of Mathematics by Charles S. Peirce, 4 vols (5 books), Eisele, Carolyn (ed.) (The Hague, Paris, New York: Mouton, 1976)Google Scholar, for Peirce's works on mathematics.

2 See Smith, John E., The Spirit of American Philosophy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1963), vii–xi.Google Scholar

3 See Riley, Woodbridge, American Thought: from Puritanism to Pragmatism and Beyond (New York: Peter Smith, 1941), 240–253.Google Scholar

4 See Fisch, Max H., ‘The Range of Peirce's Relevance’, The Relevance of Charles Peirce, Freeman, Eugene (ed.) (La Salle, Ill.: Monist Library of Philosophy, 1983), 11–37.Google Scholar

5 Faris, J. A., ‘C. S. Peirce's Existential Graphs’, Bulletin of the Institute of Mathematics and Its Application 17 (11/12 1981), 232.Google Scholar

6 Thus, for example, in 1976 a two-volume German translation of Peirce by Gerd Wartenberg appeared in Frankfurt. Karl-Otto Apel edited that edition and wrote extensive introductory material. In 1981 an English translation of Apel's book on Peirce, From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism appeared in the United States. Finally, it may be surprising that the President of C. S. Peirce Society for the year 1982–83 was Klaus Oehler of Hamburg University, himself a translator of Peirce. No doubt there are many and varied reasons why Peirce has attracted the attention of German thinkers. Apel's reason I find fascinating. He sees Peirce's pragmatism, as distinct from James' and Dewey's, as a dialogue partner for Marxism and from which Marxism has something important to learn. He uses the unusual term ‘logical Socialism’ to characterize Peirce's theory of inquiry, emphasizing as it does the community of investigators. One wonders whether Apel is searching for an alternative to Marxist ‘dogmatic’ and unconditioned predictions about the course of history. It might surprise some Americans, I dare say, to think that some aspects of their indigenous philosophy are close enough to Marxism to be an interesting alternative for ‘a public, emancipatory mediation of theory and praxis’. Hegel, through Kant, however, is pragmatism's and Marxism's common ancestor. See, Charles Sanders Peirce: Schriften zum Pragmatismus und Pragmatizismus, 2nd edn, Apel, Karl-Otto (ed.), trans. Wartenberg, Gerd (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1976)Google Scholar; Apel, Karl-Otto, Charles S. Peirce: From Pragmatism to Pragmaticism, trans, by Krois, M. (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1981)Google Scholar; Charles S. Peirce: Ueber die Klarheit unserer Gedanken, trans, by Oehler, Klaus (ed.) (Frankfurt a/M: Vittorio Klostermann, 1968).Google Scholar

7 James, William, Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (Cambridge, Mass., and London, England: Harvard University Press, 1975), 10.Google Scholar

8 The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, Vols I–VI, Hartshorne, Charles and Weiss, Paul (eds.) (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1960)Google Scholar; Vols VII–VIII, Arthur Burks (ed.) (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1958). I will use the standard convention for reference to these volumes, namely, CP followed by volume and paragraph number: e.g. CP 5.12.

9 Writings of Charles S. Peirce: A Chronological Edition, Vol. 1 (1857–1866)Google Scholar and Vol. 2 (1867–1871) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1982, 1984). The convention for citing from this new Peirce Project Edition is W + arabic volume number + page: e.g. W 1, 12–20.

10 See Weiss, Paul, ‘Charles Sanders Peirce’, Dictionary of American Biography (1934), Vol. 14, 398–403Google Scholar, for an account of Peirce's difficult character and of his divorce in 1883 from his first wife, Harriet Melusina Fay, and his remarriage to the French woman Juliette Froissy. At about this time Peirce was notified that his appointment at the Johns Hopkins University where he was a part-time logic instructor (the only regular academic post he held) would not be renewed. He retired to the small Pennsylvania town of Milford where he lived in virtual academic isolation until his death from cancer in 1914.

11 Most of the biographical material which follows comes from the following works of Fisch, Max: ‘Peirce as Scientist, Mathematician, Historian, Logician, and Philosopher’, Proceedings of the C. S. Peirce Bicentennial International Congress, 13–34Google Scholar (cf. note 1); ‘The Range of Peirce's Relevance’, The Relevance of Charles Peirce, 11–37Google Scholar (cf. note 4); ‘Introduction’, Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Vol. 1, xv–xxxvGoogle Scholar (cf. note 9); ‘Introduction’, Writings of Charles S. Peirce, Vol. 2, xxi–xxxviGoogle Scholar; ‘Supplement: A Chronicle of Pragmaticism, 1865–1879’, The Monist 48 (07 1964), 441–466.Google Scholar

12 Edward L. Youmans, editor of the Popular Science Monthly, writing from London to his sister in the United States on 29 October, 1877, reports Clifford's remark. Cited by Fisch in ‘Supplement’, op. cit. (note 11), 461.Google Scholar

13 One would infer that Peirce would not have much sympathy with James, ' ‘Sentiment of Rationality’.Google Scholar

14 See Faris, op. cit. (note 5), and Roberts, Don, The Existential Graphs of Charles S. Peirce (The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1973).Google Scholar

15 Semiotic and Signifies: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby, Hardwick, Charles S. (ed.) (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977), 114–115.Google Scholar

16 Abbot, Francis E., Scientific Theism (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1885).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See Boler, John, ‘Peirce, Ockham and Scholastic Realism’, The Relevance of Charles Peirce, 93–106Google Scholar; Charles Peirce and Scholastic Realism (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1963).Google Scholar See also Raposa, Michael L., ‘Habits and Essences’, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 20 (Spring 1984), 147–167.Google Scholar

18 See Potter, Vincent G. SJ, Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968), 8–24Google Scholar, for a discussion of Peirce's categories.

19 James, William, Pragmatism, dedication.Google Scholar

20 ‘Supplement’, The Monist, 450.Google Scholar

21 Whewell's major works on inductive method were History of the Inductive Sciences first published in 1837 and The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, founded upon their History first published in 1840. Both went through several editions. For good accounts of Whewell's controversy with Mill, see Strong, E. W., ‘William Whewell and John Stuart Mill: Their Controversy about Scientific Knowledge’, Journal of the History of Ideas 16 (1955), 209–231CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Ducasse, C. J., ‘Whewell's Philosophy of Scientific Discovery’, Philosophical Review 60 (1951), 56–69, 213–234.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

22 Those treatises are: The Senses and the Intellect (1855)Google Scholar and The Emotions and the Will (1859).Google Scholar A one-volume abridgement appeared in 1868 under the title Mental Science. For a careful historical study of what and how the members of the ‘Metaphysical Club’, at Cambridge at whose meetings Peirce first formulated pragmatism, knew about Bain's definition of belief, see Fisch, Max H., ‘Alexander Bain and the Genealogy of Pragmatism’, Journal of the History of Ideas 13 (06 1954), 413–444CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on which I heavily depend for my presentation.

23 CP 5.429, 8.256.

24 CP 5.394–402.

25 CP 5.213–357; W 2,193–272.

26 Fisch, , ‘Alexander Bain’, 438–442Google Scholar, for discussion of Peirce's pre- and post-Bain approach to knowing.

27 James, William, ‘Philosophical Conceptions and Practical Results’, The University Chronical (Berkeley, California, 09 1898)Google Scholar; reprinted in Collected Essays and Reviews (1920), 406–437.Google Scholar

28 Potter, Vincent G., ‘Peirce's Pragmatic Maxim’, Tijdschrift voor Filosofie 35 (09 1973), 505–517Google Scholar, where I develop the differences between Peirce and James at some length.

29 James, , ‘Philosophical Conceptions’, 412.Google Scholar

30 Kant, , Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (Leipzig: Modes und Baumann, 1839), Vorrede.Google Scholar

31 I have discussed vagueness in ‘C. S. Peirce's Argument for God's Reality: A Pragmatist's View’, The Papin Festschrift: Wisdom and Knowledge (Villanova: The Villanova University Press, 1976), 229–230Google Scholar; and in my book On Norms and Ideals, 89–90Google Scholar; see, CP 5.505–508, 5.447–408, 3.93–94; 2.357.

32 See CP 5.475–493. Peirce gives here a long explanation of what he means by ‘interpretant’. He distinguishes three interpretants: emotional, energetic and logical. The emotional is the feeling produced by the sign; the energetic is the effort, mental or physical, elicited by the sign; and the logical is the sign's rational purport. The pragmatic maxim is meant to clarify a sign's rational purport. Pierce concludes that the final logical interpretant of a concept can only be a habit (not another concept, not a desire, not an expectation). Action is not a logical interpretant either. It is thought's energetic interpretant (hence there is a connection between thought and action) but it is not thought's rational purport precisely because it lacks generality.

33 See Smith, , Spirit of American Philosophy, 13–17.Google Scholar

34 Even if we suppose this assessment is correct, to be fair to James we should admit that Peirce's first exposition of pragmatism in the 1878 article ‘How to Make Our Ideas Clear’ was open to such an interpretation. There he analysed ‘hardness’ according to the pragmatic maxim (CP 5.403ff.). The results were misleading and later rejected. Imagine a diamond crystallized within soft cotton where it remains until completely burned up. No other substance is ever rubbed against it. Would it be false to say that the diamond was soft? Peirce answers that it would not be incorrect or even false to call it soft since nothing prevents us from saying that all bodies remain soft until they are touched when their hardness increases with the pressure until they are scratched. Such modes of speech ‘would involve a modification of our present usage of speech with respect to the words hard and soft, but not of their meaning. For they represent no fact to be different from what it is’ (CP 5.403). This passage might be understood in a nominalist or even positivist sense. Again writing to Calderoni, Peirce admitted: ‘I myself went too far in the direction of nominalism when I said that it was a mere question of the convenience of speech whether we say that a diamond is hard when it is not pressed upon, or whether we say that it is soft until it is pressed upon. I now say that experiment will prove that the diamond is hard, as a positive fact. That is, it is a real fact that it would resist pressure, which amounts to extreme scholastic realism. I deny that pragmatism as originally defined by me made the intellectual purport of symbols to consist in our conduct. On the contrary, I was most careful to say that it consists in our concept of what our conduct would be upon conceivable occasions’ (CP 8.208). The passage is nominalistic then because it tends to identify the real with the actual. The meaning of ‘hardness’ is in the actual resistance of the diamond to pressure. Potentiality in the diamond to resist pressure is only a linguistic usage not a matter of a real fact where ‘real’ means not a figment of mind. Peirce would later (after 1903) put the matter this way: ‘would-be's’ are real even though they cannot be reduced to ‘is's’ (if I might be allowed to coin a barbarous expression). ‘Wouldbe's’ consist in a reference to the future (esse in futuro, as Peirce would say) and as such are general and no number of actual cases exhausts their meaning. Even though Peirce maintained in his letter to Calderoni that he did not intend to fall back into nominalism, none the less the example was unfortunate and could easily have been so understood. And if, mind you if, James was in fact a nominalist already, it is understandable why he attributed to Peirce his own interpretation which Peirce found unacceptable.

35 Yet see CP 5.38 for a passage in which Peirce denies any conscious influence of Hegel upon his thought.