Peirce, Charles Sanders

Peirce, Charles Sanders (pûrs), 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1859; son of Benjamin Peirce. Except for occasional lectures he renounced the regimen of academic life and was in government service with the Geodetic Survey for many years. Regarding logic as the beginning of all philosophical study, Peirce felt that the meaning of an idea was to be found in an examination of the consequences to which the idea would lead. This principle was published in 1878 in Popular Science Monthly, using the term pragmatism, which was later employed, with acknowledgment, by his friend William James.

A major thinker in a number of fields, Peirce is also recognized as the originator of the modern form of semiotics and the first American experimental psychologist. His influence is clearly seen in the works of Josiah Royce and John Dewey, but recognition of his importance was delayed because of the scarcity of published works. He had a difficult and tumultuous life, died in poverty, and left many fragmentary manuscripts. The only book published during his lifetime was Photometric Researches (1878), in which Peirce originated the technique of using light waves to measure length. His scientific interests had also led him to design an electric switching circuit computer. In all, Peirce made significant contributions to chemistry, physics, astronomy, geodesy, meteorology, engineering, cartography, psychology, philology, the history and philosophy of science and mathematics, phenomenology, and logic. After his death his major essays were edited by M. R. Cohen in Chance, Love, and Logic (1923).

Bibliography

See his collected papers (8 vol., 1931–58); selections of his letters, ed. by C. S. Hardwick (1977); biography by J. Brent (1993); studies by J. Buchler (1939, repr. 1966), M. G. Murphey (1961), A. J. Ayer (1968), J. K. Feibleman (1970), F. E. Reilly (1979), R. J. Bernstein, ed. (1965, repr. 1980), E. Freeman, ed. (1983), and J. Hoopes, ed. (1991).

---

Peirce, Charles Sanders

(born Sept. 10, 1839, Cambridge, Mass., U.S.—died April 19, 1914, near Milford, Pa.) U.S. scientist, logician, and philosopher. He was the son of the mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Peirce (1809–80). After attending Harvard University he spent 30 years with the U.S. Coast Guard Survey (1861–91). As a scientist, he is noted for his contributions to the theory of probability, the study of gravity, and the logic of scientific methodology. He eventually abandoned the physical sciences to study logic, which in its widest sense he identified with semiotics. He lectured on logic at Johns Hopkins University from 1879 to 1894, then spent the rest of his life writing in seclusion. He is regarded as the founder of pragmatism. Though he made eminent contributions to deductive logic, he was a student primarily of “the logic of science”—i.e., of induction and of “retroduction,” or “abduction,” the forming and accepting on probation of a hypothesis in order to explain surprising facts. His lifelong ambition was to establish induction and abduction as permanent branches of logic.

---

Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839–1914) philosopher, logician, mathematician; born in Cambridge, Mass. He was the son of Harvard mathematics professor, Benjamin Peirce; although his father early cultivated his intellectual abilities and he was obviously brilliant, he did not do all that well at Harvard. After a temporary post with the U.S. Coast Survey (1859), he remained associated with it for 30 years (1861–91). He performed important experiments with the pendulum and contributed to gravity theory, the use of the wavelength of light as a standard unit of measure, and to conformal map projections. He also lectured at Harvard (1864–65, 1869–70) and Johns Hopkins (1879–84), but his difficult presentations appealed only to the brightest students. Highly temperamental, careless in dress, unsociable to an extreme, he was divorced in 1883; when he inherited some money, he retired in 1887 to an isolated part of Pennsylvania, spending his time writing down his diverse and complex ideas; in his later years he turned to writing book reviews and encyclopedia entries to support himself. During his lifetime he published only one book, Photometric Researches (1879), but he produced a prodigious number of papers; his works were collected and published in eight volumes (1931–58). Not a systematic philosopher, he ranged over an incredible variety of topics and singlehandedly anticipated several of the main currents of modern logic, mathematics, and philosophy. He developed the work of the 19th-century Englishman, George Boole, to help lay the foundation of the logical basis of modern mathematics. He set forth ideas since regarded as the beginning of semiotics, the study of the use of signs and symbols. He is probably best known as one of the founders of pragmatism, the quintessentially American school of philosophy—the idea that the real value of any idea lies in its practical effects, its real consequences. Little known and less understood in his day, Peirce has come to be recognized as one of the most important of all American thinkers.

---

Peirce, Charles Sanders 

Born Sept. 10, 1839, in Cambridge, Mass.; died Apr. 19, 1914, in Milford, Pa. American idealist philosopher, logician, mathematician, and natural scientist. Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1877) and of the National Academy of Sciences (1879).

Son of the well-known American mathematician B. Peirce, Charles Peirce graduated from Harvard University in 1859. From 1866 to 1891, he was on the staff of the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey. He lectured on logic, history, and the philosophy of science at Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, and elsewhere.

Peirce’s philosophy combines two contradictory tendencies: the empirical and positivist tendency that derives from Kantian “criticism” and the objective-idealist tendency associated with Plato and F. W. Schelling. The basic scheme of Peirce’s ontolog-ical constructions is expressed by the following thesis: “Spirit is first, matter is second, and evolution is third.” Peirce criticized agnosticism, saying that an incognizable but real thing-in-itself is inherently contradictory. Yet at the same time he denied certainty of knowledge: “All our knowledge floats in the continuum of weak semblances and vagueness.”

Peirce gave primary importance to the problem of formation, reliability, and validity of scientific knowledge and opinion. In his view, the problem can be solved only if meaning is interpreted exclusively in terms of results: “Consider what effects, that might conceivably have practical bearings, we conceive the object of our conception to have. Then, our conception of those effects is the whole of our conception of the object” (Collected Papers, vol. 5, Cambridge, Mass., 1934, paragraph 402). This principle of Peirce’s received further development in the idealist conceptions of pragmatism; indeed, the term “pragmatism” was introduced into philosophy by Peirce. Thus, following Peirce, W. James went on to identify truth directly with practical results, with utility.

Peirce’s principal achievements were in mathematical logic and semiotics. In mathematical logic, he investigated the concept of degree of confirmation, worked on the classification of propositions and arguments, studied the nature of logic and the relationship between logic and mathematics, investigated the limits and possibilities of formalization, and discovered minimal systems of logical operations through which the remaining operations can be expressed. Semiotics, which studies all sign systems used in human collectives, was essentially created as a science by Peirce.

WORKS

The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce, vols. 1–8. Cambridge, Mass., 1931–58.

REFERENCES

Mel’vil’, Iu. K. Filosofiia Ch. S. Pirsa. Moscow, 1964.
Stiazhkin, N. I. Formirovanie matematicheskoi logiki. Moscow, 1967.
Basin, E. Ia. Semanticheskaia filosofiia iskusstva. Moscow, 1973. Chapter 9.
Thompson, M. The Pragmatic Philosophy of C. S. Peirce. Chicago, 1963.
Gallie, W. B. Peirce and Pragmatism [2nd ed.]. New York, 1966.
Goudge, T. A. The Thought of C. S. Peirce. Toronto, 1950.
Dobrosielski, M. Filozoficzny pragmatyzm C. S. Peirce’a. Warsaw, 1967.
Feibleman, J. K. Introduction to the Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce. Cambridge, Mass.-London, 1970.

I. S. DOBRONRAVOV