Peirce, Charles Sanders (pûrs), 1839–1914, American philosopher and polymath, b. Cambridge, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1859; son of Benjamin Peirce Peirce, Benjamin, 1809–80, American mathematician and astronomer, b. Salem, Mass., grad. Harvard, 1829. From 1833 he was a professor at Harvard; he helped establish the Harvard Observatory and was an organizer of the Dudley Observatory, Albany, N.Y.
..... Click the link for more information. . 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 pragmatism (prăg`mətĭzəm)
..... Click the link for more information. , which was later employed, with acknowledgment, by his friend William James James, William, 1842–1910, American philosopher, b. New York City, M.D. Harvard, 1869; son of the Swedenborgian theologian Henry James and brother of the novelist Henry James .
..... Click the link for more information. .

A major thinker in a number of fields, Peirce is also recognized as the originator of the modern form of semiotics semiotics or semiology, discipline deriving from the American logician C. S. Peirce and the French linguist Ferdinand de Saussure . It has come to mean generally the study of any cultural product (e.g., a text) as a formal system of signs.
..... Click the link for more information. and the first American experimental psychologist. His influence is clearly seen in the works of Josiah Royce Royce, Josiah, 1855–1916, American philosopher, b. California, grad. Univ. of California, 1873. After studying in Germany and at Johns Hopkins, he returned to California to teach (1878–82).
..... Click the link for more information. and John Dewey Dewey, John, 1859–1952, American philosopher and educator, b. Burlington, Vt., grad. Univ. of Vermont, 1879, Ph.D. Johns Hopkins, 1884. He taught at the universities of Minnesota (1888–89), Michigan (1884–88, 1889–94), and Chicago
..... Click the link for more information. , 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.