Tullio Viola - Peirce on the Uses of History: The Legacy of a Realist

This book examines the relation between philosophy and history in the work of Charles S. Peirce. It asks, in particular, to what extent Peirce allowed history to have a bearing on philosophy. To do so, it follows two paths. It examines those philosophical arguments that deal, directly or indirectly, with the role of history. And it looks at Peirces own historical inquiries.

It is often recalled that Peirce was a philosopher-polymath, and that his style of philosophizing cannot be understood if one does not take into account his interest in logic, mathematics, and the experimental sciences, as well as his attempt to conceive of philosophy as being contiguous with scientific inquiry. This book starts from a kindred observation: Peirces interest in history is a fundamental component of his scientific and philosophical profile. Peirce started cultivating historical interests very early in his life, in parallel with his engagement with the experimental sciences. Later on, he started writing firsthand historical works. Though his focus was the history of science, he made some forays into other areas of historical learning as well. But how did he conceive of the link between these historical interests and his work as a philosopher? Peirce neither asked nor answered this question unambiguously. This book is devoted to spelling out the precise terms of the problem and to exploring its most significant implications.

Peirces sensitivity to history displays two sides. On the one hand, his historical writings testify to an eager intellectual interest that cannot be discarded as the mere by-product of an eclectic mind. On the other hand, these writings are not even close to being as systematic or comprehensive as other branches of Peirces production. Peirce was neither a fully-fledged philosopher of history nor a mature, first-rank historian. But he made excellent contributions to both fields of study. Likewise, his observations about the relation between history and philosophy are often penetrating and original. Still, they give the reader the impression of being left underdeveloped, especially when compared to the painstaking detail with which Peirce worked out other segments of his system.

I believe that this tension can be ascribed to at least three main sources. The first source is biographical. In the last three decades of his life, Peirce was an increasingly secluded scholar. His work displays the traits of the brilliant outsider, able to shed new light on difficult issues, but also idiosyncratic in his judgment and isolated from the scholarly community. This fact is reflected in the uneven quality of his historical writing.

A second source is philosophical. Peirces style of work is characterized by a propensity to tackle philosophical issues by taking as seriously as possible the arguments on both sides. The highly sophisticated and original positions he developed on many epistemological, logical and metaphysical issues owe much to this ability. But in some cases, his inclination to look at both sides of the matter stopped just short of culminating in a truly successful synthesis. The question of whether history may have a bearing on philosophy is, I believe, one such case. Peirce seems to oscillate between a more liberal and a more restrictive answer to this question, and the relation between his historical inquiries and his philosophical activity is therefore never free of tension.

Finally, a third source is Peirces willingness to experiment with a plurality of ways in which history can become relevant to philosophy, as well as with different methodological strategies to study the human past. One such strategy is highly metaphysical and speculative. It consists in putting forth sweeping generalizations about the dynamics of historical progress. Peirces tormented relation with Hegel is pivotal in understanding this aspect of his work, as is his complex allegiance to evolutionism. However, another methodological strategy is seemingly opposite to the first. It hinges on erudite research, on philological and archival work, on the quintessentially antiquarian love for those traces of the past that are apparently devoid of interest. We will see throughout the book, moreover, that these two strategies are just the poles of a complex spectrum of methodological approaches that coexist in Peirces oeuvre.

This pluralism might be taken for a weakness of Peirces philosophy. However, I am more interested in the flip side of this argument. Peirces work is significant precisely because it offers a blueprint to investigate the complexity and ramifications of the philosophy of history and historiography. Moreover, his broaching the problem both from the viewpoint of the philosopher and from that of the historian enhances the significance of his reflections for different communities of scholars. Given the disciplinary focus of his writings, one such community is, quite naturally, that of historians and philosophers of science. But Peirces ideas will turn out to be equally relevant to philosophers of history, historians, and social scientists at large.

Born a few years after the death of Hegel, Peirce lived through a period in which philosophy experienced a profound transformation. Philosophers faced new and unprecedented challenges coming from the burgeoning field of social and human sciences, but also from the revolutionary import of Darwins theory of evolution. The epochal contribution of Hegel to the philosophy of history was soon challenged by those historicist thinkers who looked at history as an empirical, non-speculative enterprise.