Peirce Charles S. - Peirce: a guide for the perplexed

Peirce

GUIDES FOR THE PERPLEXED

Guides for the Perplexed are clear, concise, and accessible introductions to thinkers, writers, and subjects that students and readers can find especially challenging. Concentrating specifically on what it is that makes the subject difficult to grasp, these books explain and explore key themes and ideas, guiding the reader toward a thorough understanding of demanding material.

Adorno: A Guide for the Perplexed , Alex Thomson

Aquinas: A Guide for the Perplexed , Pater S. Eardley and Carl N. Still

Arendt: A Guide for the Perplexed , Karin Fry

Aristotle: A Guide for the Perplexed , John Vella

Augustine: A Guide for the Perplexed , James Wetzel

Bentham: A Guide for the Perplexed , Philip Schofield

Berkeley: A Guide for the Perplexed , Talia Bettcher

Deleuze: A Guide for the Perplexed , Claire Colebrook

Derrida: A Guide for the Perplexed , Julian Wolfreys

Descartes: A Guide for the Perplexed , Justin Skirry

The Empiricists: A Guide for the Perplexed , Laurence Carlin

Existentialism: A Guide for the Perplexed, Stephen Earnshaw

Freud: A Guide for the Perplexed , Celine Surprenant

Gadamer: A Guide for the Perplexed , Chris Lawn

Habermas: A Guide for the Perplexed , Lasse Thomassen

Hegel: A Guide for the Perplexed , David James

Heidegger: A Guide for the Perplexed , David Cerbone

Hobbes: A Guide for the Perplexed , Stephen J. Finn

Hume: A Guide for the Perplexed , Angela Coventry

Husserl: A Guide for the Perplexed , Matheson Russell

Kant: A Guide for the Perplexed , TK Seung

Kierkegaard: A Guide for the Perplexed , Clare Carlisle

Leibniz: A Guide for the Perplexed , Franklin Perkins

Levinas: A Guide for the Perplexed , B. C. Hutchens

Locke: A Guide for the Perplexed , Patricia Sheridan

Marx: A Guide for the Perplexed , John Sheed

Merleau-Ponty: A Guide for the Perplexed , Eric Matthews

Nietzsche: A Guide for the Perplexed , R. Kevin Hill

Plato: A Guide for the Perplexed , Gerald A. Press

Pragmatism: A Guide for the Perplexed , Robert B. Talisse and Scott F. Aikin

Quine: A Guide for the Perplexed , Gary Kemp

Relativism: A Guide for the Perplexed , Timothy Mosteller

Ricoeur: A Guide for the Perplexed , David Pellauer

Rousseau: A Guide for the Perplexed , Matthew Simpson

Sartre: A Guide for the Perplexed , Gary Cox

Schopenhauer: A Guide for the Perplexed , R. Raj Singh

Socrates: A Guide for the Perplexed , Sara Ahbel-Rappe

Spinoza: A Guide for the Perplexed , Charles Jarrett

The Stoics: A Guide for the Perplexed , M. Andrew Holowchak

Utilitarianism: A Guide for the Perplexed , Krister Bykvist

A GUIDE FOR THE PERPLEXED

Peirce

CORNELIS DE WAAL

Bloomsbury Academic

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

www.bloomsbury.com

First published 2013

Cornelis de Waal, 2013

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

Cornelis de Waal has asserted his right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as Author of this work.

No responsibility for loss caused to any individual or organization acting on or refraining from action as a result of the material in this publication can be accepted by Bloomsbury Academic or the author.

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ePub ISBN: 978-1-4411-4327-3

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

De Waal, Cornelis.

Peirce: a guide for the perplexed/Cornelis de Waal. First [edition].

pages cm (Guides for the perplexed)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-84706-515-5 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-84706-516-2 (paperback) ISBN 978-1-4411-9862-4 (ebook pdf) (print) 1. Peirce, Charles S. (Charles Sanders), 18391914. I. Title.

B945.P44D385 2013

191dc23

2012020371

Typeset by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India

For Kelly, Livvy,
and Sophia Arisbe

CONTENTS

CN volume: page. Charles Sanders Peirce: Contributions to The Nation. 4 Vols. Kenneth L. Ketner and James E. Cook, eds Lubbock, 197587.

CP volume: paragraph. The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce . 8 Vols. Vols. 16, ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss. Vols. 78, ed. Arthur W. Burks. Cambridge, Mass., 193158.

EP volume: page. The Essential Peirce: Selected Philosophical Writings . 2 Vols. Vol. 1. ed.. Peirce Edition Project. Bloomington, 199298.

HPPLS volume: page.. 2 Vols. ed. Carolyn Eisele. The Hague, 1985.

NEM volume: page. The New Elements of Mathematics , 4 Vols. in 5. ed. Carolyn Eisele. The Hague, 1976.

PM Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Writings. ed. , 2010.

R followed by Robin catalogue and sheet number. Manuscripts held in the Houghton Library of Harvard University, as identified by Richard Robin, 7 (1971): 3757.

RLT Reasoning and the Logic of Things: The Cambridge Conferences Lectures of 1898 , ed. Kenneth L. Ketner. Cambridge, Mass., 1992.

SS Semiotic and Significs: The Correspondence between Charles S. Peirce and Victoria Lady Welby , ed. Charles S. Hardwick. Bloomington, 1977.

W volume: page. The Writings of Charles S. Peirce , ed. The Peirce Edition Project, 7 Vols. to date. Bloomington, 19822010.

In the early morning of 29 December 1914, a young graduate student from Harvard and a local farmer with a droopy moustache sped on a horse-drawn sled to the Port Jervis train station. They carried with them roughly a thousand books and two heavy crates of manuscripts that belonged to the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce (pronounced purse) who had died that spring. The two crates of manuscripts would establish Peirce as one of the great Western philosophers. During his life, Peirce was highly regarded as a scientist and as a logician, but not too much was known of his philosophy, as most of it had remained unpublished.

Charles Peirce was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on 10 September 1839, as the second son of the renowned mathematician and astronomer Benjamin Peirce. Charles Peirce (hereafter referred to as Peirce the focus of this book) was far from a bookish philosopher and the scope of his work is staggering. He did pioneering work on the magnitude of stars and the form of the Milky Way. He worked extensively determining the exact shape of the earth, designing instruments, and improving methodologies. He invented a new map projection that gave a world map with a minimum distortion of the distance between any two points. He was a pioneer in mathematical logic and mathematical economy, did important work on Shakespearean pronunciation, engaged in experimental psychology, wrote several books on logic and mathematics (none of which were published), gave lectures on the history of science, developed a bleaching process for wood pulp, wrote on spelling reform, made calculations for a suspension bridge over the Hudson river, and was the first to use a wavelength of light to determine the exact length of the meter. Almost as an aside, in a short letter to his former student Alan Marquand, Peirce invented the electronic switching-circuit computeruntil then computing machines had been wholly mechanical (W5:42123). However, none of these accomplishments really helped Peirce, who died in abject poverty and almost completely forgotten in a small town called Milford, Pennsylvania, on 19 April 1914. Peirce was survived only by his second wife (whose identity is still a mystery) and by a disarray of over a hundred thousand manuscript pages. The American philosopher Josiah Royce, who was deeply indebted to Peirces thought, worked hard to raise money for Peirces papers and library, and for the less than impressive sum of five hundred dollars the books and papers went to Harvard, first by sled and then by train. Though the process of getting Peirces unpublished writings into print is slow and not without controversy, it is already undeniable that he is a philosopher of great magnitude whose writings are bound to significantly alter the philosophical landscape.