Charles Sanders Peirce

American philosopher

• Born: September 10, 1839
• Birthplace: Cambridge, Massachusetts
• Died: April 19, 1914
• Place of death: Near Milford, Pennsylvania

Although he was largely unrecognized by his contemporaries—apart from his contribution to pragmatism—Peirce developed a system of philosophy that attempted to reconcile the nineteenth century’s faith in empirical science with its love of the metaphysical absolute. His difficult and often confusing ideas anticipated problems central to twentieth century philosophy.

Early Life

Charles Sanders Peirce was the son of Benjamin Peirce, one of the foremost American mathematicians. During his childhood, his mother, Sarah Hunt (Mills) Peirce, took second place to his dynamic father, who personally supervised the boy’s education and provided a role model that inspired but also proved impossible to emulate. Convinced of his son’s genius, Benjamin Peirce encouraged his precocious development. Charles began the study of chemistry at the age of eight, started an intense scrutiny of logic at twelve, and faced rigorous training in mathematics throughout his childhood. In the latter case, he was seldom given general principles or theorems. Instead, he was expected to work them out on his own.

At sixteen, Peirce entered Harvard, where his father was professor of mathematics. Contrary to expectations, Peirce proved a less than brilliant student, and he was graduated, in 1859, seventy-first out of a class of ninety-one. Probably too young and certainly too much the nonconformist to fit into the rigid educational system of nineteenth century Harvard, Peirce’s inauspicious beginning in institutional academics was prophetic. Though he would continue his education, receiving a master’s degree from Harvard in 1862 and a bachelor’s degree in chemistry the following year, his future did not lead to a distinguished career in academics or, indeed, in any conventional pursuit. His lot in life, in spite of so much promise, was frustration and apparent failure.

Peirce’s difficulty in adjusting to the world of ordinary men was related to his unusual and often trying personality. Always his father’s favorite, Peirce became convinced of his own genius and impatient with those who failed to recognize the obvious. Shielded and overindulged as a child, Peirce never developed the social skills required for practical affairs nor the self-discipline necessary to make his own grandiose vision a reality. Such problems were exaggerated by his passion for perfection and his abstract turn of mind. Peirce found real happiness only in the rarefied world of his own philosophical speculation.

As a youth, Peirce both attracted and repelled. Always prone to the dramatic gesture and, when he was inclined, a brilliant conversationalist, he could be an entertaining companion, but he could also use his rapier wit as a weapon. Of medium height, dark, swarthy, and fastidious in matters of dress, the handsome young Peirce reveled in his reputation as a lady’s man and spent much energy in seeking the “good life.” He actually paid an expert to train his palate so that he could become a connoisseur of fine wines. In 1862, Peirce married Harriet Melusina Fay, three years his senior and infinitely more mature and self-possessed. A feminist and intellectual in her own right, “Zina” worshipped her captive “genius” and labored for years to keep him out of serious trouble while restraining his extravagance. However, she could also be jealous and possessive, and, though Peirce would experience some stability under Zina’s influence, the marriage was doomed.

Life’s Work

Upon his graduation from Harvard, Peirce went to work for the United States Coast and Geodetic Survey, a position acquired through his father’s influence. Benjamin Peirce served as a consulting geometer for the organization and became its superintendent in 1867. Charles Peirce remained with the survey in various capacities until 1891, when he was asked to resign. This bureaucratic career, while terminated in less-than-desirable circumstances, was not without accomplishments. His deep commitment to the experimental method helped put the survey on a firm scientific basis, and Peirce himself became internationally known for his work on gravity research.

Peirce also continued an association with Harvard, once again through his father’s influence, holding temporary lectureships in logic in 1865-1866 and 1869-1870 and from 1872 to 1875 serving as assistant at the Harvard Observatory. His observatory work on the measurement of light provided data for the only book he published during his lifetime, Photometric Researches (1878). Peirce hoped for a permanent appointment at Harvard, but his lack of a doctoral degree, his erratic lifestyle, and a typically personal quarrel with Harvard president Charles W. Eliot made the dream impossible.

More important than Peirce’s actual work, the atmosphere and personal contacts at Harvard helped mold his philosophical outlook. Never idle, Peirce spent his spare time studying the work of Immanuel Kant, the ideas of the medieval scholastics, and various theories in logic and mathematics. The most useful forum for his developing ideas was the so-called Metaphysical Club.

In the meetings of this unusual group, which included William James, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., Francis E. Abbot, and Chauncey Wright, among others, Peirce had the opportunity to test his theories before a critical audience. It was there that he used the term “pragmatism” to describe the relationship between a conception and its effects that allows one to understand the actual meaning of the original conception by knowing its effects. Although Peirce intended his idea as a theory of meaning, William James, more than twenty years later, would popularize the term and expand it far beyond the original intention. In fact, objecting to his friend’s interpretation, Peirce, in 1905, coined the term “pragmaticism” to distinguish his thought from James’s version.

In his Harvard years, Peirce began to write articles for The Journal of Speculative Philosophy and other scholarly publications, as well as more popular magazines such as Popular Science Monthly. Such articles, along with numerous book reviews, provided his major public outlet for the remainder of his life. Ignored by much of the philosophical community, these writings contained important contributions to logic, mathematics, and metaphysics.

Peirce finally got his chance to teach when he was hired as a part-time lecturer at Johns Hopkins University in 1879. Apparently an effective teacher, he produced some of his best work in logic and scientific methodology at Johns Hopkins. However, his erratic behavior, coupled with his divorce from his first wife and remarriage to a twenty-six-year-old French woman, the mysterious Mme Juliette Pourtalai, made it difficult for the authorities to accept him, no matter how brilliant, as part of the faculty. In 1884, Peirce was dismissed from his position because of unsuitable activities of a moral nature, probably connected with his divorce and remarriage.

Peirce’s second marriage began a phase of his life that would be philosophically productive but personally frustrating, ending in self-imposed exile. In 1887, his academic career hopelessly in shambles and his labors for the survey drawing to a conclusion, Peirce moved to Milford, Pennsylvania, a resort area on the Delaware river. With a small inheritance, he was able to purchase land and begin construction of an elaborately planned home he called “Arisbe.” Though Peirce was able to live in his retreat for the remainder of his life, the mansion was never really completed.

Typically, Peirce had overextended himself. When he lost his government salary in 1891 and suffered severe losses in the depression of 1893, he began a long slide into poverty. His closest and always tolerant friend, William James, tried to help as much as possible, arranging for a series of lectures in Boston in 1898 and finally persuading Harvard to allow the notorious philosopher to give a series of lectures at the university in 1903. No effort, however, even by the most famous American philosopher, would make Peirce acceptable to established society in the nineteenth century. Finally, James began collecting donations for a Peirce fund from interested and unnamed friends. From 1907 until his death in 1914, Peirce was largely supported by this fund, which amounted to about thirteen hundred dollars a year. Peirce, who had often been jealous of James and attacked his version of pragmatism with undisguised contempt, paid his friend a typical compliment by adopting Santiago (St. James) as part of his name in 1909.

Even in his last years, which were marred by illness, Peirce was productive. He continued to work in isolation, leaving behind a massive collection of papers. Ironically, Harvard, the institution that had so often rejected him, recognized his worth and purchased the manuscripts from his widow. Between 1931 and 1935, the six volumes of the Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce , edited by Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss, were published by Harvard. This collection began what amounted to a revolution in American academic philosophy, making the ideas of Peirce a touchstone for twentieth century philosophical inquiry.

The exact nature of Peirce’s contribution to understanding is by no means clear. Numerous scholars have spent careers examining his writings, never reaching a consensus. The confusion is rooted in the nature of Peirce’s work itself. Not satisfied with a contribution in a single area of inquiry, Peirce envisioned a vast architectonic system ending in a complete explanation of all human knowledge. In short, Peirce strove to be a modern Aristotle. Although admirable, this goal ran up against a central dilemma in human thought, providing a source of tension within Peirce’s system as well as within the world in which he lived.

Science, in the last years of the nineteenth century, revealed a limited vision of reality, of what could be known. The world, according to this view, consisted of matter and could be fully explained through the scientific method. Many thinkers, unable to accept this so-called positivistic version of reality, countered with an explanation based on the mind itself as the source of everything. Best represented in the Idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, this view had spawned many variations. Peirce could not fully accept either position. Positivism seemed to deny the possibility of metaphysics or, perhaps better, a universe with meaning that could be understood by human beings. Idealism seemed hopelessly subjective, denying the possibility of actually knowing the physical universe.

Peirce set out to reconcile the irreconcilable by carefully examining immediate experience. Characteristically, this examination would be grounded on clear and precise thinking such as his famous “pragmatic maxim.” He also rejected nominalism and accepted the position of the medieval scholastic Duns Scotus on the reality of Universals. Peirce insisted that cognition itself is reality, and everything that is real is knowable. The structure of experience is revealed in what he called “phaneroscopy.” This term is typical of Peirce’s obsession with the invention of new words to explain concepts, which is one of the reasons his ideas are so difficult.

Phaneroscopy is roughly analogous to the modern concept of phenomenology. From his phenomenological basis, Peirce deduced three categories or qualities of experience that he termed Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. This division of experience allowed him to move from an essentially psychological analysis to logic itself through what he called the “semiotic,” or the doctrine of signs. By signs, Peirce essentially meant those things in the mind that stand for the real things of the world. A word, for example, would be a sign but only one kind of sign. Peirce’s analysis of signs and their relationships was a vast and complicated explanation of how human beings think and provides the logical basis for his whole system.

A complete discussion of this difficult and obscure argument is not possible in this context, but most modern philosophers would agree that it constitutes Peirce’s most important contribution to philosophy, particularly logic. Its obscurity, however, has led to many different interpretations. Phenomenologists, for example, find considerable comfort in his explanation of experience, while the logical positivists, who seldom agree with phenomenologists, also see their ideas reflected in Peirce’s theory of signs. In fact, most philosophical systems in the twentieth century found some part of Peirce’s ideas important in either a positive or a negative way.

Peirce’s logic, however, was only the foundation of a broad system that included a complete theory of knowledge as well as cosmological speculations. This system, while not as widely accepted as his semiotic, includes a number of important concepts. For example, Peirce develops what he calls “tychism,” or the doctrine of chance, which explains irregularities within nature. This idea should be balanced with “synechism,” which is the doctrine that continuity is a basic feature of the world. Here again, Peirce reconciles the irreconcilable, and the result provides a reasonable picture of the actual condition of scientific inquiry.

Synechism represents scientific law, which Peirce calls habit, without which one could not understand the operation of the natural world. Tychism, however, explains how change is possible and prevents a deterministic version of reality, which is the logical result of scientific law. Science then, while based on research that, if pursued to infinity, will result in “truth,” must in the practical world be based on probability. Even in logic itself, one cannot be sure that all statements are correct. Although not denying absolute truth, this concept, which Peirce called “fallibilism,” provides a healthy corrective to those who are convinced that they have found the ultimate answer to reality.

Significance

Few can profess to understand all of Peirce’s philosophy, and his work will probably never appeal to the average person unschooled in the mysteries of philosophical discourse. Nevertheless, his attack on the central dilemma of modern thought, created by scientific advance and its almost inevitable clash with human values, is the necessary starting point for many twentieth century philosophers and, through their work, has a profound influence on the way the world is viewed.

It may be true that Peirce ultimately failed in his attempt to reconcile the “hard” world of science with cherished human values represented by the “soft” world of Idealism, but, unlike his tragic personal life, his philosophy was certainly a glorious failure. Moreover, Peirce remained a true optimist who believed in the inevitability of human progress through reason. His system of thought, while far from perfect, did provide a view of reality that would make such progress possible. His first rule of reason demanded that the road to new knowledge always be left open. The greatest sin against reasoning, he believed, consisted in adopting a set of beliefs that would erect a barrier in the path of the search for truth.

Bibliography

Almeder, Robert F. The Philosophy of Charles S. Peirce: A Critical Introduction. Totowa, N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1980. An analysis of Peirce’s philosophy, stressing his epistemological realism, which contains a perceptive and detailed discussion of his theory of knowledge.

Conkin, Paul K. Puritans and Pragmatists: Eight Eminent American Thinkers. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1968. One of the finest overviews of American intellectual history. Places Peirce within the context of the development of American thought between Jonathan Edwards and George Santayana.

De Waal, Cornelis. On Peirce. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2001. Brief (91-page) overview of Peirce’s philosophy, designed to introduce his ideas to students.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. On Pragmatism. Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth/Thomson Learning, 2005. Describes the main figures and the central issues of pragmatism, with individual chapters devoted to Peirce, Dewey, James, and other philosophers.

Goudge, Thomas A. The Thought of C. S. Peirce. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1950. One of the most perceptive studies of Peirce’s thought. Sees Peirce’s philosophy as resting on a conflict within his personality that produced tendencies toward both naturalism and Transcendentalism.

Misak, Cheryl, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Peirce. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004. Collection of essays discussing Peirce’s philosophy and his place within the pragmatist tradition. The essays include examinations of Peirce and medieval thought, his account of perception, and his theory of signs.

Moore, Edward C. American Pragmatism: Peirce, James, and Dewey. New York: Columbia University Press, 1961. An analysis of American pragmatism based on its three primary figures. Provides an excellent comparison of their different positions.

Potter, Vincent G. Charles S. Peirce: On Norms and Ideals. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1967. An analysis of Peirce’s attempt to establish aesthetics, ethics, and logic as the three normative sciences. The author places particular emphasis on the role of “habit” in the universe.

Reilly, Francis E. Charles Peirce’s Theory of Scientific Method. New York: Fordham University Press, 1970. A discussion of Peirce’s ideas concerning the method and the philosophy of science.

Skagestad, Peter. The Road of Inquiry: Charles Peirce’s Realism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Focuses on Peirce’s theory of scientific method but also contains an introduction with considerable biographical information.