Charles Sanders Peirce American philosopher, physicist and mathematician Date of Birth: 10.09.1839 Country: USA

1. Early Life and Education
2. Scientific Career
3. Philosophical Influences
4. Pragmatism
5. Semiotics and Logic
6. Metaphysics
7. Later Life and Legacy

Early Life and Education

Charles Sanders Peirce was born on September 10, 1839, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Benjamin Peirce, a professor of mathematics and astronomy at Harvard University. Peirce graduated from Harvard College in 1859 and went on to study chemistry at the Lawrence Scientific School, graduating in 1863.

Scientific Career

Peirce had a short stint in the U.S. Coast Guard in 1861, during which he assisted his father. While working for the Coast Guard, he also published his first scientific paper on photometry in the university observatory's journal.

Peirce made several scientific discoveries in mathematics, physics, geodesy, and spectroscopy. He gave lectures at Harvard (1870–1871), Johns Hopkins University (1879–1884), and the Lowell Institute.

Philosophical Influences

Peirce was deeply influenced by Immanuel Kant, whom he believed addressed all the most important philosophical problems. He criticized René Descartes for promoting modern nominalism and had a favorable view of Duns Scotus.

Peirce saw philosophy as a subset of the science of discovery, which in turn was a part of theoretical science. According to him, philosophy's function was to explain the unity of the diversity found in the universe. All philosophy began with logic (the relationship between signs and objects) and phenomenology (the experience of perceiving the objective world).

Pragmatism

Like many other scientists in the late 19th century, Peirce was concerned about religious controversies following the publication of Charles Darwin's work. He sought to create a philosophical system that both accommodated scientific methods and results and was compatible with Christianity.

Peirce's famous "pragmatic maxim" (1878) stated that the meaning of a concept is its practical consequences. By examining the practical effects of an idea, we could determine its full meaning.

Semiotics and Logic

Peirce's work in logic and scientific method was groundbreaking. He made significant contributions to propositional calculus, the theory of inference, resolution methods in propositional logic, relation logic, logical paradoxes, logical semantics, and multi-valued logic.

Peirce also introduced the general theory of signs, including linguistic signs, and developed a classification of signs based on their relationships to their objects: iconic, indexical, and symbolic.

Metaphysics

Peirce sought to rid metaphysics of dogmatism by introducing the scientific method as the only genuine method of acquiring knowledge. He defined "reality" as that which would be discovered through an infinite process of scientific inquiry.

In order to make metaphysics a part of the realm of knowledge, Peirce proposed a criterion for distinguishing between questions solvable by the scientific method and those that were not. This criterion was his pragmatic maxim.

Peirce believed that his metaphysical system was compatible with Christianity. He argued that evolution as he understood it was consistent with the Gospels and that we have empirical knowledge of God.

Later Life and Legacy

Peirce retired in 1891 and lived on a farm near Milford, Pennsylvania, with financial support from friends, including William James. He died on April 19, 1914.

Peirce's work had a significant impact on William James, but Peirce himself believed that James's views were not related to his own. He coined the term "pragmaticism" to distinguish his theory from James's.

Peirce's ideas in semiotics and logic were largely ignored outside the United States until they were adapted and popularized in the 1930s by Charles W. Morris.