Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1914) was an amazingly prolific and influential philosopher in America, and founded what has come to be known as "pragmatism", which is the idea that the meaning of terms depends on how they "cash out" in practice. He contributed to the development of modern logic, founded the semiotic tradition (he called it "semeiotics) and was the first philosopher to take evolution seriously as a philosophical source.
But he was also overly fond of coining neologisms from Greek and Roman roots, and is very hard to read. Now a group in Helsinki have compiled definitions of his terms from his own writings and put them on the web. This will make it easier for students to read Peirce's writings.
[Hat tip to Chris Porter for the heads up.]
Comments
I have to admit I have not yet read anything by him. My wife, though, read quite a lot of Pierce back in the day when she was still majoring in philosophy (before going to a quick nursing school in order to start earning).
When we went to Belgrade (Serbia/Yugoslavia) in 1995., she was floored - it seems that every bookstore, every second-hand bookstore, every street book vendor and every home library had at least one Pierce book, and often several. He (and philosophy in general - large shelves in every bookstore devoted to it) is much more popular there than in the USA (where your only sources is Amazon.com).
Posted by: coturnix | September 1, 2006 10:32 PM
Oh, btw, since we own several of his books, which one I should read first, considering my interests?
Posted by: coturnix | September 1, 2006 10:38 PM
It's been a long while since I read him, I admit, apart from some of his logical writings dealing with type and token. But this looks approachable:
Pragmatism as a Principle and Method of Right Thinking: the 1903 Harvard Lectures on Pragmatism by Charles Sanders Peirce. Edited by Patricia Ann Turrisi (State University of New York Press, Albany, New York, 1997).
Posted by: John Wilkins | September 2, 2006 12:12 AM
OMG, Patty Turrisi was my wife's philosophy prof (and later a good friend) and so was her husband Dennis! World is small...
Posted by: coturnix | September 2, 2006 2:18 AM
You can also find a lot of Peirce's writings available at Aribe (the name of Peirce's house).
Posted by: John Wilkins | September 2, 2006 3:26 AM
I've read a fair amount of C.S. Peirce, and I've found about half of it accessible and challenging to the lay reader. But I have to say, as some who shares the same last name, I'm always baffled by his insistence that his name is pronounced "purse" (as you allude to in your post title). This is purely a conceit, or perhaps he just enjoyed taking the piss.
Certainly, everyone in my family pronounces it "pierce," just as with any other variant spellings like Pearce, Pears, Piers, Pyrs, etc. I've met a handful of other Peirces in my life, and no one pronounces it "purse."
Posted by: Howard Peirce | September 2, 2006 3:23 PM
I have always heard his name pronounced as "purse" by professional philosophers. Perhaps it was a conceit, or maybe it is an archaic pronunciation. As he lived into the 20th century, it's probable that this is how he pronounced it.
Posted by: John Wilkins | September 3, 2006 12:37 AM
Posted by: somnilista, FCD | September 3, 2006 3:58 PM
If you'd like to see exactly why Peirce was a neologist, you'll get some clues from this source, "What Pragmatism Is": The Monist vol. 15 no. 2 (April 1905), pp. 161-181. Fairly early in the essay, his discusses the "ethics of nomenclature," that is, when you should use terms, where, how and why they should be used in particular ways. While CSP doesn't actually say that much about why his guide is an "ethics," I suspect that the very possiblity of communicating or representing to others with symbols depends on communicators using such rules. He's only making them explicit here.
This essay is available through the Persus Project and the Peirce Cybrary (http://www.pragmatism.org/)
Posted by: Patricia Turrisi | September 8, 2007 4:34 PM
If you'd like to see exactly why Peirce was a neologist, you'll get some clues from this source, "What Pragmatism Is": The Monist vol. 15 no. 2 (April 1905), pp. 161-181. Fairly early in the essay, his discusses the "ethics of nomenclature," that is, when you should use terms, where, how and why they should be used in particular ways. While CSP doesn't actually say that much about why his guide is an "ethics," I suspect that the very possiblity of communicating or representing to others with symbols depends on communicators using such rules. He's only making them explicit here.
This essay is available through the Persus Project and the Peirce Cybrary (http://www.pragmatism.org/)
Posted by: Patricia Turrisi | September 8, 2007 4:41 PM