The Philosopher

Charles Sanders Peirce

The face

The background

Nationality:
American
Schools:
Pragmatism, Pragmaticism
Branchs:
Logic, Mathematics, Statistics, Philosophy, Metrology, Chemistry, Experimental psychology, Economics, Linguistics, History of Science, Philosophical logic, Metaphysics, Epistemology, semiotics, Signs, Pragmatism
Period:
Late modern philosophy

The synopsis

Charles Sanders Peirce (1839–1914) was a pioneering American scientist, mathematician, logician, and philosopher, widely regarded as the "father of pragmatism." Educated as a chemist and employed as a scientist for thirty years, Peirce made profound contributions to formal logic, including theories of relations and quantification, and is celebrated as one of America's most original thinkers and greatest logicians. His work anticipated key developments in computer science, particularly the use of electrical switching circuits for logical operations. Peirce's philosophical contributions include the concept of abductive reasoning, foundational work in statistics, and metaphysical ideas such as objective idealism, synechism, and tychism. Despite his intellectual achievements, Peirce faced significant personal and financial struggles throughout his life, leading to a later life of poverty and limited recognition, though his influence has grown considerably posthumously.

The works

The quotes

Every new concept first comes to the mind in a judgment.
Charles Sanders Peirce
It will sometimes strike a scientific man that the philosophers have been less intent on finding out what the facts are, than on inquiring what belief is most in harmony with their system.
Charles Sanders Peirce
A quality is something capable of being completely embodied. A law never can be embodied in its character as a law except by determining a habit. A quality is how something may or might have been. A law is how an endless future must continue to be.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Doubt is an uneasy and dissatisfied state from which we struggle to free ourselves and pass into the state of belief; while the latter is a calm and satisfactory state which we do not wish to avoid, or to change to a belief in anything else.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Generality is, indeed, an indispensable ingredient of reality; for mere individual existence or actuality without any regularity whatever is a nullity. Chaos is pure nothing.
Charles Sanders Peirce
The final upshot of thinking is the exercise of volition, and of this thought no longer forms a part; but belief is only a stadium of mental action, an effect upon our nature due to thought, which will influence future thinking.
Charles Sanders Peirce
The essence of belief is the establishment of a habit; and different beliefs are distinguished by the different modes of action to which they give rise.
Charles Sanders Peirce
Bad reasoning as well as good reasoning is possible; and this fact is the foundation of the practical side of logic.
Charles Sanders Peirce
It is impossible not to envy the man who can dismiss reason, although we know how it must turn out at last.
Charles Sanders Peirce
All the evolution we know of proceeds from the vague to the definite.
Charles Sanders Peirce