Talk:Charles Sanders Peirce

Someone more versed in logic than I am should take a look at Reason, abductive reasoning, and abduction (logic) to see what needs to be done to bring them together. Ortolan88 15:55 Sep 12, 2002 (UTC)

I added the last half of the paragraph on "Abduction" in order to place Peirce's insights in historical perspective, and to explain his epistemology and metaphysics in more detail. Joe House June 21, 2005.

This sentence in the first paragraph under Abductive Reasoning is confusing: "His pragmatism may be understood as a method of sorting out conceptual confusions by linking relating the meaning of concepts to their operational / practical consequences." Meanwhile I've corrected a typo! Jmchen October 21, 2005.

Philip Meguire, 22.10.05: The discussion of Peirce's philosophy and his notion of abduction remain in crying need of correction and expansion.

Charles Saunders Peirce article entry

Philip Meguire, 11.7.05: His middle name was Sanders.

Going through several philosophers who hadn't yet been added to the Wikipedia, I added 'Charles Saunders Peirce' as a separate article, but I now see it already exists. If someone else would like to, it can be merged with my entry. The source I gave clearly puts Saunders as a middle, rather than alternate surname (pseudonym Surname?). I would crop this article to the location of mine after merging and leave this as a link, but I'll leave it for someone more impartial to decide. Nagelfar 13:58, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

The problem is, his middle name is Sanders, not Saunders. Feel free to add information from your article to this one and then provide a Redirect. --Blainster 17:45, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

While were on his middle name, what's with this Santiago business? --- Charles Stewart 19:28, 2 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

My source must be in error, though it clearly & repeatedly had Saunders, so it isn't a mistake on my part. Nagelfar 16:53, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

How interesting things get with a Google search. This paper [1] states (on p.17 of the pdf file, listed as p. 58 on the page): "Peirce himself acknowledged the fictionalizing involved in his self-representations, and Howe cites his written meditation on his name: ('I am variously listed in print as Charles Santiago Peirce, Charles Saunders Peirce, and Charles Sanders Peirce. Under the circumstances a noncommittal S. suits me best')". The Howe source is given as The Birth-mark: unsettling the wilderness in American literary history. Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 1993.

Regarding the frequency of use of the middle names, there are only 11 English language hits on Santiago by Google, 391 hits on Saunders, and 90,000 on Sanders, and 64,400 on just the middle initial S. I look for some print sources that may help to explain this. --Blainster 18:26, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I did a bit of a background check as well. I found no reference quality works (eg. Stanford E. P., Routledge E. P., Grattan-Guinness's biographical article) that use the name "Santiago", and "Saunders' looks rather like a mispelling (and has no quality source). This looks like web noise to me, and in the absence of a credible source, we should not be amplifying it. --- Charles Stewart 18:56, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

I'm OK with Sanders in the lead. The fact remains that the form "Charles S. Peirce" is nearly as widely seen in the literature. What bears research is the Pierce quote cited by Howe that lists the other versions and says he prefers the middle initial. If it can be located it will show that the other versions were extant long before the Web. --Blainster 19:11, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:Manual of Style (biographies) more or less specifies that we should spell out the full name. It doesn't mean to say that that is how he signed himself, or how he is most often referred to. --- Charles Stewart 20:22, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Saint James rides again The source for this 'The Continuity of Peirce's Thought' by Kelly Parker http://www.vanderbilt.edu/vupress/Peirce.htm

There is a discussion of this in one of the footnotes, suggesting that it is a reference to William James, which I would go along with. Perhaps the three versions of his name is an example of 'Thirdness' and certainly his own preference for a non-commital S. says something about his own attitude to the signs used for his self-representation give us insight to Peirce as as a Peirce-on if you will excuse the dreadful pun! No doubt he had to deal with the mispronunciation of his surname from childhood, which may account for his critical attitude to the supposede virisimiltude of nominal self-representation. For all these reasons, I feel the Santiago tag and his relationship to it give precisely the sort relevant information to Peirce's character which a more anodyne account of his philosophising might omit from an enclodeia entry upon this enigmatic philosopher. BTW, have others considered how wikipedia in many ways can be seen as an application of Peirce's theories of knowledge? Harrypotter 17:11, 10 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Electrical switches and notation

I've been toning down the puffery of the "The Logician" section, which contains the remarkable claim:

In an 1886 letter to another former student, was the first to see that Boolean calculations could be carried out by means of electrical switches, anticipating Claude Shannon by more than 50 years.

This sounds incredible, and given Shannon's research of Pierce sounds almost like a claim of plagiarism. Does it have any basis? Which might be the letter referred to? I've deleted the claim for now.

Philip Meguire, 11.7.05: No possibility of plagiarism, as Peirce's discussion was in a letter to Alan Marquand (the former student), not discovered until the 1950s, and not widely reproduced until the 1980s. Kenneth Lane Kettner at Texas Tech, and Arthur Burks at Michigan have both written on this. The definitive reproduction of the letter, with commentary, is in vol. 5 of the Writings.

I've also deleted, of Pierce's existential graphs vs. Frege's notation:

Peirce's notation, unlike Frege's, was widely used until the 1930s.

Possibly there was a niche culture using Pierce's notation, but the dominant notation was due to Peano, Whitehead, Russell, certainly well established by the time of Hilbert&Ackermann's Principles of Theoretical Logic in 1928. --- Charles Stewart 20:16, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Philip Meguire, 11.7.05: Schroeder, Loewenheim, and Goedel's 1931 landmark paper all used Peirce's notation for quantification and sometimes more. Until about 1960, the Polish school's notation for quantification was that of Peirce. The Peano-Principia notation did not become canonical until Alonzo Church and the young Quine made it so in the 1930s. The Introduction to the Houser et al 1997 Indiana University Press volume makes this and more clear. Hilbert & Ackerman deviated from Principia in a way which evolved into the notation that is now more or less canonical. E.g., the upside down A is believed due to Hilbert's student Gentzen.

Merge Charles Saunders Peirce

I don't think this requires much discussion, but this is your opportunity to move anything from that article over here before it gets changed to a redirect. --Blainster 23:01, 4 November 2005 (UTC)[reply]

Santiago & Realism

Peirce adopted the middle name "Santiago" in his old age out of gratitude for William James's financial support. For over a decade, William James would send letters to about 50 Boston Brahmins, asking them to make a donation to help Peirce. This money could well have been all Peirce had to pay property taxes and thus not lose Arisbe to a forced sale. Much of the blame for Peirce's hard life can be placed on his lifelong patrician contempt for making ends.

I am quite pleased that someone took the trouble of adding the material on Peirce the scholastic realist. At the same time, the exposition left something to be desired in my view, and so I gave it an edit. This section also does not say enough about Peirce's peculiar fascination with Duns Scotus. I also have reservations about whether a bold new position staked out in a very recent academic article deserves pride of place in Wikipedia.

Please, more on Peirce's philosophy!

Would the many happy Peircians out there please add discussions of Peirce's fallibilism, his evolutionary thinking, his anticipations of process thought, and his peculiar metaphysics? The article at present does not reveal just why Peirce has been deemed the greatest abstract thinker ever to emerge in the western hemisphere.